Hey Watercolor Wizards, Hajra here!
So, I typically get straight to painting, and don't show my sketch process to save time
and make the most of our short attention spans, but I have discussed my sketch process in
a separate video before, and today I will be demoing and comparing 5 methods of drawing
anything, which will all work whether you are a novice or expert, but of course, all
things improve with practice.
All 5 ways I share are for drawing anything from a reference, whether printed, digital,
or real-life, but they will help drawing from imagination skills develop, too.
Thanks for parking your brushes here, and let the epic drawing adventures begin!
1) Freehand: This means drawing without tracing.
Your "hands are free" from any other help as you sketch the contour lines of whatever
you see.
Freehand works best if you loosen your arm up, and reduce even a complex subject to just
large, simplified shapes first, then move to smaller shapes.
You eyeball distances and estimate where shapes and lines go through constant visual comparison.
In the video, I have a flower from a portion of a historical painting, and I chose it because
it's complex enough not to just be a simple circle or heart or something, but simple enough
that you can focus on understanding the methods I'm sharing and not the subject.
So, I first reduce the bloom to a big circle for most of it's girth, making it easy for
me to begin to just place a general form on paper.
Then I use the size of that first simple shape to estimate how and where the next petals
will be placed.
The back three petals are triangular shapes, extending about 30% of the diameter of the
circle past the circle, while the front 3 petals are about the same length as that first
large circle I drew, so they are about the same height as the circle.
And once I have a petal or two in, I can also compare the petals to each other along with
the circle and keep adjusting my lines to make my drawing accurate.
And then I just keep eyeballing and drawing and erasing and adjusting till I get my drawing
to match the reference in all its proportions.
And this is the same process for every subject and every medium, from flower to face or pencil
to watercolor, just estimate, sketch, erase and adjust, and repeat!
Freehand drawing requires the most practice, but it's worth it.
Freehand practice makes all the other drawing methods easier, it also makes estimating and
painting shapes easier which is useful since using a paintbrush nimbly is not a step you
can skip in traditional painting, If you can accurately place contour lines in pencil,
you will learn to accurately place shading and rendering on forms with paint, too.
Furthermore, it allows you to make voluntary changes to a reference to make it more graceful
or visually pleasing, rather than just be a slave to the reference by copying exactly.
Freehanding will always result in the most natural and graceful pencil lines.
My result is a sketch of an accurately proportioned flower, which I'll show later is just as good
as any of the other results that used more assistive tools; it's just practice to increase
comfort and good eye-hand coordination.
2) Gridding: Use a ruler to measure and place equidistant dashes which are connected vertically
and horizontally to make a grid of squares.
You can also make the sections even smaller with diagonal lines through the squares if
you want to make triangles, but here I stopped at squares.
And I would argue this is a subcategory of freehand, just freehand with training wheels.
The grid is helping you balance your lines the same way little extra training wheels
help you balance your bike.
I used this a lot when I was younger to tackle complex subjects fast, and it did eventually
increase my comfort in drawing that I used it less and less.
Now I haven't used it in many years except for this demo.
What stands out to me now is how long it takes to draw the grid on both the reference and
the drawing paper (though you can make or buy a clear grid overlay to use over printed
or digital references), and then to erase it carefully after drawing.
So keep that in mind when gridding; it is more time-consuming to set up and clean up
after.
But using a grid to hang in front of you as you sketch a real life subject or locale can
make live sketching very fast and approachable.
This grid hanging in space tool is called an Albertian Veil, named after Leon Battista
Alberti who wrote about it as an artist's tool making use of math and perspective in
the 1400s.
And he stressed that it was not a cheating technique, just a mathematical tool like perspective
lines to help an artist draw accurately.
Since I used larger squares on my drawing, the flower got bigger proportionately than
my reference, so grids are also useful to redraw a drawing larger or smaller, and they've
been long used by mural painters to do just that.
A mural painter can do a small, mural mockup, grid it, then grid the wall to be painted,
and drawing for his mural will go up accurately!
And, you can even draw a grid in receding perspective to draw a subject in flat perspective
accurately in receding perspective, something that would be daunting and confusing without
the grid.
3)Proportional Divider: This gives artists another mathematical tool to assist in drawing
accurately.
I paid about $130 for my high end one 7 years back, but I never ever used it.
Perhaps, I should have just bought the much cheaper one for $12, especially since that
way I could have learned at far less cost that I don't ever remember to use a proportional
divider.
So, this is literally the first time this tool has been out of its box to be used, and
that is shameful.
Anyway, a proportional divider is like a 2-ended compass sort of similar to the one used to
draw circles and angles with in geometry.
