How to Draw (well Part One)

This instructable is your basic guideline to how to draw a tonal (shaded drawing) with pencils, draw a simple pen outline character and simplified cross hatching of shapes.

Before you start I would like to say that there is no definitive guide for drawing, it is something very personal down to the way you hold your pencils and pens.

Today class, we will be using pencils, pens and paper.

For now the drawing is kept simple and yes if I get good feedback I will add more instructables as follow ups that as the pictures below show will take you up as far as the level I am at. Unfortunately I will have to become a better artist when that point in time comes along. I would be able to give better examples and plan to add them when my art coursework finally comes back to me from moderation as I was under special circumstances this year due to my fathers passing away.

In the meantime these two images will have to suffice, the first being a caricature of Angus Young, or was it Bon I did too many caricature in one night and the second is from my coursework that shows a good example of shaped cross-hatching on the lighter's body (best ignore the rest I was firing out a page a minute for a deadline)

Art is no science, nor will it ever be even a technical drawing is your own approximation of what on object looks like.

For now I'm going to go with a sketching method for lines using short strokes. The reason for this is that sketching tends to be the base of any drawing, painting or print.

First pick the object you want to draw, maybe something simple but with minor details that make it interesting. For my example of this part I am using a screwdriver because it's an instructable and the dremel's a bit too complicated to draw and document at the same time.

So once you've got the object you're wanting to draw, make yourself a light outline of it, including line inside the outer part.

NOTE: Ignore the darkness of mine as I had to use an extremely dark pencil (8B) throughout this to make sure everything showed up on camera well enough.

Right now that you're happy with the outline you can start to shade, it's usually best to take the shadows only created by your main light source at first. (If that doesn't make sense have a look at the picture)

Here you're only trying to get the shape of the main shadow using a lighter shade, this gives you a better idea of how to shade your shadows within this.

Now we've started to add darker tone to the main shadow and created some of the less basic shadows.

Here your drawing should be starting to take on some depth.

Yes I do know my screwdriver is squinty but I have a very rough take on drawing.

At this point we are adding in the shades that comprise the object's unshadowed parts, usually these give our drawings much more realism as whit becomes for shinier parts and the shadows blend in much more easily.

You might have noticed that I still havn't told you how to hold a pencil 'right' or shade the 'good' way, this is because in this first lesson you are learning to get to grips with your tools and in particular pencil holding is a null point as people are individuals and unique in so many ways. To explain I'm using stories about how I learnt how to draw a total of 4 times in life, specifically the most recent.

The year before last I broke my arm at a party (whiskey + trampoline) and when I came in to art fully healed I knew I was going to have hell of a time getting any good work done for the end of term deadlines. This is because drawing has a lot to do with how you move and hold your pencil, specifically when you break a bone in your arm the geometry of it changes alot and unconciously your skills are completely based on your subconcious knowledge of that geometry. As far as artistic talent goes you have it or you don't but either way knowing your own hands will help alot (not in that way though...).

It's time to make your drawing your own, so you'll notice mine has taken on much heavier outlines than before along with extra dark shadows, I know the drawing is still in the rough stages but for now I'm keeping the lesson to this.

You can choose to do alot to your image here and If you've already gotten the hang of your basic drawing skills then remember details work the same on a smaller scale.

Now we move on to something a bit more fun.

For our first pen drawing we're going to try doing fictional characters like Pop Tart man below, something I did when bored and out of stuff to smash/take apart.

An inky pen (rollerball) ones are preferable as next time I will illustrate the uses of a biro for drawing

This sounds hard, but theres a great secret to this. All you really need is a start point on these funny people and I suggest you think of a hat to start with or hair, working top down seems to help the process 'grow' the person for you, these people tend to be a clutter of random thoughts that only ever make sense to you when you think of their caption (usually a thought).

Now we're trying to get a more solid line look to the drawing so sketching is out and slower more deliberate movements are necessary.

I make the garment's style or state by starting lines like so.(it's a top hat by the way)

Ok so make the hat or hair it should have reasonable shape and detail isn't needed until you're done.

If you look how the hat below is done you can see the basic idea for what you're going for.

By the way it doesn't need to be raggedy like mine your man should hve is own distinct and silly style.

Give your person ears and eyes (mine's a lunatic not badly drawn...

I know right now it looks stupid but your ears are always visible so bear with me and you'll see next step.

Your person's eyes and ears should reflect who he/she is like thick glasses, beady eyes, etc.

Your person should now be getting more features like an outline of hair, a nose and a face outline.

Oops I had a wee bit of confusion remembering what was face and waht was hair, thankfully his hair will be black anyway.

This is just a good time to add any hair details and colour them in at the finer parts, this just makes it easier ti finally colour the hair in my opinion.

I usually do this part by drawing a shape for the mouth then adding expression lines, followed by doing the teeth...

I would tend to go for funny looking teeth most of the time as it adds alot of character to out character.

For this step I simply added some more detail to his hat but feel free to do whatever suits you and the beard should have went in here really, I made the by drawing a combination of tight spirals and random squiggles. The beard in the other guy is just straight lines for like a desperate Dan chin.

For colour these guys really suit simple block colours though with just a pen they make a nice time filler/waster...

Basically cross hatching is an illusion created by sets of roughly perpendicular lines that looks like shadow, the darker the shadow the closer together the lines get. Adding shape to cross hatching is usually done with a set of lines that run through the hatch, shaped hatching is usually used to show curved surfaces, if you looked at the drawing of the lighter you can see what I mean.

Today we're going to do a sphere, just to give us an idea of how cross hatching works, this a very rough and brief introduction which Im using to give people and idea of how it works, as it can be used in a hybrid way with other forms of tone and shading. To see the illusion look at the mini view of the last step.

First draw a rough circle, in the circle I want you to make a series of line like the ones in the picture.

Sorry for the teacherish way of doing this part it's just a good way of showing what we're trying to do.

Once you have a set of perpendicular lines, it is like having one shade where the lines are so now we start shading in

Where the shadows would be darker we add more lines in and add a second shade area that's a bit darker, again the mini picture at the top should give an idea as to what this would look like further away.

Using the same technique we add an even darke bit on the out edge of this shade and on the outside we blend it in using more hatching but not as dark as before. Pictures are far better than words here.

You'll notice this is very rough looking and quite large, this is because it is an example and in practice this is usually done with smaller hatches and a very fine pen. Also try your best not to 'zig-zag', where you scribble rather than create seperate lines, it make the hatch uneven and there are waves of the ends of scribbles through the drawing.

this step is just where we add those shaping lines that were mentioned earlier on in this instructable, they simply give cross-hatched objects some extra depth.

As I said before for a better version of cross-hatching look at the first step of the instructable

Thanks for reading this far, it's a shame there's no secret to being the next Picasso, but hey I hoped my Instructable has helped.

By the way this isn't a final version so please point out any spelling and grammar errors aswell as anywhere with room for improvement.