While I think that designers in general should be able to draw well enough to communicate their ideas, (Von Glitska @Vonster tweeted that those who can’t draw end up plagiarizing those who can), they should also doodle. Doodling is what you do when the rest of your senses are otherwise occupied.

I used to doodle during class lectures, meetings and sermons. I filled the white space in and around my notes with lines and shapes.

I found that doodling helped me to mentally process what the speaker was imparting. Drawing does the same thing for me.

For example, I drew this profile of Tony Luna during his Art Center class, Crafting A Meaningful Career:.

So, what is the difference between doodling and drawing.

A doodle has no real purpose but to keep a person occupied. It doesn’t need to depict anything.

A doodle is simply a mark or series of marks. They can be playful, geometric, linear, shaded… whatever.

It requires no talent, skill or special training. Doodling is useful because it helps us process cognitively.

Doodles are often the result of thinking, but they’re not a depiction of thinking in the way a drawing is. Because doodles are aimless in nature, they don’t need to communicate.

Doodling is calming. To engage in mark-making quiets us down and we can actually slow down.

Doodling is to the designer and illustrator what stream-of-consciousness is to the writer. Drawing also quiets us, but we’re not daydreaming.

We become quiet because we’re focused on one this and separating ourselves from distractions. Doodles are not critiqued as drawing is.

I’ve never met anyone who was jealous that another person could doodle better than she. In fact, we’re all at about the same level when it comes to doodling.

But we do study others’ drawings to build our own ability. There are those who equate doodling to mind-mapping, I don’t.

Mind mapping is a blend of notation and drawing. It’s a visual layout of information on a page, a sort of diagram to help explain stuff.

Mindmapping involves more focused thought and concentration than doodling.

Well, that sounds like doodling, right.

The verb, drawing, means to produce a picture or diagram. Drawing is a work of visual art — the result of a productive (hence, the work) process — whereas doodling is not.

Drawing is the evidence of focused thinking and attentive observation. Drawing is meaningful.

When learning to draw, go for accuracy. Learn to draw form as it is.

(insert challenge here). Once you have the ability to draw accurately, then you can draw expressively.

Drawing makes us look carefully and understand what we’re seeing. It helps our ability to see better — form, space, gesture, movement — and give us a means of communicating what we see.

It’s the foundation of the written word, whether we write with an alphabet or characters.

When I teach students to draw, I begin by having them simply make as many marks as they can on a blank sheet. My purpose is to have them get comfortable with making scribbles, hatching, and various types of lines and tones without the restrictions of depicting something.

I’ve watched as many students tighten up and become timid in this simple exercise. “Why do we need to do this.

Let’s just draw something. ” Then they start thinking about the lines they’re making and become even more awkward about it.

This exercise does not ask students to think in order to do. It simply asks them to do, and start getting used to creating lines and tones in general.

The point of the exercise is to explore mark-making and separate from the control of writing and moving the hand only. In drawing, you need to move from the elbow, shoulder and wrist.

It’s like those stretching exercise ballplayers go through right before a game. It’s a warm-up session that serves the work to come.

The mechanics have become second nature. He or she just aims the ball and throws the runner out at first.

When students get used to making marks without thinking about it, and get used to making a wide variety of marks and scribbles, mark-making becomes automatic and they don’t need to be aware of how they create marks during their drawing session. That means they can focus on what those marks are communicating, which is a higher level of skill and understanding.

It leads to overstating a straight-curve contrast, for example. And to coloring outside the lines, connecting the figure to the surrounding background.

If you mean to draw — to say something, to record an incident, depict a likeness, illustrate a story, or decorate a surface — you need to be intentional. Unless your drawing communicates, it’s a mere doodle.

Don’t be timid, aimless, unsure, uncaring, and uncertain. Drawing is intentional.

More on drawing by Alvalyn Lundgren: Add Energy To Your Drawing With Structural Syntax.

Is Drawing a Necessary Design Skill.

Try my doodle exercise:. On a blank sheet of paper or page, make as many different kinds of marks as you can using a pencil:

Fill up a third page using a ballpoint. Then, recap your experience.

What did you learn. Did mark-making become easier as you kept going.

So…you’ve picked up a pencil and have a piece of paper. Where exactly do you start to draw and what does this thing called the contour line have to do with anything.

That blank piece of paper looks large and daunting. What is the logical order in which to get going.

The first of the basic 5 drawing principles is known as the contour line. What does contour drawing mean and when should you use it.

If you’ve ever joined me in person you will know that I pretty much start every drawing session with the contour line in my page, whether fast or slow. I lay down the entire shape on my paper first by capturing its contours.

Contours are the skeleton of your artwork and if you reach the end of your drawing and feel dissatisfied it is often as a result of the first few strokes of the pencil on the page. The dictionary definition of a contour is as follows.

“an outline representing or bounding the shape or form of something.”. I’d also add that we must not confuse the concept of an outline with a contour.

Imagine placing your hand down and drawing around it. That is an outline.

In addition, our perception of edges, (in the case of drawing), where two things come together and the line that depicts this shared edge is known as a contour line. Grasping the importance of contours is fundamental in moving you beyond childlike drawings.

“Be guided more by the sense of touch, than by sight.”. An interesting concept.

Well, read on. Mastering and understanding the concept of a good contour is step 1 in developing a good drawing habit that, within the first moments of your drawing sets out the shape and feel of what you are trying to draw.

But before I do so I want to take an even further step back. Table of Contents.

I’m not talking getting relaxed, I’m talking about how your eye, brain, and then body respond to the act of drawing.

We all assume that the act of picking up a pencil and placing it to the paper is the first step. There is a pre-step.

How does your eye communicate the visual to your brain.

How do you process what you see. How good are you at looking at your object.

Do you ask questions about what you’re looking at. Do you de-construct the image and take it to pieces in front of you.

At the risk of sounding romantic about this the great nineteenth century romantic poets were acutely connected to the impact that their surroundings had on their “mind’s eyes.” One of my favourite texts is The Prelude by Wordsworth. This famous text revolves around the power the poet’s natural surroundings have on his “mind’s eye,”.

There is a dark / Invisible workmanship that reconciles /Discordant elements, and makes them move / In one society…”. If only we were so finely tuned when it comes to learning to draw.

In order to master the basic techniques of drawing, you must first become highly sensitised to what is going on in your “mind’s eye,” and how you are processing what you are seeing. The faster you become aware of this concept the easier learning to draw will become.

Once you have mastered and become aware of the eye to brain connection and this process you can then proceed to develop your brain to hand activity. Your brain to hand activity emerges through the first contour style I discuss, blind contour drawing.

There are many different ways in which we can initially start our drawings. Contour drawing is born out of how you perceive the object in front of you.

Our aim, as Nicolaides so aptly puts it is to draw as if we are running our pencil along the edges of our object. Wouldn’t it be great if the way we see something could translate neatly onto the paper without us even having to worry how we do so.

That is at the heart of great drawing practice.

Drawing blind means you are not allowed to look at your paper. Set yourself a time limit of 5 minutes and draw what you see.

You can also attempt to do this with your non dominant hand. The more you do this exercise the quicker you will connect your “seeing” to your “doing.” The emphasis you once placed on your pencil is no longer the focus of how you draw.

Next, allow yourself the luxury of glancing at your paper as you draw. This is a blended type of contour drawing which I personally use.

I then glance at my paper to ensure I’m setting down the right lines. I keep my line work minimal and work quickly if I can.

Gesture contour drawing is one of my favourite types of contour drawing as you take no longer than a few minutes to develop each one. You have to capture your object and what it is “doing” as opposed to what it is.

Whereas in pure contour drawing, your focus is on the edges, in gesture drawing your focus is on touching the whole form and how it moves. This type of drawing is brilliant when you’re sketching out and about.

If there is anything you take away from this article today, it is a renewed interest in your approach to where and how you get started when you draw. The second thing I’d like for you to take away from this is an acknowledgement that in grasping this process you will ultimately need to set aside the perfectionist in you and push through many mistakes as you learn to master these techniques.

If you need an excuse to do so make sure you check out the Sketch from Scratch to Sketchbook in 10 Weeks and Beyond. enrolment for which will open up again within the next few weeks.

An entire module is dedicated to learning about the foundational principle of how to draw a contour line. To keep receiving notifications of emails and resources do sign up to Emily’s Notebook community.

When you start drawing, the first thing you tend to worry about is line drawing. If you’re having trouble with line drawing, such as “I want to draw straight lines without blurring,” or “I want to do something about a sloppy line drawing,” there are 6 points you should know.

Index. When you draw a line drawing, draw a rough draft first.

(1) Decide on the general shape and composition.

Here, the rough sketch in ① was enlarged and reduced in size. After that, I changed the composition a little and drew the rough image on a new layer with darker colors.

(3) Drawing in more detail. I’ve lowered the opacity of layer (2) to make the lines of the new layer easier to see.

[Point 1: Keep roughing it out. ].

If you draw multiple lines on a single layer, you won’t be able to tell which lines are necessary, so I recommend making a new layer and drawing the rough draft to narrow down the lines. How much detail to draw depends on each person, but if you’re not sure which line to choose, I think it’s a good idea to draw in some solid lines and narrow down the lines you want to draw.

