The Complete Guide to Drawing & Illustration: A Practical and Inspirational Course for Artists of All Abilities

Introduction

I often hear people say, I wish I could draw. Perhaps you too have found yourself uttering those words. The response that immediately springs to my mind is Why don’t you? Of all the pursuits open to us, drawing is perhaps the easiest to take up, requiring only minimal equipment: a pencil and some blank paper.

The fact is that nearly everyone draws already. Who has not sketched a rough map to give directions, or made doodles on a telephone message pad? In these activities are two of the essential elements of drawing: selection and simplification, and uninhibited mark making. The third element is observation. In ordinary life, people see what they have already learnt is likely to be there, but through the process of drawing, we overcome our expectations and notice subtleties of shape and structure, texture and pattern, light and shade. We develop sight into insight.

Drawing is a form of art, and art does not recognize boundaries or fit into neat pigeonholes. However, to make this vast and varied activity approachable, this book is divided into broad areas of subject matter. From simple object drawing we move on to tackle all aspects of our environment, people and animals. A certain amount of art theory will necessarily be introduced along the way, but I’ve tried to keep this to a minimum and explain things, wherever possible, through practical demonstrations.

The book is designed as a course, with each new subject following naturally from the previous one. To get the most out of it, work your way through from page one. Suitable for complete beginners, as well as those who have some experience, the book opens with the most elementary drawing exercises. You may be inclined to find you own way through the book and skip to subjects and techniques that suit your interests. With this in mind, a comprehensive index should allow you to check back to previous exercises and pick up any information you may have missed.

There is so much more to drawing than acquiring the facility to copy from a picture or object. It is also about developing your own subjects and compositions and finding individual means of expression. Unlike many other drawing manuals, this book aims to direct you towards imaginative end results, introducing in each subject area ideas for developing your sketches into various forms of illustration and design. When following the step-by-step exercises, try to resist simply copying mine. Find similar subjects of your own and work through the stages, to create new pictures rather than mere copies.

I hope to debunk some of the myths that persist around the practices and processes of drawing. It is true that some people are born with exceptional gifts, but these are rare and most artists achieve their proficiency through fascination and sheer persistence. You may look at an artist’s drawings and think that they were produced effortlessly, but that’s what they want you to think. Behind every successful drawing lie a great deal of thought, application and a history of mistakes and false starts. Even the most advanced draughtsman will always see their faults and strive for improvement. In that light, an accomplished artist’s drawings are no different from your own faltering first steps; all are mere stages on a journey that has no end. Interesting discoveries await at every turn. The going may sometimes be arduous, but there will also be times when things click into place and you surge ahead. Above all, drawing should never be boring, so if you find a subject tedious, accept that it’s not for you at that time, and move on. The best way to stay the course is to enjoy yourself. Like so much of life, what you get out of drawing is dependent on what you put in. It is an activity that calls for dedication, experimentation and play, and rewards you with self-satisfaction and a heightened appreciation of the world around you.

Peter Gray

THE FIRST MARKS

Before a drawing begins, the artist opens his or her sketchbook, chooses and sharpens a pencil, and then there comes a brief moment of anticipation, excitement and even fear. It takes something like courage to make the first mark on the virgin paper, but once that mark is made, the others come flowing.

This chapter deals with the first marks you make coming to the activity as a complete novice and aims to steer you around some of the mental stumbling blocks that could be awaiting you. From the very start you should aim to draw with confidence and expression, even at the expense of precision. Some very simple exercises should limber you up and get you comfortable with holding a pencil and pushing it about on the paper.

If you have some experience of drawing, much of the information contained within this short chapter will probably be familiar to you already. Whatever level you feel you are at, it never does any harm to be reminded of the basics, so I urge you to at least read the early pages, even if you choose to give the exercises a miss.

Basic materials and equipment

One of the great things about taking up drawing is that you need very little equipment to get started. There is a large and highly profitable industry in artists’ materials and some of the elaborate items on show in art shops can be very tempting, but fancy media and equipment generally do little to improve skills and can confuse the issue of learning to draw. To start with you’ll need pencils, paper, an eraser and a knife, but throughout the book we’ll look at other materials and tools you might want to experiment with and add to your kit.

Pencils

Although any pencil will do for mastering the basics of drawing, cheap ones can be scratchy and unsatisfying to work with. It’s well worth splashing out on a few good-quality pencils from an art supplies shop. They are graded from H (hard) to B (black) with a number prefix indicating the degree of hardness or blackness. A useful starting set would be H, HB, 2B and 6B.

Eraser

An eraser is a vital part of your kit. There’s absolutely no shame in erasing mistakes and rough guidelines – they are an important part of the drawing process. Buy a good-quality eraser that is neither too hard nor too spongy; there are dozens of varieties on the market, but they all do essentially the same job. When the corners wear blunt, an eraser can be trimmed with a knife to produce a fine working edge. For fiddly erasing I often use a special eraser that comes in the form of a pencil and can be sharpened to a point.

Paper

At this stage, virtually any paper will do the job. A cheap A4 sketchpad would be good, but photocopy paper or even scrap paper will do fine. (If you’re not using a pad, you’ll need to find a piece of board a little larger than your paper to lean on.) The more your skills develop the more important the grade and type of paper will become, but at the novice stage expensive paper only serves to inhibit your freedom to make mistakes.

