Life Drawing Syllabus

Lesson 1 I always compare learning how to draw with going to the gym. Someone can show you all the fancy work out machines and how to use them, but to build muscle you have to work hard. The more often you work out, the stronger you get. This is also true with drawing. The more you practice, the better you get. You might be surprised at the amount of theory involved when it comes to learning how to draw. Talent has very little to do with training your eye, brain and hand to work together. Interest and dedication is the way. In this course you will learn about rules and exercises that will help you draw a figure correctly and eventually create a drawing that you would consider a finished piece of art.

Materials Learning how to draw will not break the bank. You will not have to spend hundreds of dollars to get started. About $20 - $30 should be enough to get you going.

Drawing pads. There is a lot of different paper out there to choose from. The cheapest paper is Newsprint. This paper will yellow and fall apart within only a few years and is mostly used by students practicing drawing. Why? Picture how many times you have to lift a weight to get those big arm muscles…that is how many sketches you should be doing, so cheap paper can be a good thing. Newsprint comes in two kinds: rough or smooth. Rough lends itself better to charcoal. Smooth has a harder surface and it is more difficult for charcoal to adhere to. Cotton rag paper is considered the best paper due to its durability and soft fibers that hold the particles of charcoal and pencil well. You, as a beginning artist, should get something in between. Any regular sketch or drawing pad will do. I would normally suggest an 18” x 24” pad, but if you do not have a digital camera or a large scanner, 8 ½” x 11 works just as well. When I talk about drawing plane in these lessons, I mean the flat surface of your paper, or whatever else you might be drawing on.

In this course we will work with both charcoal and pencils.

Charcoal is probably the oldest drawing tool in existence. It has been used for thousand of years, as early as in cave drawings. Charcoal is wood burnt under pressure. It creates a dark line that can be easily smudged to create soft shadows. To erase charcoal you will use a kneaded eraser, a soft rubber-like substance that easily picks up the charcoal particles. However, be aware that it is almost impossible to completely erase a charcoal line. Charcoal normally comes in three different grades; hard, medium and soft. The softer is the darker. You can get charcoal in round sticks from thin vine charcoal sticks to ½” thick jumbo sticks as well as in square sticks and in pencil form.

The inventor of the first lead pencil is unknown, but such pencils were in use primarily as an artists' tool as early as the fourteenth century. Pencils have created very beautiful, pale grey drawings, done with rods of lead, zinc or silver. Many of these drawings can be found in museums today, though all of them are now classified as “silver point drawings”.

Pencils come in many grades: 9H, 8H, ... , 2H, H, F, HB, B, 2B, ... , 8B, 9B. The most common are the middle grades from 4H to 6B. H=Hard, B=Black. The H pencils will create a very light gray line slowly getting darker as the number goes down, the B pencils will get darker as the numbers go up. In the states there is also a number system that corresponds to the letters: #1- B, #2 – HB, #2½ - F, #3 – H, #4 - 2H

Pencils and lines made by pencil Razor or sharpener How to sharpen with a razor: Sharpeners Erasers for pencils vary. There are white vinyl/rubber erasers, pink eraser, and gum erasers. With these you might want to get one of each and experiment. Depending on what paper you use and the hardness of your pencil anyone of these may be preferable. Images of erasers.

List of supplies to get: Charcoal 1 pk of soft vine charcoal 3 charcoal pencils, HB, 2B and 4B Sharpener for Charcoal (a small pad of sandpaper-like quality) Razorblades for sharpening charcoal pencils 4 pencils; 2H, 2B, 4B and 6B Pencil Sharpener 1 kneaded eraser 2-3 pencil erasers (Magic Rub or Staedler Mars Plastic are good options). 1 drawing/sketch pad, 8 ½” x 11” or preferably18” x 24” Tracing paper (we will use this in the lessons for anatomy and skeleton) A roll of Kraft paper

A mirror. Since you may not always have a friend or model to pose for you, you can use yourself as a model. You will need a wardrobe mirror hanging completely vertical (if the mirror is on an angle you will see a distorted image). You must be able to step back far enough to see your entire body.

Other optional drawing tools are pens, ink, conte’ crayons, pastels and even paint brushes. Any art work that is created mainly by lines is a considered a drawing and anything that you can make a line with is a drawing tool.