Once the rough sketch has been drawn, the next step is to draw a line drawing. Where to start drawing the line drawing differs from person to person, but in this case, I will draw the outline first.

If this is the case, I recommend that you rethink your line drawing style. [Point 2: Choose a drawing style that suits you].

We hope you’ll try each one and find the one that works best for you. (1) How to draw in a single stroke.

In one stroke, you draw a line in a single stroke. It’s hard to “get it” in one go.

(2) How to draw a short line. This is often used to draw long lines.

(3) Shaving and shaping lines. First you draw a line, then you erase it with an eraser or something similar to form the line.

[Point 3: Use Shake Correction]. If you find that your lines get blurred easily, we highly recommend the Shake Reduction function.

For more information on how to use image stabilization, please refer to this article. ▶︎ Use Correction to draw beautiful lines.

[Point 4: Rotate the canvas]. The human hand draws lines in a constant motion.

If you’re painting in a direction you’re not comfortable with, rotate the canvas to adjust the direction you’re comfortable painting in. For more information on how to rotate the canvas, please refer to this article.

I want to rotate the canvas with two fingers.

Since some parts of the hair overlap with the face and body, I created a new layer of hair. By separating the layers in this way, it is convenient to avoid the problem of deleting the face of the hair when modifying the image.

[Point 5: If you want to draw a long line, hold the pen long and vigorously]. In this case, I have long hair, so I need to draw long lines without blurring.

(1) Hold the top of the pen. If you hold the lower end of the pen, your stroke will be shorter and it will be harder to draw long lines.

(2) Draw vigorously. It’s tempting to draw slowly and carefully when you’re trying to create a clean line, but in fact, it’s easier to blur the line if you draw it slowly.

Drawing a line quickly as if you were waving a pen, rather than putting a lot of force into it, makes it easier to draw a clean line.

When I draw these details, I use fine lines. [Point 6: Change the thickness of the lines].

・Outline lines, close together are thicker. ・Thinly representing fine parts and textures, and farther away.

Once the line drawing is done, I adjusted the parts that I was worried about. Here, I added a small solid color to give it a three-dimensional look.

If you want to learn more about line thickness, small solids, and other quality improvement techniques, you can also refer to this article. ▶︎ The 3-step line drawing quality improvement technique in 5 minutes.

After the line drawing is completed, you can color in the line drawing and adjust it by changing the line drawing color or a part of the color to match the surrounding color. If you want to change the line art color, you can change it from “Filter > Hue” or “8-bit layer” and then change the color.

▶︎ Easily change the color of your line art with 8bit layers. ▶ How to use the clipping mask function to change the line art color.

Finally, I’d like to summarize again the 6 points for beautiful line drawings. [Point 1: Draw the rough in separate layers as you go along] [Point 2: Choose a drawing method that works for you.] [Point 3: Use Shake Reduction] [Point 4: Rotate the paper] [Point 5: If you want to draw a long line, hold the pen long and vigorously.

The more you draw a lot of line drawings, the more you get used to them, the more you’ll be able to draw the lines you want, so try to draw a lot of line drawings by following these 6 tips. (Text/Artwork by sakaki).

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You may be trying to draw with a digital tool such as Mediban Paint and are having trouble getting your line drawings to look good. In order to draw a clean line digitally (1) Know the functions of the app, such as Shake Reduction, and adjust it to suit your needs.

There are three basic methods. (1) No matter how well you can draw lines on paper, if you draw with a tablet pen, there will always be shake.

(2) should always be done when drawing digitally. When you work with a small image, even if the image looks clear on the monitor, the jagged lines are clearly visible when you zoom in.

For (3), you’ll have to get used to manipulating the lines so that you can draw the shape you want. It’s just a matter of practicing every day.

In this article, you can do all three of the above so that you can draw a clean line drawing. How to use the Shake Correction function to draw clean lines Techniques for making lines “look nice This section introduces the following.

There are several pens included in Mediban Paint by default, but there are generally four that you can use to draw “line drawings” in illustrations and cartoons. From these, you can adjust the nibs to suit your needs.

Only he or she can tell you which pen is right for you. Hand habits are different for each person.

Is your hand tired. Is it easy to adjust the intensity of the drawing.

) etc. If the line is a little blurry, it’s okay because the next step is to apply shake correction.

Be sure to apply image stabilization. Set the image stabilization here.

In this case, I set it to 25. The higher the value of the stabilizer, the more it is automatically (and forcibly) corrected after you finish drawing the line, so it may not turn out the way you want it to.

Lines of the same thickness can be drawn evenly. This is different from analog line drawings drawn by hand).

If you feel that you want the stabilizer to be a little softer, or that you want more natural contrast, or that you want the stabilizer to be more automatic, change the pen tool or change the stabilization value to adjust the image stabilization value. The following article provides detailed information on image stabilization.

What kind of lines are you drawing on paper with a pencil or millimeter pen.

B: Tracing over and over again, lots of overlapping lines. C: Short lines are cut into small pieces and connected little by little to make a long line.

It’s best to practice drawing lines a little every day, either on paper or on a tablet. For people with B and C, drawing with a digital tool will correct the lines, so they will be cleaner than when you draw on paper.

If you overlap or connect too many short lines, the natural momentum of the line is lost and the line tends to look unnatural. Also, if you enlarge the image, you may see interruptions in the overlaps and connections.

Drawing a single line may not be your forte at first, but you can improve it considerably with practice. Get to know your line drawing habits and practice with your hands over and over again.

When the bleed-through is turned on and off, there is a clear difference between the beginning and end of the line. In Mediban Paint, the Pen tool is the only tool that comes standard with CropScape, but you can also use the Round Pen and G Pen to add or remove padding as you like.

The smaller the value for “Minimum Width”, the thinner the bleed is, and the larger the value, the larger the bleed.

They are all set at 10px wide and 10px minimum width (the width of the pen in and out).

I’ve decided on a pen tool specifically for line drawings. Next, let’s draw with it.

This time, I will draw a B5 size, 600dpi, color mode canvas.

Be sure to zoom in and draw a line drawing.

When you’ve finished drawing the lines to a certain extent, shrink them to check the overall balance. Repeat this process to complete the entire line drawing.

However, it is possible to “draw short lines to make them look nice”. I have tried drawing the outline of the character’s face in 5 parts (I’ve changed the color to make it easier to see).

If you check the “Protect Transparency” box and then fill in the black and shrink it, you can see …….

This method is very useful and can be used by beginners as well as intermediate and above, so please practice it. When you connect the lines, be sure to zoom in to nearly 100% and overlap the lines in and out neatly.

Some people are able to draw relatively well if they move their elbows in a big way instead of using their wrists as a fulcrum. Different people have different habits, so try to actually draw the line as many times as you can to find your “own way” of drawing it.

When you draw a hair line, zoom in or out on the screen and take note of the balance as you draw it. You can also make the lines smoother by using a slightly stronger shake correction.

It’s especially difficult to correct hair and clothing when they are overlaid on the person, and if you erase or draw them over and over again, even a well-drawn line may disappear. So let’s keep the layers separate for each part.

For example, if you draw the person, the person’s hair, the person’s clothes, the eyes, etc. in separate layers, it’s very convenient because you can scale, erase or add to the drawing later on in each part of the layer, and the other line drawings will not be affected.

Here are some tips on how to draw beautiful lines. I make a layer for line drawing on top of the rough sketch I have made earlier and draw more and more lines.

For example, use a G-pen for the main line drawing, use a round pen for the wrinkles in your clothes, hair and eye details, and so on. Of course, you can also use the same pen, but with a different thickness.

Draw a short line and a long line. For example, as we did in Chapter 2.

Repeat this process to create a clean line drawing. In order to merge the line drawings drawn separately in layers into one picture, I erased the overflowing parts with an eraser.

Since the hair was too thin in the lines throughout, duplicate the hair layers and layer them on top of each other, erasing only the areas you want to leave thin and crisp with an eraser (do not join the layers together). This method is useful if you want to make the line drawing thicker and darker.

(*If you make a color illustration later, do not draw the inside of the eyes with line drawings). [This is the finished line drawing] *If you tone it, it becomes an illustration at the beginning.

It’s a hassle to click the “back” arrow every time you can’t draw a line the way you want to. By drawing a line with your right hand pen and if you fail, you can smoothly go back to the previous step and redraw it by “pressing ctrl + z” with your left hand (or vice versa if you are left-handed).

(On a Mac, some key names and combinations are different, but the shortcut keys are generally similar. There are a variety of other shortcut keys as well, so it’s useful to learn them little by little.

What did you think. In this article, we’ve discussed “How to draw a clean line drawing”.

Drawing vs Painting.

Drawing is the basis of painting, and the converse is not true. You should be a good at drawing if you want to excel as a painter.

This article attempts to emphasize the differences between drawing and painting while elaborating on each word. It is important to know that drawing is characterized by lines and shades.

A person who draws is called an artist. Drawing needs no turpentine oil, unlike painting.

