How to Draw

Conclude with challenging projects that weave together observation and imagination, as well as abstraction and representation. Explore how to develop subject matter and source material for your drawings.

Consider how, from pre-history through the Renaissance to the contemporary era, artists have approached the depiction of the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional flat surface. Observe how recent artists have taken liberties with Renaissance principles of illusionistic space and set them to contradict one another, creating a whole range of new possibilities for art spanning both the highly abstract and highly representational.

Finish exploring human anatomy, covering the muscles of the lower body and limbs. Then bring your knowledge to a spectrum of drawing projects, beginning with a full-length self-portrait in three views.

Like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and countless others, study human anatomy, and learn its value for drawing the figure. Study the human skeleton, with particular focus on visible skeletal landmarks seen on the surface.

Complete drawing anterior, lateral, and posterior views of the human figure. Then, turn the flat shapes used to construct the figure into volume, to get a more naturalistic and three-dimensional figure.

Learn to draw the human figure using a set of measures, or a canon of proportions, and simple geometric shapes. In doing so, make a study of human proportions in three views, using the height of the head to measure relative proportions of the body.

Choose palettes of pastels for your own drawings. Do a series of projects, using a specific color palette to create mood, a visual hierarchy, and the illusion of space, volume, and light.

Observe how an artist�۪s color palette (group of chosen colors) affects light, mood, and emotion, by studying palettes used through the centuries by major artists. Learn about flat color, open color, and color gradation in art.

Delve into color theory, beginning with the organization of primary and secondary colors on the color wheel. Learn about analogous and complementary colors, as well as the attributes of hue, value, and saturation.

Take a comprehensive look at texture, beginning with five master drawings that exhibit contrasting textural personalities and moods. Study the primary factors that affect texture, from the drawing surface to the material's application method and modification through blending, smudging, or erasing.

Investigate the use of mark making, such as hatching and other related techniques, as a means of creating visual texture and tonal value. Experiment with hatching and how to use it compositionally.

To complete your study of cast shadows, learn to draw shadows produced by oblique light coming from both the front and rear of objects. Then investigate artificial light as it affects shadows projected by objects within interiors.

Learn how artists draw cast shadows from their imaginations. Start with shadows thrown by blocks and curvilinear solids, in one- and two-point perspective.

Put your knowledge of value into practice, beginning with still lifes of white objects on white backgrounds drawn in a broad palette of light to dark. Learn to see a color's value as distinct from its hue and saturation.

Discover how artists use value. With brush and ink, learn to make both white and black shapes and create a still life using only these two values.

For drawing with value, take a deeper look at the types and qualities of the materials you'll use. Investigate the uses of graphite, charcoal, blending and spreading tools, ink, and the use of fixative.

In approaching value (the relative lightness or darkness of tones), grasp how the tonal palette of a drawing governs mood and the viewer's emotional response. Learn how we can conceive of the range of values from white to black as a scale.

Complete drawing a believable, proportioned environment from your imagination. Next, study two-point perspective, used to accurately draw planes that are angled to the picture plane.

Apply the principles you've learned to draw curvilinear volumetric forms, such as a cylinder, cone, and sphere in perspective. Also investigate the drawing of geometric patterns in perspective.

Learn how to draw a perspectival grid, and look at ways artists use grids to measure the depth of space in a drawing. Then, draw a complete gridded room, beginning with the floor plane.

Combine your knowledge of illusionistic space and linear perspective in drawing an architectural landscape of two buildings on a ground plane. Construct the buildings and the space between them using the principles of one-point perspective.

Linear perspective, a Renaissance discovery that radically changed art, is another core tool for controlling proportion and creating a life-like drawing. Learn about one-point perspective, how diagonal lines recede to a vanishing point, and how to use this principle to create convincing form in space.

Apply your knowledge and skills to a number of intriguing and complex drawing conundrums. Among a range of projects, create a still life of boxes, translate a complex figure painting into a line drawing, and draw a carefully composed self-portrait.

Look broadly at how artists create flatness, volume, and space on two-dimensional surfaces. In doing so, study 12 factors that affect how we perceive depth of space, encompassing principles such as overlap, the relative scale of objects, the use of diagonals and foreshortened shapes, atmospheric perspective, and how distance affects color.

Study key tools artists use to arrive at correct proportions. In particular, learn how to use an analog clock face as a way to quantify angles, how to use a standard unit of measure to measure across the picture plane, and how to use level and plumb lines.

Now begin a study of proportion and measurement in drawing. Learn about a key discovery of 15th century European art, the velo, a gridded device that allows you to create a convincing depiction of a figure, landscape, or other subject.

Investigate visual strategies artists use in composing drawings. Grasp how shapes communicate, and how the factors of contrast and repetition affect how a viewer reads a drawing.

Take a deeper look at the types and qualities of line, and consider how these attributes affect line's expressive potential. Study and practice nine key attributes of line, from value and width to continuity, shape, and texture.

Study how artists think structurally in building a drawing, tying the drawing's content to the geometric underpinnings of a given rectangular shape. Learn about focal areas, focal points, and compositional balance, and how this kind of structural understanding serves to unite the parts of a drawing, creating a unified whole.

In approaching composition, study the underlying structure of rectangles, the fundamental shape of most drawings. Learn how the character of any rectangle is defined by the relationship of its verticality to its horizontality, and how this relationship affects our perception.

Explore the vital concept of negative shape, the shapes existing between the positive shapes representing the objects on the page. Study how artists conceive of negative shape and use it in constructing their compositions.

Now investigate cross-contour line (which can transform flat shape into a volumetric solid), oblique or foreshortened shapes, and their relation to geometric solids-principles that allow you to make objects appear three-dimensional. Also grasp the relation of figure to ground within a drawing, and practice drawing three-dimensional still lifes.

Learn about contour line, which describes the outer edges of objects, and construction line, which helps you build the objects you draw. Discover how to draw individual objects by constructing them from basic geometric shapes.

Explore essential first drawing exercises and learn how you will apply the skills developed here to much more complex subjects. Grasp how the curriculum-spanning the many pieces making up the €œgrammar€ of drawing, such as composition, proportion, perspective, value, texture, and color-fits together, providing you with the knowledge and ability to explore your own creative vision.

Here, investigate drawing materials you'll use throughout your lessons. Learn about artists' graphite pencils, charcoal, brush and ink, and drafting and measuring tools.

Begin by considering the remarkable history of drawing, a history that has produced knowledge, methodology, and techniques that are readily learnable. Assess common misconceptions about talent and genius; discover how learning to see analytically and abstractly helps us draw; and try your first drawing exercise, retracing what our ancestors drew 80,000 years ago.