Art Lesson # 3 The Secret to Drawing

Anyone can learn to draw! Of course acquiring any skill takes time and practice, but if you practice the secret I am about to share with you, you will eventually become pretty competent at drawing what you see. Just remember, that like great musicians, great artists don't happen overnight and they don't get there without a lot of hard work. Natural talent does play a factor as well, hard work will trump talent on most any day. It is only the combination of the two that results in greatness.
And now the secret...
Start by choosing a picture you want to draw. It can be anything, but if you are very young or just starting out, pick something simple so you won't get frustrated. This week we chose to draw our own version of Frederic Remington's "Sun Fisher". Once you have picked your subject, do a black line tracing of it. It will look like a page from a coloring book. You could also just start with a coloring book page. Here is the line drawing we started with.


What you do next is to get a colored pencil or crayon and trace over a small line.
You will see in the next picture, that the best line to start with is the long body line of the cowboy. It is outlined in red. Now make this same line on your blank paper. You can use your pencil to make measurements of the line, but it is better to teach your eyes to do it. The next lines to tackle are the back of the horse shown in blue and green. Add these to your drawing now as well. These lines will have now given you four quadrants.



Now just keep tracing a line at a time on your black line drawing and then recreate it on your drawing until you have all of the elements. As you draw each line on the black line, your hand is learning the feel of how to make the line again. Most of us, if asked could write our name with our eyes closed, simply because we have done it so often and there is a muscle memory that has been created. Writing and drawing are really the same thing. Making marks on the black line first make it easier to make those marks again.
You can use this same technique with anything you want to draw. Concentrate on trying to get the whole form in first and concentrate on details later.
Eventually you'll be able to do this with your eyes only and you won't need to trace the lines on the black line drawing first.
This was my completed sample...

This is Ryan's.