You need not use a palette while drawing an object or a human figure. Drawing needs no time to dry.

You need not use brushes in the case of drawing. As a matter of fact, scale and other measuring equipment are used in the case of drawing.

Painting is characterized by colors and designs. Painting is of different types such as painting on canvas, oil painting on canvas, watercolor painting, acrylic painting and the like.

You need to have a palette while painting on canvas using oil colors. Oil colors, acrylic and types of pigments are used in the art of painting.

Oil painting and acrylic cannot be very easily erased or altered. You need to have different kinds of brushes with different bristles in the case of painting.

It is also interesting to note that there is a market value for both drawing and painting works. Works of painting have a greater market value than the works of pencil and charcoal drawing.

The painting equipment is expensive to buy when compared to drawing equipment. It is interesting to note that any art exhibition would hold both the types of artworks, namely drawings and paintings.

Now let us summarize the difference as follows.

Drawing: Drawing refers to producing a picture by making lines on paper. Painting: Painting refers to applying a liquid to a surface with a brush.

Drawing: Drawing is characterized by lines and shades. Painting: Painting is characterized by colors and designs.

Drawing: Drawing is of different types such as line drawing, shade drawing and object drawing. Painting: Painting is of different types such as painting on canvas, oil painting on canvas, watercolor painting, acrylic painting, etc.

Drawing: Drawing needs no turpentine oil. Painting: You make use of turpentine oil in the case of painting.

Drawing: You need not use a palette while drawing an object or a human figure. Painting: You need to have a palette while painting on canvas using oil colors.

Drawing: We can use crayons, pencils and charcoal for drawing. Painting: Oil colors, acrylic and types of pigments are used in the art of painting.

Drawing: Pencil drawings can be rubbed and redone quite easily because graphite can be easily erased. Painting: Oil painting and acrylic cannot be very easily erased or altered.

Drawing: A person who draws is called an artist. Painting: A person who paints is called either an artist or a painter.

Image Courtesy: 1.

Birds Painting By Jean-Jacques Bachelier [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Explore the Element of Art: Line with your favorite art mediums, such as felt markers and crayons, with this Flower Line Art Project Drawing Tutorial for kids. This is an easy to-do, hands on activity that kids can do at home or in the classroom to help them learn and understand the element of art: line.

Let’s make art.

All art needs line, and line can look differently. Any mark, splash, splot, stroke, or dot is a line.

Line is an element of art that is defined by a moving point. Line can be thick, thin, expressive, still.

Line can be descriptive, abstract, or implied. Line creates things like shape or form.

Line can create patterns or doodles. Line is a very important element of art.

Lines describe an outline, capable of producing texture according to their length and curve. There are different types of lines artists may use, including, actual, implied, vertical, horizontal, diagonal and contour lines, which all have different functions.

First, use your pencil or favorite drawing art medium to draw a flower in the center of your paper. Draw it large and add your own artistic flavor to it.

Draw a border around the flower. Divide the background up into 5 sections with lines that extend from the border to the edge of the paper.

Then, color your flower with your choice of mediums, leaving the border white. Last, color in your background with your favorite colors and art mediums.

Click here to download free art worksheets that you can print to allow kids to explore art at home.

-10 Reasons Why Arts Integration in Schools is Important-How To Guide for First Year Art Teachers: 10 Steps to Success-How to Teach Art Classroom Rules and Routines in a Fun and Engaging Way.

Draw in an oval. Be careful to measure the proportion of how tall the head is to how wide using a pencil held in your hand and extended at arms length use the tip of the pencil and your thumb to take proportional measurements.

Establish a center line, 1/2 of the Oval for the eye line, 1/4 nose line and 1/8 mouth line. From there look for the small variances in the person’s features.

Some people will have a nose slightly longer or shorter.) Try to get as close as possible to that person’s unique proportions. Use your pencil and thumb to gauge accurate proportional measurements.

I also reestablished the width of the head after observing the width of her head was about the same as the length from the bottom of her chin to her eyebrow. I then marked the eyebrow line.

The distance from brow to forehead was the same as from the chin to nose.

Using pencil and thumb.) 1. Eyes to the Chin 2.

Nose to eyes 4. Nose to chin 5.

Compare brow to hairline against nose to chin. Mark off all the relationships you note while comparing these areas.

I begin to draw in the basic eyes, nose, mouth and eyebrows ( I will do detailed art tips on drawing the individual features later.) These basic shapes allow me to observe the basic relationships between the features and allows me to see what I may have missed and what needs to change.

I noticed I made the head too long, her head needed to be a bit wider. The eyes were slightly too close together especially after widening the head so I moved the eyes(this is why I kept the features simple so changes would be much easier to make.) I redrew the nose, changed the mouth slightly, and redefined the shape of the hair as it defines the forehead.

Recheck and Refine After getting everything redrawn I noticed I still had the face too long so I modified the width by about a 1/16th of an inch. I widened the space between the eyes by about 1/32nd of an inch.

These little changes really helped. Look at the final sketch below.

If I was to make this into a finished drawing there are still some modifications that need to be done. First I would redraw the eyes a little they are not symmetrical enough, same with the nose it too needs to be more symmetrical, and the lips again need to be more symmetrical.

These modifications would strengthen the drawing’s consistency. Drawing the Front View Using the Egg Shape.

Doodle is basically my name. When I was in high school, I was nick named Doodlefield (half of my maiden name as well) by one of my science teachers, because I love to doodle.

I think simple doodles are key to helping people learn to draw. It’s simple and can be fun too.

Get the kids involved too.

How to Draw a Paper Airplane in four easy steps above. This would be so cute on some snail mail too.

MONO Drawing Pens. TwinTones.

I love simple art and there’s nothing quite as fun as using the Tombow MONO Drawing Pen 05 to doodle it. Make a cute little 🦄 unicorn with a mane full of flowers in just a few simple steps.

How to draw a Diamond. Just add sparkles.

4 easy steps for a darling diamond. I remember trying over and over to draw a diamond when I was young and I couldn’t get the trick of it..this little diagram helps a lot.

Here’s a simple wavy ribbon banner that is perfect to add to simple line art, watercolor painting or doodled flowers. Use the Tombow MONO Drawing Pen 05 for the perfect clean lines.

Perfect for hand lettering, card making and journaling.

How to Draw a Paper Boat in 4 easy steps:.

When I was in elementary school, I learned how to draw this cute swirl rose. 🌹🌹🌹 I doodled this on every note, worksheet margin and blank paper that was passed my way.

So get some paper and the Tombow MONO Drawing Pen 05 and doodle a simple rose. When I was in elementary school, I learned how to draw this cute swirl rose.

I think it’s important to teach people how to draw simple images, to build confidence and success in small ways–whether they are artistic or not. So get some paper and the Tombow MONO Drawing Pen 05 and doodle a simple rose.

How to draw Seashells. These cute seashells are simple line art that can be copied just by referring to mine.

Check out this post on drawing crystals too. Plus, painting them like Galaxies.

Use the Tombow Dual Brush Pens to paint all your little line art doodles.

All you need to do is have a little wander. Whether you live in the city or in a tiny village, put on your shoes and take to the air.

If you cannot find anything of interest where you live, or you’ve already sketched it all you can always switch locations or wait until your next vacation. Either way, listen to yourself.

Find something that speaks to you, with no regard to what you think is the correct building to choose. Even if it takes a little time to find such a view.

If you prefer glassy skyscrapers or iron bridges sure thing, sketch away.

This kind of composition works well for certain subjects and is a style in its own. However, in most cases an angled view that is less straightforward and centred will be a better choice, especially for architecture.

Instead, follow some of the examples from my above mentioned post Architecture-themed Art Prints that will Impress and Inspire you and see how creative the artists there were with their composition.

Landscape drawing for beginners is a great way to learn various skills in a single exercise that enables you to grasp the processes of drawing more deeply. There is various landscape drawing ideas that encompass multiple elements that interact and coexist in the same scene making it a great explorative exercise for drawing.

There are many landscapes to draw but, in this tutorial, we’ll look at how to create a mountain landscape drawing. This landscape drawing will give us the opportunity to explore various drawing techniques and tricks that will teach us to construct a landscape scene.

In this tutorial on landscape drawing for beginners, we will be learning how to draw landscapes with a pencil. Pencil drawing is perhaps the most accessible and most important learning experience for artists.

We will learn how to break up the drawing process, which makes the construction of landscape drawing simpler and easier to follow. By the end will have learned various tips and tricks that will help us to refine a simple landscape sketch and turn it into a realistic landscape drawing.

In this tutorial, we will be working with a set of very basic tools, as the intention is to understand the fundamental process of drawing a landscape using basic tools. We will be drawing with a pencil, which means we will want to have a decent pencil set.

We will want to make sure that our pencils are sharp, as this will help to capture finer details for various elements within the drawing. Lastly, we will want to have some good paper, then we should be ready and prepare ourselves for the drawing process.

In this landscape drawing for beginners, we will learn the basic process of drawing a landscape broken up into three main sections. background, midground, and foreground.

As we learn how to sketch landscapes, we will go through various ideas to consider as we move from the background to the foreground. Now that we know what to expect, we can get into this tutorial on how to draw landscapes with a pencil.