In fact, you could make do with a one-sided geometry compass that comes with your geometry
protractor set in a pinch, though it won't do some of the more complex stuff a 2 ended
proportional divider or Marine Navigational Divider will.
So, the way it works for drawing purposes is that you need to set up a horizontal and
vertical line reference on both your drawing surface and your reference.
It can be a plus sign or cross drawn right through the middle of both, it can be an accurate
box drawn outside, or both.
You just need, literally, a frame of reference to make measurements, that's precisely where
that phrase comes from.
Then, make single distance measurements from the reference and transfer those as dots or
dashes to the drawing.
You don't have to measure and map as many dots as I did, probably half would have sufficed
before I could just join in the lines, but I did extras so you could observe how and
where I took useful measurements and transferred them.
Once you have your dots plotted, you can sort of play connect-the-dots and have a measured
mathematical gauge of where your subject should be placed in the proper proportions like I
did with the tulip.
(If you want to increase or decrease the size of the drawing versus the reference, you can
do it with a proportional divider as well.
You just take the reference measurements with one side, and the drawing's resulting measurements
from the other side of the tool.
It applies the equal, intersecting angles rules from geometry.
I'm not going to show that in this video, here I just draw the flower at the same size
as the reference flower.
I can do a future video and notes posts if there's a demand for all the tricks a prop
divider can perform.)
I will add that the metal points on this divider were super fine, unlike the points on cheaper
plastic dividers, so I can take very small measurements.
A proportional divider is more challenging than the grid method since it involves more
freehand, but it does get easier with practice.
I haven't given this particular method any practice at all, which is why both the freehand
and gridding drawings were faster and more natural for me.
And keep in mind, I stop at the general measured outline here so you can see just how this
method works with this tool, but if I took the time to rework all these lines without
the proportional divider for a better contour flow and finish up the rest of the sketch
freehand, it will be just as good as the gridded or fully freehand version.
Any method needs some freehand contours to get it to the most graceful.
The proportional divider is a useful mathematical artist's tool, especially if you don't want
to bother with a grid, but also don't want to trace, and need just a bit of gauging size
and placement of your subject before you finish drawing it.
The 4th way to draw anything is in a similar spirit of getting some guidance before drawing
freehand, and I'm calling it a "guideline trace and draw" or a "guided drawing" for
short.
And it consists of a rough, fast trace of the subject of minimal, guiding lines only,
and then adding the rest of the sketch and details freehand.
It's an excellent method to use once you are confident with your freehand drawing skills,
and it's used by many advanced artists to save time.
It is different from full on tracing in that you go and finish the sketch and refine it
and make the lines graceful with freehand, and trace only minimal lines for placement.
Again as a timesaver, not as a crutch.
The less lines you trace the better.
Trust me, even as a novice, a person's flowing freehand line pivoting on the anchor of hand,
elbow, or shoulder will be far more graceful than a hard, disjointed trace line.
I'm using a thinner, transparent paper for this sketch than for the previous ones.
As I said in my other sketching tips video, a thin paper will allow you to transfer to
watercolor paper easier, and having a sketch separate from your watercolor paper gives
a reassuring backup copy in case you mess up while painting.
The reason to have the sketches on transparent paper is that they can be flipped, rotated,
and layered with other sketches and this is like a manual photoshop.
It lets you place and layer drawing pieces for the most pleasing final result.
5) Tracing: My least favorite and I don't ever use this myself.
It can be argued that full on tracing is not a conventional drawing method at all as freehand
sketching is totally removed.
It's just laying tracing paper over a reference and tracing all the lines you can make out,
and then transferring that full trace to your painting or drawing surface.
It will result in the most awkward and stilted lines of any of the methods, the lines will
lack subtlety and grace because there are no freehand contour lines, and some of the
accuracy will also be lost because you learn a lot less about the actual shape and form
of a subject when you're not taking the time to sketch and refine.
I know it's unpopular to say this, but reserve tracing as a last resort.
Like if you've been abducted by the mafia or terrorists and they want you to paint something
complex for their goon den at gunpoint and your freehand skills aren't there yet, or
you've lost them from fear.
I urge you to spend time honing your freehand drawing skills whenever you can, and if you
do need a tool, try a grid, a proportional divider, or a guided drawing with minimal
transferred lines.
All of these other ways, unlike full tracing, are artist's tools that will help you grow
your drafting skills.
You can see here that my first sketch of the tulip, which was freehand, when I lay the
guided drawing over it, my freehand sketch is just as accurate.
I would argue that the full freehand sketch is visibly the most graceful of the 5 sketches,
and the full trace is visibly the least graceful.
Well, Wizards, hope you enjoyed seeing 5 Ways to Draw Anything demoed and compared all in
one place!
Wishing you all epic drawing adventures!!