Hi there.
I'm Danny Gregory and I am here to help you to learn
to draw work through these videos in this series with me.
I promise you, you will learn the basics that will have you
able to draw just about anything from a sandwich to a dinosaur,
to a landscape, to a portrait.
We're gonna cover all of it.
Well, maybe not the sandwiches.
Well, we probably will actually, knowing me.
Um, well, maybe that'll be during the lunch break.
Um, so yes, we're gonna have fun and we are gonna build
skills layer by layer so that you have a sense of confidence,
ease, and know what to do.
So far, we've talked about some of the basic, uh.
Marks that you make with a pen or a pencil and paper as you,
as you're starting to draw.
Then we talked about the idea of a continuous line drawing where
you put a pen down and you just drive around an object until
you get back to the beginning.
I.
And voila, you have a drawing.
Today we're gonna talk about one of the probably most
important tools that you can have as somebody who draws
and that is contour drawing.
It's really fundamental.
Contour drawing is well from the French contour, meaning
basically the outline.
So the outline of whatever it is you want to draw
when you practice doing contour drawing, you.
Increase your ability to see you develop your eye
hand coordination, and you develop your confidence and
your mark making ability.
It's just so fundamental to being able to draw
something that looks great.
So we're gonna spend a bit of time working on it
because, um, I think you'll find it incredibly useful.
In some ways it can be a preparatory skill.
It can be the first skill that you use when you're first
making a drawing or first learning to draw, but also
it can be very sophisticated.
There are lots of contour drawings that were done by.
Great artists like Picasso or Egg on Sheila
or um, David Hockney.
All kinds of artists use contour drawing, and they can, and it
can be extremely expressive and beautiful and artistic.
It's also the basis for comic books, comic book
drawings, uh, even animation, manga, all those things.
Rely on contour drawings as the foundation of the art form.
So it's really important no matter what kind of
art you wanna make to feel confident with your ability
to do contour drawings.
So we're gonna focus on that.
Uh, it also helps you to notice details, to notice fine details,
to notice the overall shapes of things, to notice how components
of an object fit together.
It's really developing your brain.
As an artist, your your ability to see not just a look, but
to see what's in front of you and to capture all of its
detail, to put it onto paper.
So, uh, it's very important also to understanding the
structure of the thing that you're drawing.
Its proportions.
It gives you an appreciation for the complexity of something.
I love drawing really complicated things.
First, they can be really intimidating, but when you start
to use contour drawing, you break them down into pieces and
suddenly you can draw anything.
And that's kind of what our goal is.
So, um, this is, here we are just in the third video.
We're already focusing on contour drawing, but you
will continue to use it, continue to develop it,
continue to build on it.
Um, but today you will have done your first contour
drawing if I stop talking and move on with it.
So.
Um, so what you're gonna need for today's, uh,
exercise is pretty simple.
Just like in the videos we've done so far, you're
basically gonna need a pen and you or a pencil.
It's up to you.
Uh, you can use a pencil and eraser.
I think a pen will probably be okay because we're allowed to
make mistakes and we're allowed to leave our mistakes on paper.
Leaving mistakes there to look back on is okay.
It's part of the learning process.
If you erase them all, you're kind of erasing
your lesson with it.
So don't hesitate to use a pen.
I'm gonna go into more detail about that over time, but
for now, I'm gonna use a pen.
I might even use a fat pen.
We'll see.
Um, and then, uh.
I'm just gonna throw down something pretty simple, which
is some car keys and house keys, and I'm gonna throw a key chain
onto the table and I'm just gonna draw that so you can draw
something as simple as that.
If you have, uh, something else in mind, throw it down.
And we're gonna focus on this in two stages, which I will
explain to you in a minute.
We're gonna focus on the outside contour and then
the inside contour or details, so let's get to it.
All righty.
Here is a set of keys and uh, I'm just arranging
them a little bit.
I just wanna spread them out so that there's an interesting
line that goes across.
And basically what we're gonna do is we're gonna draw the
outline of the entire shape.
So instead of looking at this thing as being a series
of individual components, we're gonna look at this
whole thing as one kind of complicated shape that we're
gonna then try and draw.
We're not gonna try, try.
We're gonna draw it.
Yes.