With all landscape drawings, perhaps what makes them so beautiful is the depth that they demonstrate. This quality is not difficult to replicate and is more a matter of building the scene from back to front.

It all starts with setting the scene, which we can do as a basic line sketch. At this point we want to figure out the form ad flow of the scene, so we want to keep our sketch light.

You will find that as we move from background to foreground, we will jump back and forth on occasion to set up the way in which we individually draw the different depths of field. For now, we want to lightly sketch the entire landscape lightly, from background to foreground.

We want to set up the space for the background with the componentry of the foreground and midground. A good suggestion is to incorporate a river that flows from foreground to background, slowly narrowing as it fades into the distance.

We can also draw rolling hills that veer from outside of the page into the center of the page, helping to create a zig-zagging motion for the river. This provides a nice focal point that leads the eye through the setting.

Many of the details will become smaller as they move into the distance, we want to keep this in mind as we draw the background.

When it comes to mountains, we want to provide contrast between them and the sky behind them.

We can also give the mountains a ride that creates a partition between light and dark sides. We want to make sure the light and dark sides are all on the same side for each peak.

Another great element to incorporate at a distance is a forest. Because it is at a distance we can simply and in dark little strokes at the bottom of the mountains.

This is particularly true for mountains and trees.

On a mountain side, its moments of shading are scattered along one side of the slope. With trees, it’s sharp little vertical strokes with smaller horizontal ones to suggest branches and foliage.

Details don’t need to be clear when seen at a distance and in most cases, you just want to understand the basic form. Once you understand the basic form of a tree or mountain you can get away with representing them in a realistic way with suggestive marks.

This means that we are quite loose with shading and drawing, more intentional about shadows and forms rather than finer details. Remember, we want to make sure that shadows and light are always consistent.

Keeping the shadows on one side is a great way to create realism within a structure at a distance. This process of suggestive marks works well within the details of a landscape set in the background.

This idea applies to all landscapes, whereby the further the object the less clear it is. Play around with how you represent the qualities of a sky, mountain, or trees by loose mark-making.

This is because they are quite abstract and, in many instances, can be drawn with simple techniques.

Adding in some smaller horizontal lines to suggest branches can really establish the form of a forest.

As we seamlessly progress into the midground of our drawing, we will find that the details start to a seamless transition. Having a body of water that flows from the background to the foreground is also a great way to establish this seamless transition.

Water is a great tool for exploring the use of light and shadow, as it is a great opportunity to create a realistic effect of reflection. Having a body of water in a landscape is a great tool for creating realistic qualities within a landscape.

The effects of reflection in the water are easy to draw and can enhance the realistic quality of the landscape.

The way we draw the effect of water is with horizontal shading and line placement.

Water often is distorting shadows and light, which means we want light and dark moments in the water.

As we move through the midground, we want to start enlarging elements, the best way to do this is by first setting the largest scale in the foreground. We want to jump to the foreground at this stage just to set an element to help navigate the scale for the midground.

Scale is another major aspect of creating depth within a landscape drawing. Having an element drawn within the foreground is actually a great way to help establish how large elements should be within the midground.

Utilizing all the ideas you have learned so far, we want to start working on more elements and shading into the midground. This means that objects become slightly larger and clearer whilst still staying smaller than the elements within the foreground.

Again, utilize the tree as a means of filling space and indicating scale within the different areas of your landscape. Another great element is the use of rocks.

Again, as you start to work your way toward the foreground, you want to start enlarging the elements and making them clearer. Another important aspect to remember is to keep shadows consistently to one side within all the elements.

This is particularly good for creating contours within the mountains and hills that flow in the midground.

We want to utilize the skills we have learned within an accurate field of scale.

Updated: 10 Oct 2023. In this guide, I will explain (& demonstrate) the basics for drawing in perspective.

Linear perspective is one of drawing’s fundamentals, and it is crucial for drawing from imagination. Atmospheric perspective refers to the effect of the atmosphere on far away objects, and therefore it is used in landscape drawing (& painting).

Each drawing that uses linear perspective has a horizon line that may be visible or invisible in the final drawing. In each linear perspective drawing, there is at least one vanishing point (VP).

Lines, which are parallel in reality, meet at a vanishing point when drawn in perspective. To the human eye, although they are parallel, they seem to meet at a great distance.

When drawing or painting, the horizon-line’s placement has a significant effect on the outcome. You can use your “artistic license” to build different compositions with different horizon line placement.

In general: Examples of horizon line placements in my paintings:

When an obstacle blocks the horizon (like a wall, buildings, mountains, trees, etc.), hold your drawing tool (pencil, pen, paintbrush, etc.) at eye level, to find the horizon line. There are two important rules to pay attention to when drawing in perspective.

In other words: Objects in front of the observer look smaller with distance, but they keep the ratio between height and width, meaning there is no distortion.

Explanation: The farther away an object is, it takes less of your field of view, and therefore looks smaller.

Although the paper is flat, there is a sense of depth when one object is smaller (far), like in the next example: All objects are subject to foreshortening.

When objects are along your line of sight, they look shorter. In other words:

The reason is the change in the angle of sight. Visualization:

In the illustration above, you can see two flat circles (they can represent a lake or a biscuit). When they are flat on the ground, their width gets smaller with distance like in the first rule, but their depth is getting much smaller (depth, in this case, is represented as height, since the drawing paper is flat).

The closer an object is to the horizon (or to a vanishing point), the more it is foreshortened. In the next example, the front of the book (1) is in front of the observer.

Because it is close to the horizon line, the foreshortening effect is strong. When your drawing in perspective is ready, you can add brightness values for the final render.

One-point perspective is used for drawing objects that are in front of the observer, and in reality their width lines are parallel to the horizon (and to each other), and their height lines are perpendicular to the horizon (and parallel to each other). Lines that in reality are parallel (to each other) and represent DEPTH are NOT parallel when drawing in perspective.

Start by drawing a horizon line (with a ruler), and one vanishing point. The horizon line helps as a guideline to draw other parallel width lines, AND to see how close objects are to the horizon line, and therefore how foreshortened they are.

The closer objects are to the vanishing point, the more they are foreshortened. Next, draw a rectangle.

In one-point perspective, width lines are parallel to the horizon, and height lines are perpendicular to the horizon. Now draw depth lines from the rectangle’s vertices (corners).

Determine the amount of foreshortening (the depth’s length), and finish drawing a box in perspective: After you draw some boxes above, on, and below the horizon line, you can try a more complex object, like a chair.

Objects above the horizon-line, are objects you need to look up to see. Objects below the horizon-line, are objects you see from above.

Or, just looking at objects on the floor, down at an angle. Objects on the horizon, are objects in front of you, when you look forward.

When drawing an interior space, you are actually drawing inside a box. Draw a horizon line with one vanishing point.

Lastly, draw lines from the vanishing point, for the walls. This is your basic room.

Next, draw some pictures and windows on the walls. Depth lines meet at the vanishing point.

The closer objects are to the horizon line (or to a vanishing point), the more they are foreshortened. To find the center of ANY rectangle, draw two diagonals from the vertices.

Use it to find the center point for your windows. Draw softly, so it is easy to erase guidelines and parts that are hidden by overlapping.

For box-shaped objects, start with the front rectangle. Then, draw depth lines toward the vanishing point, and determine the amount of foreshortening, depending on the length you want for the box.

The same center point will help with handles position. Once you practice drawing some rooms from imagination (and observation), in perspective, you can render them in many styles.

I usually prefer realistic drawing. If you are new to realism, read my guide on realistic drawing basics.

While it is fast to draw a picture on the wall using a rectangle, in reality a picture has volume. You can use lines (for cupboards, windows, pictures, tables, etc.), but once you understand linear perspective, it is time to pay attention to volume and details.

I use the division method regularly, when I draw from imagination. To draw a house is like drawing a box.

Drawing with a pen produces a clean render. Pens for technical drawing produce lines with uniform thickness, and their ink is made of pigments, and therefore very durable.

You can use markers (or any medium) for colors. Here is a list of my recommended markers for drawing.

Here is an example of a ground plane in front of the observer. Looking directly from above.

Next, draw lines from the vanishing point for the top part of any structure (away from the vanishing point). In this case, the depth lines represent the height of the buildings.

Then, render in your favorite style, and add as many details as you like. You can do the same when looking directly above.

The closer a building is to the vanishing point, the taller it is. To add characters (or any type of object), look for something in your scene that can help.

You can estimate the character size compared to a door. It (the character’s height) should be shorter.

Once you find the character’s height, use the vanishing point to find its height in ANY depth. Now you can move it front or back using lines from the vanishing point, with accurate change to its height.

Then check for its height for that location (2), and move the top part of the known figure to the new location (3). Now you can add characters and objects to your drawings, in perspective.

You can divide a plane into two equal parts, divide them again to four equal parts, then eight, and so on. If you want three equal parts (for example, three drawers), or five, you can use the duplication method.

Next, draw lines from the sides (in the direction you want to duplicate), AND from the center point. Then, draw a line from one of the far corners, through the center of the opposite side.

