Hi welcome to the Art and Science of Drawing series.
My name is Brent Evistan and I'm thrilled that you've decided to join me here to learn to draw.
Drawing is such a fascinating activity.
What we're really doing is smearing dirt or pigment around on a page in order to trick the mind into
seeing images objects spaces and to even have an emotional reaction.
What this series is designed to do is to replicate the experience of coming into a studio and taking
private lessons.
What you're going to get in this program are some of the most powerful drawing tools and concepts distilled
into a user friendly format.
All you're going to do is watch one video each day, do the assignment and then watch the next video.
This program is designed for people who are either absolute beginners who really want to get good at
drawing or for people who have drawn, possibly for years, who really want to engage the fundamentals to
improve their skills.
Learning to draw will help you with your painting.
It will help you with fashion design, with architecture, with really any creative endeavor that you want
to engage in. Particularly for painters
if you want to learn to paint learning how to draw is going to be one of the most powerful things that
you can do.
So again congratulations.
I'm thrilled you're here and I'm thrilled to be your instructor while you learn this beautiful and compelling
craft of drawing.
The materials we're going to be using are really basic.
I'm just going to be using a drawing pencil.
I actually really like to use black colored pencils and I'm going to encourage you at least for this
basic skills week just to simply use newsprint.
I would recommend 18 by 24 inch newsprint and I know that seems pretty big.
But one of the things you're going to learn at the very beginning today is that we're going to be doing
a lot of drawing really from our shoulder.
And the larger format paper really helps us to free up our strokes while we're drawing.
I would also recommend getting a drawing board of some sort.
The reason I recommend this is drawing upright can often be a much easier way to engage the concepts
and the tools and techniques we'll be learning here and you can see my drawing board here in the
background.
I have a basic wooden drawing board with some clips at the top to hold the paper.
But even a simpler drawing board will do.
One of my very favorite things about drawing is that the materials are very accessible and inexpensive.
So if all you've got is a small pad of paper and a number two pencil that'll work just fine as well.
What's much more important than the materials you're using is your understanding of the concepts and
practice.
Practice is going to be really critical.
Drawing is a skill.
And even if you understand intellectually what I'm talking about the practice is an essential component
because intellectual understanding doesn't always translate or doesn't even often translate into the
physical skill of being able to do something.
So in order for this program to work you really have to be willing to practice and you're going to hear
me give the minimum amount of practice after each session.
But I would highly encourage you to go beyond that.
If you practice for twice as long or three times as long as I'm recommending that's all going to be beneficial.
And really your success in this program is going to come down to practice.
The biggest elephant in the room when we start talking about drawing is the idea of talent.
I have so many students coming into my classroom or my studio who tell me that they are there to discover
if they have any talent for drawing.
So I want to get this right out of the way at the very beginning.
Drawing is not a talent.
Drawing is a teachable and learnable skill. If you can learn to read or write
you can learn to draw.
I've been teaching drawing for almost 20 years now.
I have had literally thousands of students. My youngest student has been three my oldest student has
been 87.
And not everybody becomes masterful at drawing.
But one thing they all have in common is that they all improve.
One of the other biggest myths that we come across is this idea that the best drawers are the ones who
get it right the first time.
When we look at a drawing it's easy to get caught up in a finished drawing and all the detail and all
of the beautiful lines and all of the beautiful strokes and it's really easy to assume that that all
the artists made.
They just started off with these beautiful dark lines.
And I would actually likened an artist to a magician in the sense that when they perform a trick. Hopefully
you don't actually believe magic has been done.
Once the magician explains how the trick is done it becomes obvious and drawing happens the exact same
way.
We are performing a series of almost tricks that allow the viewer to see something on a page and if
you don't know these tricks or if you don't know these tools and techniques the process of drawing can
look magical, even miraculous, but once you understand the tools and techniques involved, drawing becomes
demystified.
So the very first thing you need to learn about drawing has to do with this misconception that good
drawers get it right the first time. They don't.
What we find when we look at master drawings is that artists are starting off every single drawing using
incredibly light lines.
Even the greatest masters of drawing who have ever lived didn't get it right the first time.
And when we look closely we can find evidence of these very very light lines usually around the edges
of the drawing.
And many of these light lines get covered up as the drawing is finished but in almost every master drawing
you're going to see, if you look closely, you can find evidence of these incredibly light attempts at
the form.
And again this is something we can see across time and we look at drawings you will see over and over
and over again the best drawers starting off their drawings with these incredibly light lines and adjusting
along the way.
I'm going to start off showing you actually how to hold the pencil the way that you're going to see
me holding the pencil.
