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'm going 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 have 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 draws 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 of the detail and
all of the beautiful lines and all of the beautiful strokes.
And it's really easy to assume that that's 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, if you don't know these tools and techniques, the process of drawing
can look magical and 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
draws 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.
Now, 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 times.
When we look at drawings, you will see over and over and over again the best draws 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% of the time while I'm drawing
there isn't 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 the 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 straws 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, 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.
So 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 that 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 the off 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 is you want them to be very easy to see and 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 when 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.
But we're trying to go for is that your default mind?
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're going for.
You want to be able to produce light soft lines, and you want this to be a comfortable thing for you
where you don't have to think about it, 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 weight.
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.