The definition of what constitute a drawing is not as simple as it looks. Sometimes a drawing is defined by the tools you use (pen, pencil, crayon versus paint), sometimes it is defined by the use of lines to depict something, sometimes the absence of color is also a factor.

To make things more confusing, you can apply a drawing medium like charcoal with a brush or make a drawing with a painting medium like when dry brushing with oil paint.

Is pastel a drawing or a painting.

Here are a few ideas of techniques you can explore. They all are falling in somewhere between drawing and painting.

This drawing (or painting. ) is done on canvas with only lines of pencil and ink.

There are many techniques you can use to paint over a drawing, even if that drawing was made on drawing paper.

Watercolor on paper. The watercolor has been added after the drawing on paper had been covered with gel medium to make it water-resistant, and able to withstand being painted on.

India ink and watercolor crayons over a life drawing. Here also, the paper has been covered in gel medium before being painted over as regular drawing paper might not be strong enough to be painted over directly.

I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales. That does not effect in any way the cost of the purchaser’s order but it helps me keeping the content of this blog free.

You can also have fun adding patterns on top or around your drawings. I sometimes do that on paper or yupo paper.

Life patterns #5, marker and Indian ink on yupo paper. The drawing and the patterns have been drawn on yupo paper.

Yupo paper also comes in a translucent variety, that will allow you to trace your drawing directly from your newsprint paper onto the yupo surface.

Go here for more tips about using a dipping pen on your drawings and paintings: Drawing patterns with a dipping pen and ink. I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales.

Yupo is a compelling and unique alternative to traditional art papers. It’s a synthetic paper, machine-made in the USA of 100% polypropylene.

PH neutral. You can also add patterns to a drawing on a canvas surface:

Social Fabric 1 was inspired by my life drawings. I added a lot of patterns but everything is done on canvas with fluid acrylic and a dipping pen.

Drawing patterns with a dipping pen on canvas around life drawings. You can also make a picture using only lines on canvas, they could be only loops, straight lines, patterns or scribbles.

Apart from the background, this painting has entirely been done with a fountain pen and Indian ink, and lots and lots of loops.

Drawing loops to make a tree cookie on canvas with a dipping pen. Here is another example of a painting made only with lines.

Timelines 2- Fluid acrylic on canvas, all lines are straight and done with a dipping pen. You can also use scribblings to make an image.

Raveled: All the painting is done with white scribblings of fluid acrylic on canvas. I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales.

This calligraphy pen and nib set gives you the tools needed to create beautiful works of art. Ideal for drawing, crosshatching, lithography, and fine details.

Scribbling with a dipping pen on canvas.

For Culture Days 2015, Sophie Babeanu and I had visitors in my studio as well as internauts from all over the world share some words of wisdom on pre-drawn lines that were making the rings of a tree cookie.

You can see more pictures of Time Lines here.

Feel free to share your ideas and pictures of your paintings/drawings in the comments.

Contour drawing is an art technique in which the artist sketches the style of the subject by drawing lines that result in a drawing that is essentially an outline (the French word contour meaning “outline”). The purpose of contour drawing is to emphasize the mass and volume of the subject rather than the detail.

However, because contour can convey a three-dimensional perspective, length and width as well as thickness and depth are important. not all contours exist along the outlines of a subject.

It is a great style to work on, for people who are not familiar with drawing.

it can potentially modify a subjects’ form through variation within the lines. It is widely accepted among schools, art institutions, and colleges as an effective training aid and discipline for beginner artists.

In a continuous-line drawing, the artist looks both at the subject and the paper, moving the medium over the paper, and creating a silhouette of the object. Like blind contour drawing, contour drawing is an artful experience that relies more on sensation than perception.

To make a blind contour drawing, an artist does not look at the paper or canvas on which they are working on. Another technique similar to contour drawing is outline drawing.

All three types of drawing are considered to be gesture drawings. the practice of drawing a series of bodies in still form.

By altering the character of the mark, an artist can emulate many aspects of the subject that relate form and space to the viewer. For example, a line can be lighter in value (gradation) to suggest greater distance between objects in the drawing.

the space is compressed or the object is lower. Continuous lines used inside the outline of a subject can add accent or cast shadow, depending on the value of the line.

The purpose of drawing blindly is to force the artist’s eye to move along the contour of the subject as their pencil moves along the paper. Initially, this type of drawing may be difficult and slow, but an artist will find that with practice, it is an effective way of defining observation skills such as identifying and underlying the structure of the subject, relating forms, and conveying the sensual experience of the subject.

Hello, in this tutorial I will show my way of drawing faces in different angles and I will give you some tips that work for me since some of us can find it difficult to start drawing in this way. First we have to know what the human face is like, I have based myself on the Loomis method to structure the face since simple shapes are used when building the bases of the sketch.

This is an example image. What we will take as the base of the face will be the circle.

The first point that I consider to be important is the vertical line in the middle of the circle that represents the symmetry of the face. (which will be important in all the sketches when doing different angles).

The horizontal line that divides the circle is at the same height as the eyebrows. (important to take into account.).

The horizontal blue line that is on the edge of the black circle is another circle that is used to make it look deeper and more three-dimensional, only that the face is facing forwards, it is not possible to see it completely due to perspective.

An example of bad proportion is this image (some of the errors are in the jaw and eyebrows). Personally, I recommend that you see many references and practice drawing lines like the one in the examples to better understand the proportions.

Another important thing to note is that the proportions such as the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and nose change depending on the position of the face (their size and appearance depending on where they are viewed from). We start with the circle and inside we draw another circle but with perspective depending on how we want the face to be.

In this image it is possible to see more clearly the change in the proportions of the face such as the nose. Another important thing is that part of the head comes out of the main base (the circle) and this happens because the head itself is not circular, it has a more oval shape.

I divide the purple circle into 4 parts based on perspective and I divide the black circle in the same way. The lines that form a triangle within the space of the eyes is the separation between the eyebrows.

When dividing the purple circle, the horizontal line should protrude from the circle to where the eyebrows are. Then we draw the triangles, one that separates the eyebrows and another two where the nose and mouth are located.

(Remember that they have to be drawn in perspective). So it would be without the background drawing.

Example. This face is more difficult due to the angle and perspective because other parts such as the jaw and neck can be seen more.

We do the same as in the previous one to draw a horizontal line that protrudes from the blue circle. We divide the black circle in half based on perspective and do the same to identify the separation of the eyebrows, nose and mouth.

(One fact is that the ear is always near the edge of the blue circle.). Here are some examples of the jaw seen from below.

Example. (I will only put the result and the sketch).

We do the same to draw the two circles and identify the important parts. We draw the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth.

And we do the final touches. On occasions where it is difficult for us to draw angles, we can use 3D models to facilitate the process.

The main difference between drawing and painting is that drawing focuses on lines and shapes, while painting focuses on colour and form. Drawing and painting are two different visual art forms.

Sometimes, drawing can be the basis of a painting. 1.

What is Painting – Definition, Features, Elements3. Difference Between Drawing and Painting – Comparison of Key Differences.

Drawing is the art of representing an object or outlining a figure, plan or sketch by means of lines. A drawing can also refer to a picture made with a pencil, pen, or crayon rather than paint.

Irrespective of the materials used, drawing produces an accurate representation of the visual world upon a plane surface. Even doodles, cartoons, technical drawings seen in fields like fashion design, architecture and interior design are considered as drawings.

Drawing mainly focuses on creating lines and shapes using a pencil, a pen or charcoal. They are usually made in a single colour, unlike paintings.

Painting is the practice of applying colour to a solid surface such as a paper or canvas. It is one of the oldest art forms.

Artists can use different mediums for their paintings, such as watercolour, acrylic, oil, fresco, and tempera. The medium is usually applied to the solid surface with the use of a brush.

Moreover, paintings can be done on many types of surfaces, like paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, walls pottery, leaf, and concrete.

There are several basic components of a painting. We call them elements of a painting.

Colour is perhaps the most important element in a painting. It sets the mood.

Colours can be further broken into hue, intensity, and value. A good combination of elements results in a good painting.

Drawing focuses on lines and shapes while painting focuses on colour and form. While drawings are usually done on one colour, paintings are made with a multitude of colours.

In brief, drawing and painting are two different visual art forms. The main difference between drawing and painting is that drawing focuses on lines and shapes, while painting focuses on colour and form.

“Drawing hand” By cdaltonrowe (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr2. “People, man, artist, painting, paint, museum, art, exhibit, frame” (CC0) via Pikist.

This year I was particularly interested in learning to draw in a semi-realistic art style influenced by artists such as Eleeza Ivanova and Loish. In this post, I share what I have learned about drawing in this aesthetic and some tips that I have found helpful in doing so.

Although semi-realistic art does not aim to represent the drawing reference, it is more realistic compared to caricature or animation art. While a whole spectrum of portrait art can be classified as semi-realistic with varying degrees of stylization, I feel some general principles behind them make it unique.