When you draw hold the pencil underhand, not like when you write. Draw with your whole arm as much as possible, not only your hand.

How to see The brain: Science has found that verbal and rational knowledge are located in the left side of your brain. When learning theory, such as perspective, value and muscle you will need to involve the left brain. The left side processes information in a linear manner (no pun intended). It draws (again) conclusions based on information given, and will help you gain understanding of the rules and systems you need to create a good drawing. When this information has been integrated in you from lots and lots of practice you will want to use your right, intuitive side to create from. The right side senses relationships and patterns which is what we will focus on. You will then find that the left side constantly wants to have a word in what you are drawing, so you need to learn to either make the brain agree with what you see; trick it or wear it out. One trick is to do many fast sketches. Eventually the left side of your brain will find it does not have time to give you all its input. It will give up, and you will be able to draw straight from your eye.

Because our left brain is constantly trying to save energy and effort it will try to take short cuts by categorizing what you see without really looking and thus we create symbols. It only takes two dots and a line for us to recognize a face. Or think about the stick figure – symbol of man.

Illustration of symbols

The figure: Before you get started drawing the figure it is important you know something about proportion (one part considered in relation to the whole) and how to measure. What you think you see (left) and what you actually see (right) is often very different until you have trained your eye and brain to agree on what’s in front of you. Measuring is a way to help encourage cooperation between these two halves.

Example: stand in front of a mirror and stretch your hand towards it. This is an example of *foreshortening. If you were to draw this your brain would insist that an arm is long, and has to be drawn as such, even when your eye sees no length in the arm. You will need to learn either how to make your brain agree to what you see, or to trick it.

Arm in forshortening: James Montgomery Flagg, 1877-1960

* Foreshortening is what happens to forms when they are seen in perspective. Perspective is what happens to everything you see in relation to where your eye is located. If you sit down, forms around you look different than when you stand up. What is closer to your eye will appear larger than something that is far from you. More about this in lesson 5.

Measurements for the ideal figure: Keep in mind that we are always working out of a standard that in real life will fit few people perfectly. Even so, do not use this fact as an excuse to be lazy about your measurements. We will work with a body length 8 heads long, as this unit offers an easy measuring system. For a regular person, 7 ½ heads is actually more accurate. The main difference is the length of the legs. For a superhero, the measurement more often used is 8 ½ heads for the height. This creates the “larger than life” illusion.

Standard Proportions: Here is a list of standard bodily proportions that can give you a good idea of ideal proportions.

 The adult human figure is an average of 7-8 heads high.  The width from shoulder to shoulder is 3 heads width.  The distance from the hip to the toes is 4 heads.  The distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chest is 2 heads.  The length from top to bottom of the buttocks is 1 head.  The distance from the elbow to the end of outstretched fingers is 2 heads.  The distance between the nipples are 1 head  The elbow will be in line with your waist or navel and your fingertips should come to the middle of your thigh.  When you stretch your arms out and measure from fingertip to fingertip you should, incredibly enough, find your height.  Your hand is as big as your face, and the palm and the fingers are the same length. Keep in mind that the measurements of children are different. A one year old will generally have a body where the distance from neck to feet is 3 ½ heads.

Illustration male and female

Male and female figures also have standardized differences. The man has wide shoulders, slim hips and a long back, while the female has narrow shoulders, wide hips, a narrower waist and a shorter back.

Measuring: Most of the time you will not be drawing a figure that stands straight up and down. In this case knowing the standard measurement will only be partly helpful. You also need to know how to compare volumes within the body.

You most likely have seen images of the artist with hand outstretched with a vertically held brush in hand, one eye closed. What exactly is he or she doing?

Rules for measuring Stand in the same place every time you measure, and have your head in the same position. Changing where you stand or sit will create several viewpoints and it will be impossible to make them fit together. Also have a constant distance (about an arms length) to your drawing plane (your pad).

Always have your arm completely extended! Measuring from different distances to your eye will give you different proportions, and again, you will not be able to put them together correctly. You also need some distance to your subject. Being too close will give a strong perspective that will distort your drawing. You should not have to move your head up or down to see and measure the entire figure.