We're gonna draw it.
Don't listen to me.
So, um, so here's the outside line that goes all
the way around the single.
Shape.
And that's the first thing we're gonna draw.
So I'm gonna take kind of a thicker pen.
Again, you're free to use whatever pen you want
to or whatever pencil.
But just so that you can see more clearly what I'm doing.
I'm gonna start by drawing just this outside shape,
uh, with, with a fatter pen.
So I'm starting again here 'cause that's
kind of where I start.
And, uh, I'm not going to labor over this too intensely.
I'm just gonna try, kind of knock it out and, uh,
draw it reasonably quickly.
But I'm, I am going along here now and I'm turning,
see, I like to talk to myself sometimes when I'm doing this,
you might find it helpful too.
And, uh, now I'm drawing the sort of squiggly
bits of this key.
And I'm coming back here and drawing this.
Keys are kind of fun to draw.
And then I'm coming back, uh, and now I'm
sort of lined up here.
You see, I wanna line up those things so that I'm here and then
I come back down, and then I'm gonna curve around this shape.
See, I'm not even talking that much to myself about
what these things are.
I'm just seeing them as shapes, you know?
I'm not saying like, Ooh, this is.
This part of the key.
Oh, that's the fob.
I'm just sort of just focusing on this shape and how it goes.
Shift it up a bit.
And um,
and I'm trying to be specific, you know, I'm trying to
like catch each of these.
'cause I'm not just saying to myself, oh, this is
a bunch of wiggly bits.
I'm saying to myself, no, I'm trying to draw each
individual wiggle and, uh.
Now I come back here, draw this line.
I'm, I'm trying to trust myself that, that I'm doing correctly.
I don't know.
It may be that I joined this whole thing together
and it's like, oh no, it didn't join up, or That
part is too fad or whatever.
I don't care really.
But now I get to this part here and on the camera, it looks
a bit different than it does when I'm looking at the real
thing because there's this gap here between here and here.
But, uh, I'm gonna draw what I really see, not
what the camera sees.
And, uh, I'm gonna focus on that and look, oh, miraculously
I got back to the beginning.
Um, so I did get to the beginning and I had this
shape, which is the outside shape of this whole thing.
And that is phase one of drawing the, the set of objects.
And next what we're gonna do is we're gonna go
in and we're going to.
Draw the inside shapes.
Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna make it
so you can see more clearly.
I'm just gonna switch to a slightly narrower pen
and um, I'm gonna do this.
So just pick a random spot.
Doesn't really matter.
I'm just gonna draw the inside now of this ring
here, and then I'm drawing the shape here of the.
You can see what I'm doing, right?
I'm drawing this part in here and, oh look, there's
a little tiny thing in here and um, you know, and then
this part connects and then I can draw this detail here.
There's a line that's going, going down there.
I'm gonna draw that and then it stops here.
And then this line is basically this edge of this key, right?
This top key.
And then I come back over here and, um, I, I'm gonna
draw this little inside triangle and I'm gonna draw
this part of this ring here.
I'm gonna draw this ring going around here and it's
matching up with this part.
See this, this ring.
It has an inside and an outside.
So I'm drawing those rings, and then there's
a little part in here.
So I'm just drawing all these inside details.
And then I'm gonna draw this line down here.
So basically what you can see is that, that ultimately
what I'm drawing is I'm drawing all the shapes that
make up this set of keys.
But I started by not really thinking about
it as a set of keys, but thinking of it just as.
A set of shapes.
And that makes it much easier to contend with the, all the
complicated parts of this arrangement that there's, you
know, I could say to myself, oh, this is overwhelming, all
the little details in here, but instead, I'm not going
to, I'm just gonna say, I'm just gonna draw one shape
and then the next shape.
And, uh, so this ring here I've got, and then there's
got a little complicated bit of the inside ring here.
And then I can take this part of the key, the car
key, and I can draw this ring that comes in here, but it
stops right there, right?
It stops, and then it goes in here.
So I'm just gonna keep sort of talking to myself about
the things I'm observing.
There's a line that goes across here.
There's a line that goes in here, and it travels all
the way down to the edge.
And those are.
The stories that I'm telling myself about, what I'm looking
at, what I'm seeing, right?