If you are new to drawing portraits, it will help to familiarize yourself with the average proportions of the human head and basic head construction techniques such as the Loomis Method and the Reilly Abstraction first because the following tips build upon these basics. A defining characteristic of semi-realistic portrait drawings is that they simplify the shapes of the head, such as its silhouettes, planes, shadows, rhythms, and contours.

To draw a portrait in the semi-realistic art style, you need to depart from the average proportions of the face and exaggerate them a little to achieve the sort of look you’re going for. This takes some getting used to because if you exaggerate them too far, the portrait can end up looking like a caricature, so experiment with what works for you.

Not all artists who draw semi-realistic art use this technique, but I like how some artists like Eliza Ivanova use subtle flowy lines to indicate the shifts and overlapping of forms across the front and side planes of the face as well as creating a pattern of shadows and highlights.

When drawing a portrait in a semi-realistic style, I like the understated look that comes from minimally shading in some critical areas of the face, like the eyes and the lips, leaving plenty of white space to emphasize the focal point of the portrait. Of course, there are different ways of shading in semi-realistic portrait drawing.

Here’s a video demonstrating the different ways of stylization of portraits in the semi-realistic art style by Loish, in which she shares her thought process, tips, and techniques, so do check it out if you’re interested in learning this art style.

Welcome back fellow artists. In today’s post we will delve into the exploration of drawing heads from various angles.

I will show you some techniques that make this complex subject a bit easier to process so that you can start drawing the characters you imagine with confidence. I like to use a modified version of the Andrew Loomis method.

I highly recommend the book, “Drawing the Human Head and Hands” by Andrew Loomis. It is my favorite book on this topic.

You can use whichever drawing method you prefer. I tend to draw on either my iPad Pro or on paper with a 2H lead.

Try various examples at more and more extreme angles. This is the building block that will guide you through the rest of the process, so don’t feel the need to rush past it.

You can watch that here –. Before we progress I want to address a common question that I get about this process.

My answer to this is to play around with it. For the most part I would say roughly 2/3 of the height of the circle.

The other factor that you may consider is how far to cut into the sphere, thereby making the head wider or thinner based upon your placement. Again, I want you to experiment here so that you can develop a nice variety with your characters.

Now on to the next step.

Notice on the first illustration we have the segments of the face from top to bottom as the hair line, the brow line, the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin. These are subject to change based upon character types.

In this case, we will be drawing someone resembling Alfred from the Batman comics. So we will use a much taller area for the height of the nose.

Notice the middle illustration above when I have established some basic shapes in the light blue color. These primitive shapes help me to draw more dimensionally and keep things in perspective.

Without places the spheres below the brow line, I usually skew things a bit. For the nose you can use a larger pyramid like shape or in this case a small upside down triangle.

It allows me to perceive the nose from there. Likewise with the mouth.

The main thing is that you pick shapes that make sense to you and simplify the subject matter. This doesn’t work for everyone so don’t force it but I must say it was a game changer for me.

Remember that these are just guides, you need to practice seeing past them and letting your imagination run wild. Now follow along with these next few step to draw whichever character you want.

He is a fun guy to draw and pretty easily recognized. Another quick tip is to try drawing with shapes here and there.

Also, try to make any lines on the interior of the face thinner than the lines on the outside perimeter of the face. I really could have taken that much further.

Try drawing lots of various character types and play around with the measurements like I mentioned above. For this next one we will stick to the Batman theme and draw Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent without his glasses.

Hopefully you are getting the hang of this by now but what if you are not. What else will help you master this maze of possibilities.

Practicing head shapes and the individual features of the face has helped me tremendously. They are all tricky in their own right but with lots of sketches from different angles we start to find the patterns that resonate with us.

There are all sorts of shapes and variations that you can introduce. So play around with this technique and don’t be afraid to exaggerate the characters features.

Another thing that I find helpful to do is to draw the different facial features from a variety of angles. These individual studies can really add up over time.

Here are a few examples of how I practice noses from different angles. Hopefully these techniques give you something to practice and learn from.

That way you don’t give up or burn out. Consistency is very important for the growth of an artist.

I have been drawing for many years and I still struggle at times. Luckily for us artists, the passion to create drives us to keep going.

If you want more instruction on how to draw heads I have a full course here on my website that can view below. The first two lessons are free to watch so you can see if you like my teaching style.

Then sign up for our newsletter here – Thank you very much for following my content and good luck with your art.

Marzullo. Ram Studios Comics.

Go ahead: break some artistic rules and experiment with some abstract drawing techniques. Abstract drawing is a great way to improve your artistic skills by experimenting with forms and shapes in creative ways.

Here, we’ll offer a brief education on abstract art, and 8 easy ways to try out abstract drawing. For many, the phrase “abstract art” instantly brings up visions of weird or modern compositions.

Abstract art — whether it painting, drawing or multimedia — is a type of art that doesn’t depend on real-life visual references. Rather, it uses forms, colors and lines in ways that can capture a feeling or emotion rather than creating a literal likeness.

Ready to get started on your own abstract drawing creations. Try some of these fun tricks to create abstract drawings (and have fun doing it).

Doodling can act as a warm-up for creating an abstract drawing, or it can yield an abstract drawing in and of itself. Basically, doodling is just giving yourself permission to draw whatever the heck you want, with no rules.

Maybe you’ll end up with a tangle of lines, or a collection of hearts and stars, or just random shapes. Just letting yourself doodle will often result in fun, abstract forms.

Want a shortcut to create abstract art fast. Switch the hand in which you hold your drawing medium.

This can actually be a good thing. Familiar forms will be rendered abstract pretty much instantly.

If you’ve never tried contour drawing, it’s a great way to dip your toes into the world of abstract drawing. When you create a contour drawing, you don’t let your drawing medium leave the paper, but rather, draw one long, continuous line.

To really take it to the next level, you can even continue looking at the subject you’re drawing without looking at the paper. This is called blind contour drawing.

Zentangles can be a fantastic method of creating abstract art that is intricate and interesting to look at, yet highly meditative to create. To make a zentangle, you’ll start by drawing a simple form or forms, and then filling them in with intricate patterns or drawing marks.

Check out our easy tutorial on how to draw a zentangle in four steps and drawing pattern ideas to fill in a zentangle. In this method, you’ll gain a perspective shift — literally — when you shift your work surface every few minutes.

After a few turns of the surface, you’ll have some seriously abstract art.

Here’s one way I like to do it: I’ll cut out a piece of paper (it could be a magazine image or a beautifully patterned paper) and then tape or glue it to drawing paper. From there, I try to make an image out of it.

Or, you can be more abstract and simply create patterns coming from the shape or shapes.

First, create a simple drawing using a pen that is not waterproof. Then, using a watercolor brush (don’t use your absolute best one, as it may get ink on it), apply some water to the image.

There’s also an element of magic to this technique, because you won’t know how it will end up.

With drawing, you can use removable tape or carefully placed pieces of paper to block out portions of the paper. Draw on top of them, and then remove when you’re done.

Line art or line drawing is any image that consists of distinct straight lines or curves placed against a background (usually plain), without gradations in shade (darkness) or hue (color) to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects. Line art can use lines of different colors, although line art is usually monochromatic.

Line art emphasizes form and drawings, of several (few) constant widths (as in technical illustrations), or of freely varying widths (as in brush work or engraving). Line art may tend towards realism (as in much of Gustave Doré’s work), or it may be a caricature, cartoon, ideograph, or glyph.

One of the most fundamental elements of art is the line. An important feature of a line is that it indicates the edge of a two-dimensional (flat) shape or a three-dimensional form.

Before the development of photography and of halftones, line art was the standard format for illustrations to be used in print publications, using black ink on white paper. Using either stippling or hatching, shades of gray could also be simulated.

Media related to Line art at Wikimedia Commons.

Line art is a type of art that uses lines to create shapes, patterns, and images. It can be simple, like a doodle, or complex, like a detailed drawing.

Artists can create line art with a variety of mediums, including pencils, pens, markers, and paint. Artists can also create line art digitally, using software such as Adobe Illustrator.

Line art is also popular among artists who work in tattooing and jewellery design. In this guide, find out what line art is, some examples of line art and some ideas of how to create your very own line art drawings.

When you make purchases through links on this site, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The definition of line art is any image that uses distinct lines to create an art piece, usually to represent a three dimensional object.

The term “line art” can refer to any drawing that consists of nothing but lines. This includes geometric shapes, and free-form drawings.

The lines in line art can be of different colours, thicknesses, and directions. Use these variations to create deliberate effects.

Line in art is defined as a mark with length and direction but no width or depth. Lines can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

thick or thin.

It’s one of the most basic components that artists arrange on the surface to make their final piece. Artists can draw with a line to make contour drawings, or continuous line drawings which are both types of line art.

There are three main types of line in art: In drawings and sketches, contour lines map out the subject’s form.

Implied lines are created when two or more points in a drawing are connected by the viewer’s eye. Artists make these lines with shadow, value and broken lines, to form a shape, rather than one straight unbroken line.

Create gestural lines with quick, expressive strokes that show the artist’s feelings or emotions. Gesture drawings and abstract drawings often include these types of lines, where the artist has used bold brushstrokes to create a work with energy and movement.

