#com’on! let’s try and make this work. 😊

[rewordthis]

Hazy Outlines: an impromptu Saturday art class

Saturday, friends!

Class is starting, even if there are still some things not running smoothly… I’m determined to do this anyway, so stick with me. Will overcome the obstacles together.

⚠️ (Apologising in advance because heavy text post with no pictures is boring af, but pics wouldn’t load for whatever reasons… Pff, bear with me, please. And if there’s anything you need to ask, please do! I’ll answer as quickly and as best to my ability! 🫠)

Now I’ll be handing out your first ever practical exercise fliers!

Well, technically not, since you’ll excuse me for making you go search for a square or rectangular box in your home... as this is going to be your assignment for the week. 😎

Yeah… you didn’t see that coming, I’m sure. Did I mention that this is a beginner’s exercises class?

I’ll need everyone participating in these classes to have a cube-like box or an object with 90° angles and straight corners and sides for this first exercise. It can be any material you got readily, any size (just… please not a trunk or something… 😑) a box of tissues would suffice. As long as it is square/rectangular with clean corners (not curved) and with no texture.

Well go on! Go bring it— I’m waiting…

You’ll have to place it in an angle and use a source of light coming from its left. You want it on the table while you sit down? You want it right in front of you, on your desk? You can put it on the damn floor for all I care— actually any weird angle will work better because the contrast will be greater… — all I’m asking, is you put it in perspective.

Now, all you’ll have to do is to decide on a spot to sit. But! Before we begin, I’d like to give some guidelines for the way we’ll work. Let’s go:

1. First of all, we will talk about the grip.

When you’ll be holding your pencil, you’ll have to keep it tilted in an angle. Not entirely parallel on the paper, but having the tip to be near-flat on it. For this, you’ll have to find a grip that allows your arm to move freely.

We won’t draw anything the way we write. Writing is a different function we do with our wrists (small clean lines) and drawing a whole other one we do with our entire arms (faint, broad lines).

Find how you are more comfortable holding the pencil without having your fingers brushing on the paper. Most of the times, the standard way is to use the whole grip to hold the pencil; this is the overhand grip but it needs a lot of time to get used to it and it’s better for fairly big areas. Another way is the loose grip. In loose grip, you hold your pencil way back (from the middle of it usually) and have the butt of the pencil resting on your hand like when you normally write. Personally I have a fairly different way of holding my pencil which heavily depends on the area I work in every occasion, but I just keep it from the butt and swing it when I need to do object placement etc. and then switch in a more steady grip as I add details.

Make lines on the paper. Try it out and see how it weights on the paper and your hand and see which grip feels more comfortable for you. Ideally you’d have to spent at least a couple days trying deferent grips in order to find what works for you. Don’t rush with this… it’s ok. The exercise is meant to be short so taking a few days off for this won’t have a negative impact. Quite the contrary, actually. 🤗

When you feel comfortable enough with your grip, make 6 boxes at one of your paper’s sides. Leave the first one blank. 👉 From boxes 2-6 fill the boxes with the pencils you have, starting from the bigger hardness. Aka, box 2: 2H hardness, 3: H hardness and so on. 👉 For the hardnesses you don’t have, use the closest hardness to fill, trying to keep deferent tones. For example; if you miss the 2H you’ll use the H with lighter strokes and then use it in its box adding one or two layers. Make sure there is a distinct deference in shade from box to box and keep the strokes facing the same direction. Think of it as the spectrum spread in shades of grey.

2. Now, it’s time to do the placing.

Observe the object and let’s try to measure it. In order to do that, you’ll use the tip of your pencil.

When you measure, you generally need to find a shape that is obvious to pick up, so you won’t miss your measurement later on if you forget it. 👉 Are there specific proportions by the object itself that you can use to divide it? This is the most preferable way, because you’ll learn to understand shapes. 👉 But, maybe there are shadows that create a clear division on it. This comes in volumes. ��� In any way, what you’ll do is to align your pencil over that shape — starting with the tip and at the end of it placing your fingernail to hold its length. After that, you move your pencil on the same axis to see how many times that shape fits into the object. Start either by the Y or X axis and once you find how many times it fits, try to divide your paper and fit the object on it by putting light marks for every division part and keeping it as centered as possible. Then proceed to do the same on the other axis.

👉 While doing this, hold your paper upright in front of you.

👉 Now it’s the time to connect the marks. This is the tracing phase so make as light marks and lines as possible! And as mentioned, draw the lines from your shoulder and elbow— not your wrist. The lines need to be continuous and decisive.

👉 When you finish tracing the object try to see if any side is bigger/smaller than what you see in reality.

After this stage, we’ll do the outline which will not be much darker because you’ll have to correct anything that is off. It can’t be perfect from the beginning, so keep in mind that you may need to measure again. You just need to define the line a bit more than before but it can’t be too bold. Correct the lines and begin to trace the outline. After that you’ll put in the shadows.

When you think that this is as good a transfer and positioning you’ve made as possible, we’ll start the shading process.

For the shading you’ll use as a guide the boxes we made at the beginning…

3. How to shadow.

During this process you will start by the lighter shade which you will apply to the object. 👉 White parts (extreme brightness) will not be covered, so keep in mind to shade around that (there won’t be too many spots anyway) — you can always use the eraser if you go over something however, so fear not. 👉 Your first shade should be done in one direction. 🔺 Do NOT cross-hatch the shadows. They need to be smooth. 👉 Add the second layer of shadows with a small tilt of the tip towards a slightly different direction (clockwise or counter clockwise it doesn’t matter; we only need a change in degrees like the clock hands from 12 to 1 or 12 to 11); that’ll it be enough. 👉 Keep adding layers to your shadows by slightly adjusting the tip of the pencil until you reach the darkest shade (deep black shades will also be very small areas like the light ones).

Good job! You finished your first practical exercise. That wasn’t so bad now, was it?

🔹 This exercise is best done slowly, and by this I mean take your time with getting comfortable with the pencil and making smooth faded lines throughout the week. It shouldn’t take you more than an hour daily and mainly about 15— 20 minutes. The drawing itself should not take more than an hour. There are tutors that insist on practicing everyday and doing lots of practice and exercises… 😮‍💨 but you really don’t. Not yet. First you need to train your eyes and your hands into what drawing actually is and overdoing it in the beginning may lead to learning things incorrectly or feeling burned out.

Anyway…

You have the whole week to make your first attempt at drawing something as closely to the real thing as you can. Try to recreate everything you see. The lines, the planes, the shadows on it, the shadows behind the object (I’m asking for the immediate background of the object so try to put it in front of something that is as plane as possible). 👉 If the object has too many colours/designs etc, cover it with something as plain as possible like a cloth. This’ll make it a little harder to draw, but you don’t want to be confused by anything more than shadows, volumes and shapes just yet.

🔹 You’re allowed to use only ONE paper. If you have a tablet, you can use that, too. This is you learning the basics after all, so feel free to present both your attempts.

🔺Don’t exhaust yourself, though! Like I said, this is a 1hour☝️exercise tops!

Now the technical stuff:

How this is going to work: ▶️ first of all, take a picture of the object from the same angle you’re going to draw it, so I can evaluate your try and give you tips to work on the next assignment! I’m opting for a tailor-made tutorial because everybody is different. ▶️ Then by the end of the week post the photo and your finished piece (the digital, too; if you do that) with either the specific tag or a mention at me. I want to see what you made!

There are no bad tries here, only things we’re going to learn and mistakes we’re going to fix!

Now, sketch! That’s it. That’s the exercise. Simple, right? :)