Inom TurdikulovDrawabox - learning the fundamentals of drawing
Site looks well-done and well-organized. It’s even contain read the text feature, which help me as English learner.
Lesson 0: Getting Started
Introduction
Drawabox Lesson 0, Part 1: What is Drawabox? - YouTube.
Drawabox is community of professionals and enthusiasts, who want to develop their drawing skills.
Content of drawbox continuously improving and based on Peter Han’s Dynamic Sketching course (which he built with his mentor).
Drawabox give you a strong foundation, but require a lot of practice and time. It’s not going to make you professional, but give you essential knowledge and practice to improve your drawing skills. I like their comparative with MMO, you start from Newbie and potentially can become a Hero.
Drawabox focus on 3 areas:
- Confident and controlled MARK MAKING - the ability to make the marks you intend to make, and to keep them smooth and hesitation-free;
- Attentive and fastidious OBSERVATION;
- And the big focus of this course overall: SPATIAL REASONING - the understanding deep in your brain that despite drawing on a flat page, the things you’re producing exist in a real, three dimensional world.
It can be starting point to advanced topics, like lighting, rendering, or shading (especially spatial reasoning).
Changing your Mindset
End result (getting better at art) in drawing is getting in your way.
You want to impress someone, but this stresses us out and put into creative paralysis.
Failure is a beginner’s job and not bad at all, it’s even critical integral part of learning process, it’s detect your weak points and allow you to improve yourself by working on them.
You can be ashamed in some field if you are just beginner!
You don’t need to find excuses to draw, you at least ready to draw something on beginner level!
Everyone following this course is expected to abide by what we call the 50% rule, without exception.
What is 50% rule about?
- Improving your skills, first
50%. Coursework, exercises, studies, tutorials, etc. - Second
50%is drawing done for the sake of drawing. In other words, play. Experimentation, just throwing yourself at the page and giving yourself full freedom to just try, even though the result will likely turn out badly.
This is general rule, every minute you spend on learning must be followed by practice (play). You can do it in various time sessions (day/day or any other).
Why ignoring 50% rule is critical mistake?
It’ll help develop skills that do need to be developed at some point, and doing it now will help you avoid some stinging disappointment later on. So it’s sort of learning mathematics, if you don’t understand one theorem, you don’t understand next related theorem.
If you spent time on 50% of play in relaxing fashion, it will help to absorb them more fully. Balance between work and play is very important.
Cleanly separating work and play allows us to do each whole-heartedly.
Drawabox has a tool to find what to draw (drawing prompts): Tea Time at World’s End.
Using your old techniques or art materials is fine.
Reference is not bad, but try to avoid them in first time and use as Reference, not copy/paste material (multiple references to fill some gaps, or learn something).
TODO: Additional related materials:
- Stress-Free Sketching with Sheldon Borenstein
- Overcoming the Fear of a Blank Page
- Personal vs Impersonal Satisfaction in Art
Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
In drawbox course focus primarily on drawing from your shoulder. One good tip is imagining that your shoulder able to draw/write which can help change your habit to draw from wrist/elbow (on your “play” time, you can use any other techniques).
Main idea is drawing from shoulder more effective (straight lines) and allow you to draw longer sessions than from wrist.
Drawing only with your wrist, where your hand moves, but the wrist remains pinned in place. This allows us to have very tight, stiff control, and it’s good for tight details and writing.
Drawing only with wrist, allow having very tight, stiff control, which useful in writing and tight details drawing
Drawing with whole arm great for smooth, fluid line work. It’s also useful for drawing smaller marks, because it’s emphasizes a consistent trajectory (more straight lines according to image above) and minimizes erratic wobbling. I think in 2 words more stable and consistent.
Resting the side of your hand or a finger is fine, but resting elbow is not a good idea, since it force you to draw from elbow.
Using “overhand” grip is mainly used for tools like pencil, brush, etc. It allows creating marks from tool edges, better for drawing on canvas, etc. In drawbox course we use pen and using tripod grip-type is more suitable than “overhand” grip type.
Drawing hand positions
Lines: Markmaking
Rules to draw marks:
- Marks should be continuous and unbroken (sort of linear motion);
- Marks should flow smoothly (flow better than accuracy);
- Marks must maintain a consistent trajectory (break patterns into drawing steps).
Lines: Homework
Some tips:
- Do not grind;
- Do not rush;
- Read all the instructions carefully;
- Take breaks.
Exercises:
- Two filled pages of the Superimposed Lines exercise.
Superimposed Lines Homework
Start out with a simple straight line with a ruler and repeat it 8 times.
Split the page into 2 parts. In first draw 4 short and 4 medium lines (which each repeat 8 times). In second part draw 4 long lines (which each repeat 8 times). At some space draw curved lines (optional).
Main purpose of this lesson is training muscle memory (confidence), you not focus on process, you just quickly draw lines with some requirements.
Avoid common mistakes: wobbling, fraying on both edges (on end it’s natural).
- One filled page of the Ghosted Lines exercise.
Ghosting lines is backbone of how to think whey you do markmaking. It’s nice to have habit for markmaking.
Generally ghosting lines contains 3 steps:
- Planning, positions and what is meant to accomplish task, we are not sketching, and unnecessary lines are not required. Rotate page to the comfort orientation.
- Preparation, here where ghosting is ready to go. You draw “virtually” without touching the page. Select start and end positions and draw little above the page, repeat this process several times (to trigger muscle memory).
- Execution, just execute this mark with confidence. Avoid any hesitation, second guessing, attempting t avoid a mistake.
These lessons have 3 levels of success, focus on level 1, don’t grind.
- Level 1 less accuracy (start/end position);
- Level 2 better accuracy but less on end position;
- Level 3 better accuracy on both start/end position.
Overshoot issue (too long/too short line), you can use lifting method:
Try lifting your pen off the page the second you hit that end point.
We can still work with a line that is smooth and even, but there’s not much that can be done with a wobbly one. So this lesson train you to draw smooth lines.
- two filled pages of the Ghosted Planes exercise
This exercise is extension of Ghosted lines. In drawbox concepts are presented by units from easy to complex. Main purpose of this exercise is to apply ghosting method to something more complex.
First you need to plan marks, just 4 dots for quadrilateral shape.
Then rotate page as comfort for you and make mark using ghosted method, focus only on making this mark.
Then construct lines between corners of plane (diagonal).
Last step is bisecting the plane in both dimensions (vertical through center, cross).
All this steps must be done using ghosting method, you can ignore perspective in these lessons, just a bunch of lines on a flat page.
Fill page with planes with various of sizes, avoid empty space.
This exercise is especially good for warm-ups, and I’d generally recommend doing it over the simpler ghosted lines exercise for obvious reasons - it’s the same thing, but with more purpose to it. On top of that however, it’s a particularly versatile exercise that can be modified to start incorporating perspective concepts as well.
Since this is only part of lesson 1. Send homework for review when you are completed all parts of lesson 1.