'cause that's so important to what we're doing is we
wanna be able to see clearly and not just look at this
as like, oh, it's a car key.
I wanna look at it and say, no, there are these
nine little circles here.
And that's part of this car, key, part of the texture of it.
Um, and so, so I'm just gonna zoom ahead and just finish up
this drawing for you quickly.
And, um, then we will get back and talk to
each other some more.
But, uh, yeah.
Alright, I've, I've completed this journey around here and,
you know, you can keep going back and finding, noticing more
details, but basically you can see that what I did is, again,
I drew the whole outside and then I went in and I drew.
Inside, and what's helpful about having drawn the
outside is that I can see where each piece falls, where
the details fall inside.
If I took my time to draw a really clear outline, then
filling the inside details isn't as challenging as it
would be if I drew just this key and then that key and then
drew the ring connecting them by having an overall shape.
I know that I have.
A reasonable composition, and that is a great place to start.
So this technique that we just used, you can use to
draw literally anything.
You can draw a portrait by drawing the outside contour
of the person's head and shoulders and neck, and then
go in and draw the inside details of their eyes and their.
Nose in their mouth and so forth.
You can use it to draw, I don't know, a car, draw the
outside of the car, then go in and draw the wheels and
the windows and so forth.
Anything can be broken down into these component parts.
'cause ultimately, almost anything you're gonna draw
is just mount drawing shapes next to each other, looking
at the big shapes than looking at the smaller shapes that
make up that big shape.
Now, your first time doing this, you might have
struggled with it a bit.
Totally understandable, but if you think about this as
a jigsaw puzzle where you're working on one piece and
then you're working on the piece next to it, and you're
not saying to yourself, Ugh, I dunno how to draw tees.
I dunno how to draw a car.
Try and quiet that dialogue or monologue in your head and
instead just say, you know what?
I'm just gonna draw this shape and then I'm gonna
draw the shape next to it.
Then I'm gonna look inside that shape and I'm gonna draw the
shapes that make up that shape.
The world is full of shapes, and that's really
what drawing is about.
So.
You are making great progress already.
Here we are, three videos in and you're already drawing
something very complex and you're doing a great job at it.
Keep practicing this skill because this foundational
skill that we just did, contour drawing, it's gonna
come back time and again, it's super useful, but
it takes a bit of work.
I, I try to simplify it, but it is, it is difficult.
To fully explain because you have to experience it.
The more you experience it, the more you will start to see and
you'll start to look at these shapes, look at the big shapes,
look at the small shapes, look at the component parts.
You'll train yourself to do that.
In fact, you can do this even when you're not drawing.
Just next time you're outta the house, go and look at a tree.
Go and look at a building.
As you're sitting on the train, look out the window, look at a
person and start to break them down into their component parts.
Everything is made up of shapes.
You just need to identify them and focus on drawing
the shapes rather than not drawing the thing.
So don't say I can't draw.
People say, oh.
I'm drawing a straight line, then I'm drawing a
round a curve, then I'm drawing an inside line.
That's all that it is in the end.
It's just all those parts.
Now, sometimes those parts are not gonna completely line
up the way you want them to.
I.
Sometimes that can be fun.
Sometimes wonkiness is beautiful and funny and
interesting to look at.
Again, our goal isn't always to just draw like a photograph
'cause you've already got a camera with you in your phone.
You can take a picture of anything you want to.
What we want to do is we wanna learn to see, and we want to
learn to translate what we're seeing into lines on paper.
That is the key to all of this.
But it's gonna take some training, it's gonna take
some practice and just.
Keep reminding yourself.
This is fun, this is learning, this is progress.
I'm doing a great job because you really are.
Okay, so next week or next, the next video, we're gonna
do something really crazy, which is called Blind Contour
Drawing, where we're gonna draw essentially with our
eyes closed, never looking at what we're drawing.
It sounds bizarre.
You're gonna say to yourself, wait a minute, what?
I can barely draw when I'm looking at the thing.
It's gonna be amazing and really magical.
You're gonna see, and you're gonna learn to trust your
body for its ability to see and translate it into lines.
I'll see you next time.
In the meantime, keep practicing, keep drawing,
and keep supporting yourself in this process.
See you then.
I.