Don’t be afraid to make bad art.  
Instead be more afraid that  fear 
will prevent you  from making any art at all. JJ

Most of us stop drawing around 11 or 12 years old. That's when our "internal enemy" crops up and tells that our art must be perfect. The playful stick figures and lopsided houses are no longer good enough. The need for realism and perfection has found a place in our minds. At about the same time, we're all in middle school or junior high. Art has become an elective or because of funding shortages, the "art" teachers are in fact the math or home ec teachers, just filling in. They're struggling to put some kind of art program together, which usually consists of crafts and other fun stuff. BTW, a big thanks must go to all these non-art teachers for struggling to give us some sort of help.

Except for those rare "talented" kids who have drawn everything and anything since they were three, most of us have never quite learn the skills needed to master drawing. Even in my college art classes, I was never given any instruction. The profs would slap a still life on the table or a plaster body up in front of the class and say "draw (paint) this." So I'd struggle, not knowing what I was doing. Then when critique time came along, I was only told what was wrong, but never shown how to do it well. 

We live in a time however, when there are thousands of private classes and workshops (including mine!) that do teach the basics of drawing. And while I can't begin to instruct you as I would in a classroom setting, I will try to give you some suggestions on basic drawing in this tips and techniques page. For information on my classes and workshops go to: Workshops & Classes

Shape versus Form

Paul Cezanne, considered the breakthrough leader in modern art, reduced nature into three objects: the cylinder, cone and sphere. I see nature in an even simpler terms: the rectangle (the square), the triangle and the circle. Look around you right now. You computer is a square first and then a cube second. A tennis ball is a circle. A fir tree is a triangle on top of a rectangle. 

Preliminary shapes do not come alive until we add shading (dimension) to create form.

Example:

Notice I started with a flat shape--the circle. Then I added shading (also called tone or value) to create form--a sphere. I first established where the light source was coming from in order to determine where the dark side existed. From there I began to shade in the object by using  pencils HB, B, B2, B4, B8. Instead of using HB, the regular #2 pencil, to create the entire sphere, I used a range of soft pencils--the higher the number, the softer and darker the graphite. 

Once the different shades were developed, I used a kneaded eraser to "draw" in the highlights (top left on ball) and reflective light (bottom left on ball).

For a final touch I added shadow to give the ball a firm ground on which to sit.

An Exercise:
Try to notice shapes for the next month: the rectangle (the square), the triangle and the circle. Then see how these shapes become form because of light and shadow.

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