Hello and Welcome back to Art Bites In this short video, I'm going to show you
3 different techniques that you can use to improve your confidence and your precision
when you're drawing I'm also going to explain three ways that playing sport is a little bit
like making a drawing and how understanding that better can improve the way that we draw
Now, you're probably all wondering what on earth playing sport has to do with making a good drawing
Well when you're playing any form of sport one of the main pieces of advice you'll get given
is to look at the ball I remember my high school PE teachers giving me this advice they'd tell me
to look at the ball and I would have absolutely no idea what they were talking about to be honest
I remember at the time thinking well of course I'm looking at the ball I'm trying to make sure
it doesn't hit me in the face to be honest with you however this becomes relevant in drawing
because that advice is really about being aware of your surroundings and aware of what's going
on and where the where the ball is and when we're drawing we need to be aware of what we're doing
with our pencil we need to be aware of where it is we need to be aware of where the tip of it
is we need to be aware of the angle the pressure that we're using now being aware of this in this
skill becomes with time it comes with practice but these three exercises are going to help you with
that because when you first start off you have to be really consciously where you have to do it
very deliberately and over time it becomes more natural and you no longer have to think about it
The second way that sport is like drawing is that when you play sport you have to move otherwise you
wouldn't get anywhere and you have to do the same with drawing The third way that sport is
like making a good drawing I'm going to share with you in a few moments but first I want us
to get straight on with these exercises so off we go Okay equipment so go and grab something to
draw with and something to draw on A pencil and paper is a good option but use whatever you have
We're going to focus on looking at the ball Take your pencil and slowly draw a straight line
Try to keep your arm off the table you're working on whilst you're doing this so you can use your
whole arm Don't get a ruler or anything else to help keep it straight whilst you're doing
this What you need to do is focus on the tip of your pen or pencil where it meets the paper
You'll notice
that little wobbles will develop in your line whenever you lose focus don't worry about this
just keep practising bringing your attention back to the point of the pencil by going slowly
and repeating this exercise you are training your eye to follow your hands and building your hand to
eye coordination when this happens you will have more control over your pencil when you are drawing
you might want to pause the video now maybe put some music on and give this a go
try drawing lines in different directions to help develop your control don't rush or
draw quickly the benefits of this exercise come from focusing on the tip of that pencil
okay so back to sport for a moment remember i said there was a third way that sport was like drawing
well when you're playing sport you have to look where you're going obviously now that's really
important because otherwise you'd probably crash into another player but you also wouldn't be
able to aim the ball if you were playing football for example and you'd almost certainly miss your
target the same can be said when we're drawing you have to look at your target you have to know where
you're trying to get to so that your pencil has a chance of ending up there this exercise focuses
on looking where you're going and judging the distance to get there so concentrating on the
tip of your pencil as much as possible you're now going to draw a square using parallel lines
try to draw the lines exactly the same distance apart and exactly the same length
like the last exercise try doing this in different directions as well don't be
disheartened if your squares end up looking a bit wonky at first just take your time and keep trying
in the last exercise we'll start to apply the skills that we've been developing the
first two exercises so that we can use them in our future drawings but
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this last exercise gives us the chance to see how this might start to apply to drawing real things
by this point having done the earlier exercises you'll hopefully have found that your hand will
start to feel more stable when you're drawing and your lines will be becoming straighter and
more controlled next we'll be drawing some cubes so this this is an exercise you can really do
anywhere even just watching the telly so in fact I'd encourage you to do these exercises in small
amounts really really often so there are two basic ways to draw a cube we can either draw a square
and then add three parallel lines of the same length
and then close it up with some more parallel lines or you can draw a diamond and do the same
whilst you're doing this you'll be needing to judge the length
and angle of your lines to keep them parallel and to create that illusion of three-dimensional cube
now obviously you'll find that these exercises will help you if
you're ever drawing something with a lot of straight lines like a chair or a building
but you will find that your drawings and particularly the lines in your drawings will
become much more confident the more you practice these exercises I hope you find these exercises
useful don't forget to subscribe I'll see you in my next video and as always thanks for watching