And it's not that you have to hold your pencil this way there isn't a particular right way to hold
a pencil.
But what is important is that you find a way to hold the pencil that you can get really light soft lines
from the beginning.
Here is how you're going to see me holding my pencil.
I'm right handed.
So I'm going to put my right hand up with my thumb facing up and I'm going to place my pencil in between
my thumb and forefinger about an inch from the tip of the pencil.
And now you're going to see me just wrap my fingers around the pencil.
This is called the overhand grip and this is the grip that you're going to see me use probably 80 to
90 percent of the time while I'm drawing.
The reason I really like this grip is because it allows me to engage the side of the pencil.
So when you see me draw in a few minutes you're going to see me making these incredibly light, soft strokes.
And that's because it's really easy to engage this side of the pencil.
And so this allows me to make broader, hazier lines at the beginning.
It's virtually impossible even for the best drawers in the world to nail the exact form in their first
lines on the page.
The metaphor I often talk about is this idea of a lump of clay. You want to think of the first marks
on a page are really as the way a sculptor thinks about a sculpture. You have a lump of clay and the sculptor
does not put a lump of clay down and get frustrated that it doesn't look like whatever they're trying
to sculpt.
They understand that the first step is to get a lump of clay that is roughly the size and maybe starts
to hint at the shape but over time the sculptor slowly shapes this clay into the form they're looking
for.
And we're going to use the same metaphor.
So the first marks that you put on your page are not intended to be a perfect representation.
You're simply putting something down on the page.
That is very very light and very very soft that you are eventually going to sculpt into the form that
you're looking for.
Now the drawing you're going to be doing is going to come from your entire arm.
So I'm actually moving up at the shoulder.
You'll notice that my wrists and my fingers actually move very little.
Most of the motion is coming from my shoulder and a little bit at the elbow.
Now when you're first learning to draw lightly I'm going to encourage you not to try and draw anything.
What you're really trying to do is just get used to what it feels like to use the pencil in this way
to make these incredibly soft hazy lines.
I'm going to make just basic swirls.
I can practice drawing lines that are straight. I can practice just drawing lines that are curving. But the
entire idea is that we are making lines that are just whispers of a line.
So I'm going to show you a few things of what not to do.
Many people are tempted to hold their pencil in the tripod grip like this.
And the reason they I don't advocate that at the very beginning is because again it engages the tip of
the pencil and when you're engaging the tip of the pencil it can be harder to make really really light
lines.
Now if you really do want to use something closer to the tripod grip one of the things you can do is
hold the pencil further back and that takes some of the weight off of the the tip.
But whenever you're using the tip you're going to get harder lines.
One great way to practice is to make figure eights.
So a few other things you'll notice about the kinds of strokes that I'm using here.
They are very large and fluid strokes.
After today's assignment you should have a lot of pages that look like this.
I would encourage you not to use any fancy paper for this.
You should use some kind of newsprint or basic simple sketching paper. What you want your lines to
essentially have iss you want them to be very easy to see clearly visible when you are right in front
of your paper.
But if you hold your paper back 10 to 15 feet they should almost entirely disappear.
Now again finding your ideal line weight is a very personal thing but again the most important thing
is you want to comfortably be able to see them and work with them when you're right in front of the
page.
But you don't want to go any darker than that.
The further we go in this process you'll see that the lighter lines you're comfortable using the more
opportunity you have for adjustment as we move through the drawing process.
So I know this is a rudimentary place to start but I really want to communicate to you how important
being able to comfortably draw lightly is. The whole idea is that a drawing is going to evolve over time.
And the lighter your lines are at the beginning the more time you'll have to adjust your drawing as the process
goes on. You'll know you've practiced enough
when the light lines become your default.
So for most people most of the time when they get a pencil or a pen in their hand they immediately think
about it as a writing tool and they try and have an even pressure.
Well what we're trying to go for
is that your default line,
your natural reaction to getting a pencil in your hand, is to make incredibly light marks with it.
And we want darker lines to have to come as a conscious decision later on in the process.
So I'm going to recommend practicing a minimum of 30 minutes of just moving the pencil around using
long fluid strokes to produce incredibly light soft lines.
So here are the learning outcomes you are going for. You want to be able to produce light soft lines and you
want this to be a comfortable thing where you don't have to think about. Where these kinds of
light lines just become your default.
And it actually has to be a conscious decision to make a dark line.
So that's what we're going for.
And you want to figure out your ideal line.
And again that is a line weight that is as light and as soft as you can make where you can comfortably
see the lines on the page.
But from 10 to 15 feet back from the page these lines almost completely disappear.
So happy practicing.
And I look forward to seeing you again on the next session.