They can be horizontal, vertical or diagonal, straight, curved or zigzag. Horizontal lines are lines that run from left to right across a piece of artwork.

Diagonal lines are lines that run at an angle across a piece of artwork. Curved lines are lines that are not straight, but instead have a curved or wavy shape.

These lines can create a feeling of movement or action. The thickness of a line can also create different effects, artists can use the thickness of line to represent elements that are closer to the viewer in an artwork.

Contour line drawing is a type of line drawing in which the artist uses a pencil or pen to trace the outermost edge of an object. The resulting image is made up of a series of connected lines that show the shape of the subject.

Artists create contour line drawings to draw a realistic or abstract representation of an object with just line. Artists will often start an artwork with a basic outline to establish the proportions and composition early on, which they will then shade or fill with colour.

Use cross contour drawings to create a more three-dimensional image, and to show the form of an object more clearly. When drawing with cross contour lines, the artist often starts by drawing a few basic lines to map out the composition.

These additional lines help to create a sense of depth and volume. The cross contour lines show the contours of the form of the subject, in three dimensional space.

This is useful for artists who work with mediums that don’t allow denotation of value by applying pressure to the drawing medium. For example, if you apply pressure to a pencil, you can shade with the tonal shading technique.

However, artists cannot achieve the same results with ink or pen when tonal shading. This is why it’s pretty much essential to use techniques like hatching or cross hatching to create shadow.

The lines can be close together or far apart, and can be drawn in any direction. Hatching can be used to create soft gradations of shadow and it can also be used to create bolder, more defined areas of darkness.

The closer together the lines are, the darker the value will be. Hatching is often used in combination with other drawing techniques, such as cross hatching and stippling.

The lines can be close together or far apart, and can be drawn in any direction. Cross hatching can be used to create soft gradations of shadow.

To cross hatch, an artist will use a pencil or pen to draw a series of intersecting lines. The closer together the lines are, the darker the value will be.

Line art is an incredibly fun form of art to practice and it’s easy to start. Check out our guide on drawing exercises if you want to improve your drawing skills.

If you’re a complete beginner, head to our Facebook group, where we’re giving away a free eBook for all of our readers that join. Download ‘A Complete Drawing Guide for Beginners’ from the group’s ‘Guides’ section.

Every budding artist has faced the challenge of capturing the essence of a fleeting moment, the dynamic movement of a dancer, or the subtle shift in a model’s posture. How can one encapsulate such transient beauty on paper.

Enter gesture drawing, a technique that emphasizes the action, form, and pose of a subject. While you may think it’s all about quick sketches, there’s more to it.

it’s a profound study of movement, rhythm, and the human figure in motion. Gesture drawing evokes emotions, making you feel the energy and spirit of the subject.

Gesture drawing is an illustration style that focuses on capturing the essence of a subject in its most basic form. Rather than getting caught up in minute details, you’re trying to capture your subject’s movement, action, or overall shape.

Let’s say you’re drawing a running person. Instead of worrying about wrinkles on the shirt or the laces on the shoes, you’d focus on the overall shape of their body, the position, the way their arms swing, and the energy of their movement.

It’s like taking quick notes in class. You don’t write down every single word your teacher says.

That’s what gesture drawing is – capturing the ‘main points.’. Gesture drawing is a fun and liberating way to approach art.

By quickly sketching out the action, gesture drawing teaches you how muscles stretch & strain during different motions, how the body twists and turns, and how far the joints can naturally bend or extend. Gesture drawing is the anatomy class of art, but instead of focusing on what’s inside the body, you’re learning about how the outside of the body moves and expresses itself.

Gesture drawing helps you develop the ability to observe and draw fast. It enhances your eye for body language & movement and your understanding of expressing gestures in your artwork.

When practicing gesture drawing, keeping your hand moving while your eyes focus on capturing the movement of the object you are drawing is essential. This will help you train your hand and eye to work together to capture the gesture accurately.

Gesture drawing teaches you to focus on the shape and movement of the body. This helps you to understand the human anatomy, its dynamics, and its movements.

Practicing gesture drawing makes you better at drawing people in various positions and poses. Practicing gesture drawing is a great way to understand movement and action better.

With gesture drawing, you can observe how energy moves through space and is expressed through certain postures, shapes, and movements. This helps you understand the movement and action of the human body in a more detailed way.

This will help you to communicate an emotional aspect in your drawings rather than just the technical details. Gesture drawings are often done as a warm-up exercise during figure and life drawing sessions.

It also allows the artist to become familiar with the model’s gesture without getting bogged down in details. Once the gesture has been captured, the artist can draw specific features or details of the human figure.

Gesture drawing starts with establishing the line of action. It is a gesture line that describes the gesture of your figure.

It should be a continuous line from head to toe, capturing all the movement in between. Once you’ve established the gesture line, it’s time to draw the lines for the waist and shoulders.

The lines in your figure may be positioned differently depending on the posture. They can be straight, curved, or even diagonal.

Drawing stick figures is helpful for beginners as it helps them to understand and capture gestures and guides them in constructing accurate figures. However, you can skip this step and concentrate on the form as you become more confident in gesture drawing.

Start by adding shapes, loose lines, and hints of values to create tones and textures in your figure. Try experimenting with various line thicknesses for a variety of results.

Focus on gestures when adding details and use light lines to create the shapes. Remember that gesture drawing should be spontaneous and loose – so don’t strive for perfection.

Gesture drawing is all about capturing the gesture quickly. This can be done by making quick, fluid, and expressive lines.

Focus on keeping your lines loose and spontaneous. Gesture drawing is not about creating a perfect image.

As gesture drawings are done in a few minutes, the focus should be on capturing the gesture rather than details. The most accurate way to do a gesture drawing is by using a live model.

Drawing from life helps you understand movement and action better, allowing you to capture it accurately. It allows you to observe how energy moves through space, which is hard to do when drawing from a photograph.

Since gesture drawings are usually done very quickly, erasing mistakes will slow you down. It is better to draw over lines instead of erasing them.

While practicing gesture drawing, you can set yourself different time limits. Gesture drawings can range from 15 seconds to 30 minutes, allowing you to capture different levels of detail.

Yes, gesture drawing is an excellent way for beginners to build foundational knowledge and skills in the visual arts. By gesture drawing, beginners can better understand human anatomy and form.

(Read our blog post “How much should you practice gesture drawing. “.

By learning gesture drawing from experienced professionals, beginners can gain valuable insights while developing their craft. Soft pencils are great for gesture drawing because they allow you to create a wide range of marks and produce smoother lines on the paper.

4B and 6B pencils are generally recommended for gesture drawing. They can provide a good range of marks from light to dark by pressing harder or softer.

Whichever type of pencil you choose, ensure it has a good point and is sharpened properly so that your gesture marks will be clean and accurate. Gesture drawing reference websites are a great way to practice gesture drawing without a live model.

This allows artists to practice gesture drawing with various models, speeds, and perspectives. Some websites also provide timed gesture drawings, which can be helpful for artists looking to improve their speed and accuracy.

Practicing gesture drawing for at least 15 minutes every day is recommended. This regular practice will help you improve your gesture drawing skills and build the confidence to draw a gesture accurately and quickly.

With consistent practice, gesture drawing can become easier and more efficient. Over time, you will be able to recognize gestures and proportions to create accurate gesture drawings quickly.

We hope this guide to gesture drawing has given you a better understanding of the basics and techniques involved. Gesture drawing can be a fun and creative way for artists to explore the human body.

J Prieb/H South. Now that we’ve looked at a box with nice crisp edges making a clear change of plane.

The change of plane happens more gradually and it isn’t at all crisp.

But what about the edges between two planes facing us. They form a gradual curve.

Sometimes we can make a ‘best guess’ as to where the middle of the change of plane is. We can also draw as close to the edge of each plane as we can, leaving the curved area between them.

However, it does make the edge look much harder than it really is.

An implied line uses a slight break in the line to suggest that an edge is there, but it isn’t as strong as other lines in the drawing.

The brain interprets these broken lines as being less sharp or hard than the solid lines. This can help you create the effect of the gradual change of plane.

The die on the right is drawn this way, with broken lines suggesting the more subtle curved edges.

There are a couple of proportional tricks to drawing mouths. The pupils of the eyes mostly line up with the corners of the mouth.

And since most light sources will originate from above, this results in the top lip being darker in value.

If you break the mouth and lips into simple planes, it will help you get correct proportions on your paper. Take the mouth in this drawing for example..

When the lips are simplified with planes, the drawing is easier to piece together..

In this case, the face is at a 3/4 view. The planes are still evident.

The drawing of the mouth without the planes..

When you are drawing a mouth from the side view, be sure to consider the slant that usually happens from the nose to the chin. The top lip sticks out further than the bottom lip..

Here with the slant labeled along with the planes..

Hey, I’m Darlene and in this tutorial, I’m going to explain the Loomis method for drawing the face/head from the side view. It took me a long time to understand and be able to draw the Loomis heads properly, so my goal with this tutorial is to make each step as easy to understand as possible and bridge any gaps.

This is part 2 in a 4 part series on drawing the Loomis heads. ** You do NOT need to go through the series in order**, but doing so will help you understand how to draw a face from any angle that you want.