Sharpening

A sharp knife or scalpel is essential for fashioning the points of your pencils. For drawing, pencils are ideally sharpened to reveal a good length of lead, unlike the uniform point produced by a pencil sharpener. Keep the blade at an acute angle to the pencil, and always sharpen the pencil away from your body.

Before starting

Making a drawing, however simple, is very much more than a mechanical act. In between the functions of hand and eye is the necessary intervention of the brain. So drawing is a process: taking in information about a subject, analysing it, and setting it down on paper. It’s important to establish working practices that allow each element of the process to work effectively.

The eye

The function of the eye in the drawing process is to observe the truth of a subject, rather than one’s preconceived expectations of it. And the eye too can be fooled; sometimes a subject will require close inspection from different angles to make sense of it. Try to work in good lighting conditions, preferably daylight or under bright, diffused artificial light. Later on you might want to draw things that are atmospherically lit, but still try to ensure that your drawing surface is well lit.

The mind

In the act of drawing, the brain is involved at every stage: selecting, assessing, filtering, simplifying and adapting visual information. With all that going on, you can avoid too many headaches by establishing before you start what you hope to achieve with a drawing and sticking to it. You should strive for a positive mind-set throughout: Accept that some drawings will be time-consuming and mentally taxing. Accept also that you will make many mistakes, and even abandon drawings to start over. Nevertheless, try to be bold with your drawing, right from the start, and welcome errors as dues you have to pay. And always remember that your mind is unique; no one else can draw exactly like you!

The hand

Holding a pencil in your writing grip allows you control of small movements from the fingers. But for drawing, most movements will be made from the wrist, elbow and shoulder. Different grips will free your pencil to make a full range of strokes, with that all-important element of confidence.

Here are a few of the ways a pencil might be held for different drawing techniques and effects.

This is a general-purpose grip which is especially good for mapping out faint under-drawing and for long sweeping curves. The pencil is held loosely about halfway along its shaft, allowing for varied pressure.

With the blunt end of the pencil tucked into the palm, this grip is good for bold, angular mark-making and heavy shading.

Much like a typical writing grip but with the pencil more upright, this grip is good for fine detailed work or for drawing in a small sketchbook.

Held at the tips of the fingers and thumb, the pencil can produce very subtle lines and shading.

Lines and guidelines

Experiment with drawing different lines, all the while keeping in mind the way you are holding the pencil and keep the movement of your hand articulated from the wrist, elbow or shoulder.

Every drawing begins with a single line. Other lines of different weight, length, direction and shape are then added until an image emerges. If you haven’t drawn for a while, take a few moments to try out these simple line exercises. They are aimed at freeing up your hand and encouraging you to be confident with the marks you make.

With your softest pencil (ideally 6B), mark out two points, A and B, on some scrap paper. Try drawing a straight line between them in one single fluid motion, moving your whole arm across the paper and trying to keep the pencil pressure firm and even. Then try it again in the opposite direction and up and down. Experiment with different ways of holding the pencil to see what feels natural for you.

You probably noticed that the quality of your lines changed as the pencil wore down and your hand position altered. That variety can be harnessed for expressive effect in your drawings. Here are three sets of marks made with the same pencil, but with the tip held at different angles to the paper. The breadth and softness of the line can vary dramatically.

Guidelines

Very often, it is necessary to start a drawing with faint lines that act as guidelines for the stronger marks of the finished piece. This is where your harder pencils come in, to lay the foundations and do the exploratory work without making a smeary grey mess of the paper. Follow these steps and draw the lines of your own initials neatly and regularly.

STEP 1

Start by constructing a framework. Your own initials might call for wider or narrower boxes. Use an H pencil or similar and don’t use a ruler.

STEP 2

Within the framework, still using your hard pencil, draw the curves and lines that make up the letters.

STEP 3

With a softer pencil, you can now follow the guidelines with a bold touch.

STEP 4

With the guidelines carefully erased, you are left with letters that are much neater than you could have achieved without the preparatory work.

Shapes

Children’s drawings tend not to be accurate, but they have qualities of directness and free expression that adults would do well to capture. Indeed, Picasso stated that he had spent most of his career striving to draw like a child. With this in mind, I want to take you back briefly to kindergarten.

With a soft pencil, fill a sheet of scrap paper with 30 or 40 simple pictures, shapes and motifs. Draw them straight out of your head, using simple lines and making each one as direct and confident as you can.

Your drawings may look something like this. While you won’t want to hang it on the wall, you probably enjoyed the exercise and began to feel comfortable with the pencil. Keep your drawings for future reference; we’ll return to them later.

The third dimension

The chances are that most of the motifs you drew were flat, two-dimensional shapes. In real life, objects are far more intricate and require close observation to be drawn accurately. Equally essential to the accuracy of a drawing is the creation of the illusion of solidity on the paper’s flat surface.

A few lines added to a square suggest a box shape.

Seen from an angle, the square becomes a diamond shape. With a few more lines it becomes another box, turned at a sharper angle than the first.

The same approach with a triangle also produces a three-dimensional form.

Combining these two shapes gives solid form to my house symbol. These simple diagrams touch on rudimentary perspective, a subject we’ll cover fully later in the book.