Part 1 covered the head from the front and can be viewed via this link. These are the tools I’m going to use.

If you already went through Part 1 of the series, these steps will look quite familiar to you. If not, don’t worry, you can still draw a face from the side view using these detailed steps.

The text here may not make sense for people following this series out of order.

Then draw a straight vertical and horizontal line through the very center. I’m using a colored pencil so the instructions don’t get too confusing, but pencil crayon isn’t easy to erase, so I would recommend you use your graphite pencil and sketch very lightly so you can erase the construction lines easily once you’re done.

The vertical line is now called the ear line.

The horizontal line is called the brow line, since that is where the eyebrows will be drawn (but more on that later). To find where the rest of his facial features need to go, we’re going to split the ear line into 6 equal spaces.

The topmost tick will mark the hairline. The bottommost tick will mark the nose line.

The space between each facial feature should be equal. So to figure out where the chin line goes, take a measurement from brow to nose and add it below for the chin line.

The eyes are going to be located about 1/3 of the way down from the brow to nose. For the lips, make a line a little higher than the midway point between the nose and chin lines.

Draw a circle that spans from the hair line to nose line to represent the flat side of his head (aka the side plane). * Remember when we chopped off the sides of his head in the front view.

To complete the head shape, draw the jawline which runs from the bottom of the side plane to the chin.

To draw the back of his neck, align your pencil with the nose line and base of his cranium. Halfway between the front of his face to the ear line, draw the front part of his neck.

Let’s draw the ear between the brow line and nose line, placing it in the bottom right quadrant of the head. It’s actually slanted back instead of perfectly vertical, so draw a slant that looks like a forward slash “/” before we actually draw the ear.

I think the ear shape is kind of similar to an oval, so if you want to have a rough guideline to draw within, create a faint oval.

You can follow the steps as pictured above to draw the ear. You can see that I’ve now switched to drawing with a graphite pencil.

To learn how to draw and shade an ear with more detailed steps, please visit this tutorial.

Extend your pencil stroke upward to create the forehead. I gave him a forehead that slants inward, but you can make it steeper or have it jut outward if you prefer.

Stop when you reach the hair line.

Experiment with different shapes to get the nose shape you prefer. The base of the triangle should rest along the nose line.

Use the triangle as a rough guide to draw a more detailed nose shape. I’ve provided some examples above.

After you’ve drawn the nose bridge, tip, and septum, add the wing of his nose to the right side of the middle line (the vertical line that marks the front of his face). For the nostril, draw a slight curve between the tip and wing of his nose.

Time to draw his mouth. I’ve included some steps above, showing the order I recommend for drawing the mouth.

Define the opening of the mouth by drawing a wavy line. Then draw the top and bottom lip, making sure they are drawn on the left side of the middle line (the vertical line that marks the front of his face).

Below the lip, bring your pencil stroke out to create a round, full chin, instead of following the construction lines too closely. Then use the construction lines to draw the neck, jawline, and the rest of his head shape in more detail.

I’ve made it so the back of his head is a little pointy.

I like to align the eyebrow arch with the side plane (the small circle we drew within the largest circle).

We’ll draw his eye to the right of that. When referencing the numbered steps in the image above, the red line marks the imaginary line drawn from the wing of his nose and the blue line marks the eye line.

Time to draw his hair. Start along the hair line and draw hair-like strokes toward the right to frame his forehead until you reach the side plane.

For a small forehead, draw below the hair line. Follow the side plane down toward the eyebrow, but don’t get too close.

When you get to the brow line, create his sideburn, and then end your stroke near the top of the ear. Continue your stroke on the right side of his ear, working down the nape of his neck.

The closer the hair is to the head shape, the shorter the hair is and vice versa. Use this knowledge to design his hairstyle the way you want.

Once you’re happy with how the face/head looks, erase your faint construction lines (what I’ve drawn in blue pencil crayon). And that’s how you draw a head from the side view using the Loomis method.

PART 1: Front View.

Coming soon…. PART 4.

Darlene created RFA In 2013 with the goal of sharing simple yet detailed drawing tutorials with other artists on the world wide web. She is a self taught pencil portrait artist and Youtuber.

Intricate geometric compositions created on a base of a circle, known as mandalas, have a deep spiritual meaning in Hinduism and Buddhism. They represent the whole of the universe, and they can be used as an exercise or for meditation.

Drawing a mandala (or what is widely considered as a mandala in Western civilization) can seem very strenuous and difficult at first, but it’s actually the opposite. The intricate look of a mandala comes from following a rhythm, which turns a little effort into a stunning result.

You can read more about drawing as a therapy in this introduction to the series: You can follow my steps directly, use the same techniques for your own mandala, or simply read the whole thing just to learn about drawing mandalas.

As with most personal art therapy activities, you don’t need any professional art supplies. You can get these tools even in supermarkets.

You can draw a mandala with a pencil only, if you want, but dark markers make the pattern cleaner and more definite. A pencil has some uncertainty in it.

With a marker pen, you have a sense of stability, and the lines seem more real. There’s one more thing you need to draw a mandala: a proper mindset.

Treat it as a meditation session. Sit comfortably, in quiet or with some pleasant music, and focus on this one activity.

Don’t think about how it’s going to look when you finish, or how people will react when they see it. Don’t make it about yourself, and don’t treat it as a test of your drawing skill or self-worth.

There’s no good or bad—just the rhythm, lines, and contrast. Don’t scold yourself for mistakes.

Ignore them or make them a part of the rhythm, so they stop being a mistake and become a part of the pattern you could never imagine before. This is your mandala—nobody should care what it looks like, and nor should you care about them.

Let yourself be creative. Don’t restrain yourself from drawing something experimental, just because there’s a risk it will not look good in the end.

No matter how you do it, no matter how it looks, it’s good, because you have created it. A pretty mandala won’t change the world for the better, neither will an “ugly” one make your life worse.

Smile and draw your soul out. Make this mandala yours, without any attachment to the outer world, and see how much joy you can take from this simple activity.

It’s possible to draw a mandala without any plan, but it has two disadvantages: If you draw a plan for the mandala first, later you can focus on drawing without worrying about keeping the rhythm.

Take the compass and stick it in the center of the sheet. Draw a small circle, then a bigger one, and another, using various distances between them.

Take the ruler and draw a horizontal line across the center (tip: place the ruler slightly lower to make space for the pencil). Take the protractor and place it along the line, pointing directly at the center.

This will give us 12 sections. You can use fewer or more, if you want—there’s no rule for this.

Take the ruler again and draw a line between the center and every mark, across the whole plan. Again, be careful to save some space for the line over the ruler.

We need to fill that smallest circle with some kind of repetitive pattern. What can be easy to repeat, in this small space and with the guide lines you have there.

Replicate the element until you fill the whole circle. Be slow and methodical—there’s no hurry.

Leave the future for later.

Let’s go to another circle. To continue with this flowery theme, we can draw more interesting petals.

and copy it all around the circle. Now draw another side of the petal.

Here let’s try another trick: you don’t need to follow strictly the guide lines of the plan—you can add more. For example, you can cut every section in half to create another rhythm.

Not every circle must be enclosed with a dark outline. You can freely go straight to another one and derive your new pattern from the previous row.

Fill the shapes with more shapes.

Still too empty. You can add something else.

So don’t be afraid to experiment.

You can make it more detailed, if there’s enough space. If the new pattern becomes very detailed, the earlier one may appear empty in comparison, but nothing stops you from going back to it and adding more detail.

There’s no requirement for the size of the mandala—you can go as far as you like. However, the further from the center, the bigger each section.

You can create interesting patterns by using contrast. If you have a thicker pen, this is where it can be useful, but filling a small section with a thin pen can be quite relaxing as well—unless you hurry.

Let’s fill the empty space with some lines. Let’s try a different shape this time.

More triangles.

Small mistakes are not so visible in the complexity of a mandala, but if you want, you can always fix such a thing with a thicker line. Let’s add more contrast.

Let’s do it quickly. Prepare another row.

The contrast with the rows below suggests we add more darkness here as well. A mandala ends when you want it to end, but it’s good to finish it in a special way.

To make them a part of the pattern instead of just a boundary of a huge empty space, give these petals a thick frame. A thicker pen can be useful here.

Maybe it’s time for some dots. We haven’t added any for a while.

Let’s fix it. More petals.

Let’s give them a clean frame this time. Add a simple pattern to fill up the empty space:

For example, attach a circle to each petal. Fill it for a better contrast.

Not every boundary must be a closing line. To keep it open, make it with circles.

Look at your mandala once again. Try to see it for what it is, not for what it isn’t.

After all, if your goal was to draw a mandala, and you did it, then you succeeded.

It symbolizes the fleeting nature of our life—no matter how much effort we put in, no matter what we achieve, it will end the same way for everyone. You can recreate this practice by destroying your mandala, to remind yourself that it’s really the process that’s important, not the end result.

And having that in mind, it’s easier to enjoy the process of creation without worrying about the end result. And if drawing a mandala has put you into a mood for more drawing, you may like these simple tutorials: