Basic rules for outdoor sketching

Here about basic rule for outdoor sketching.

There are 3 basic rules for sketching outdoors:

First, determine your horizon line, making sure that all your receding lines converge properly.

Sketch the general contours of the big shapes. Keep them fairly angular and avoid drawing details too soon.

Second, the same advice applies to shading.

Indicate the large masses first, in simple light and shade.

Avoid using halftones at this stage. Watch your source of light and keep it consistent.

Third, put in the half-tones, constantly checking the relationship of the light and dark values.

Then render the details and necessary accents in the final stage to complete the picture.

As you can see, these rules are very simple and easy to follow.

Now go out there, and do some sketching!

Draw the human figure

Above about draw human figure.

The complex human form can sometimes seem like a huge challenge for the artist. Like any task, it becomes much more manageable if you break it up into 'bite-size' chunks instead of trying to 'swallow it whole'. To tackle figure drawing - sometimes called 'life drawing' - we will sometimes take an overview looking at aspects of drawing the whole figure, and sometimes look at drawing parts of the body. Over time, practice in all these areas will come together and you'll find yourself able to tackle any pose with confidence.

Learning to draw a nude model in a life drawing class is obviously the ideal, but if this isn't possible, don't despair. You can still learn to draw the figure very well without a model. You'll find that friends or family may be happy to model wearing close-fitting sportswear, and any drawing problem (observation, foreshortening, proportion) that you find on a nude model can equally be explored drawing arms and legs.

For best results, work consistently, practicing drawing daily. When reading, make notes in your sketchbook to remind you what to work on. When you are ready to move on, come back and takle the next exercise. Remember, you won't learn to draw by just reading about it! You have to put it into practice.

First, let's look at the basic proportions of the head and body, and practice sketching them.

Looking At Proportions
Find out the standard proportions of the human figure. The first page describes traditional proportions, while the second page shows you how to measure the model with the 'thumb-and-pencil' method.

Homework:
Once you've read the article carefully, ask a friend to 'pose' for you - clothed is just fine! - and do a sketch, using the thumb-and-pencil method to find how many heads tall they are, and marking key points on the figure. You could use a mirror, holding your sketchbook in one arm, if everyone is too busy! Try sketching some simple stick-figures using circles and ovals, using the proportions described.

Gestural Drawing
Practice capturing the essential qualities of the figure using gestural drawing. The examples in this article focus on strongly directional lines, but you can also try using loose oval forms to describe the body. Try a variety of energetic poses.

Technique of sketch

Here about sketch techniques.

Have you ever seen sketches either from an artist's sketchbook or in a gallery somewhere and there drawings always look really sketchy, there's something about them that you really like and want to emulate. Sketching isn't about drawing a likeness in a portrait or drawing things accurately, sketching is about being loose and bold and not worrying about making mistakes, letting your real feelings come out.

The whole point of sketching can be done in two different ways, one way is sketching as a preliminary to a painting or a finished drawing, the other way is just for the art and fun of sketching which if done properly can really turn into a work of art by itself. The sketch on the left is full of life and energy and you can only achieve this dynamic and rhythmic flow through sketching whether it is with watercolour, oil, charcoal, acrylic or any other medium.

In this detail of the same sketch we can see all the scribbles and marks that I have put down and each mark or scribble means something whether it is the form of the hair or the way tone has been laid in. The detail looks abstract in this example till we see the full sketch and then realise that everything is there that needs to be, look at the full size sketch and you can see what these marks and scribbles describe.

To do this sort of sketching you need to relax and let yourself go and not to be afraid of making mistakes and to have an understanding of form and shape. Once you know about form and shape try letting yourself go and lose all your inhibitions and preconceptions of what you might think drawing is all about. The example on the left is a simple sketch that is fluent and rhythmic, I wasn't really bothered about toenails or whether there was an highlight in the dogs eye. This sketch took two minutes to do and it is a good idea to set yourself a time limit to see what you can achieve.

The quick sketch technique

Above about the quick sketch technique.

When drawing, a basic understanding of the rules of perspective is essential if you are to achieve a realistic effect. Only once you have learned these rules you can begin to distort or exaggerate them in order to accentuate elements of your design. There are three basic forms of perspective (one, two and three point). There are also three main elements present in each of these (the vanishing point, convergence lines and horizon line). This tutorial shows the basics behind one and two point perspective only, three-point perspective being a technique that automotive sketching does not require.
Horizon Line: This line, as its name suggests, describes the horizon, which is always considered to be at eye level. For instance, an object sited above the horizon line is above the viewer's eye level and will therefore show its underside.
Vanishing Points: Sited on the horizon line these are the points where all convergence lines meet. Although always on the horizon, their position on the horizon depends on the viewer's angle to the viewed object.
Convergence Lines: All parallel lines in a scene will always appear to converge to a single point (the vanishing points). The exception to this rule is that lines viewed in parallel or perpendicular to the viewer will not converge. In one and two point perspective you can also consider all vertical lines as non-converging lines.
One Point Perspective: One point perspective is evident when the object being viewed lies parallel or perpendicular to the viewer. This means that only lines travelling towards or away from the viewer appear to converge to a single vanishing point on the horizon. Picture one shows how this makes for a very simple version of perspective, which is especially useful for sketching quick side views of a vehicle.
Two Point Perspective: When the object being viewed lies at an angle to the viewer, as in the second sketch example, all the horizontal lines appear to converge. This therefore introduces a second vanishing point on the horizon. Where the vanishing points fall on the horizon line depends on the angle of the object to the viewer. Looking at picture two you can see that if the vehicle were turned so that more of the side was visible, then the right vanishing point would move to the right and out of the image.
Wheel Ellipses: Getting correct ellipses when drawing a car is probably the hardest part of perspective. Getting it absolutely correct will probably not add anything to your drawing, but getting it wrong however will make your drawing look very odd. If you look at a circle at an angle of 90 degrees then what you see is indeed a circle. Once you start to reduce the angle you view the circle from, it starts to appear to be an ellipse. An ellipse has a Major Axis and a Minor Axis. In picture three you can see where these are situated on an ellipse. The Major Axis divides the ellipse into two equal halves along the longest dimension, whilst the Minor Axis divides the ellipse into two equal halves along its shortest dimension. Although not technically complete (the full explanation is long, more complicated and not generally required when sketching) a good rule of thumb is that you should always align the Minor Axis with the axle of your vehicle. The Major Axis, and therefore the longest dimension of the ellipses should therefore run perpendicular to your axle line. Finally, how do you ensure that the angle of your ellipse is correct? There is a method using construction boxes, but in practice you should not need this for sketching. If you ensure that you have got all of the above correct then the angle, or width of your ellipse hopefully should be self-evident.

About The Quilting Arts Book

Here about The Quilting Arts Book.

Today's tip is for free-motion machine quilting and it comes from The Quilting Arts Book: Techniques and Inspiration for Creating One-of-a-Kind Quilts, by Patricia Bolton, a great book full of ideas, projects and tips for making artistic quilts. From principles of design to sketching to quilting and embellishment techniques to gorgeous quilts, The Quilting Arts Book is full of art quilt inspiration.
In it Robbi Joy Eklow, Quilting Arts Magazine's Goddess of the Last Minute shares her free-motion machine quilting technique and tells how to make 16 fun free-motion quilting designs. She gives many tips as well. My favorite is, "This is not billiards, in which you have to say what you plan to do before you try to do it. If you are striving for a motif and it morphs into another shape, go with it."

 

Sketching tips that designer should know

Above about sketching tips.

Live sketching gets people engaged in the discovery process and leads to ideas that may not have presented themselves via normal note-taking. The response to visuals being created before a clients’ or colleagues’ eyes is energetic, and that leads to a natural desire to fill in the picture, completely. The result: Understanding and alignment, quickly.

Materials you’ll need:

• Whiteboard or giant stickies
• Variety of small, colorful stickies
• Markers
• Digital camera

How to do it:

1. GET STARTED | Start drawing as soon as you can. The earlier you start drawing in a session the better. It will get the momentum going in the room, the energy level will jump and you’ll start getting real content.
2. VISUAL NOTES | The key to live sketching is understanding that it isn’t “drawing” in the traditional sense. It’s visual note-taking. Instead of writing “there was a room with a couch and a lamp,” you draw a couch and a lamp and label it with the word “room.” This simple distinction between drawing and note-taking helps alleviate the fear of drawing in front of people.
3. MESSY IS OK | Yes, sloppy is good. The sketches don’t have to be pristine. The sketchier they are the better. By keeping things fast and loose you’re subconsciously telling the audience that these are just notes and not final images. What’s drawn in session isn’t necessarily going to show up in a final XPLANATiON or another visual communication piece. Keeping things sketchy will help drive that point home, and allow everyone to feel like they can add to the pictures themselves.
4. ASK | Don’t be afraid to ask for clarification or detail. If things are moving too fast, and you aren’t catching everything, let your partner — or the group — know. If the description doesn’t make sense, ask more questions. If you’re not sure whether you’ve captured something correctly, ask your client or colleague. It’s better to ask and be sure, than to assume you’ve got it and have to fix things later.
5. LABEL | Remember that you’re the one that will have to make sense of these notes after the fact, so annotate/sketch/label in a way that makes sense to you. Label people, label scenes, label arrows, label labels! Live sketching can be fast and sloppy, as mentioned above, and the squiggle you draw in a session might make complete sense to you at the time — but two days later it will just be a squiggle. Labels make the difference between a “centralized supply chain database that everyone has access to” and a bunch of mysterious boxes, lines and stick figures.

When you’re done, document everything with a digital camera being careful to avoid window and flash glare on the whiteboards. It’s a good idea to organize and annotate all of the relevant captured info soon after the session.

The color and drama of painting

Above about color painting.

Bartlett's exhibit explores the color and drama of fish schools and seabird flocks in a series of original paintings and college pieces. Hailing from St. Andrews, Scotland, he was able to vividly capture the movements and behaviors of Maine's seabirds because many of these seabirds are found in both places. On the 22nd, he will discuss his background in biology and the techniques he used to create such a vibrant and dynamic group of paintings.

Boat tour trip
For the Farnsworth, Bartlett will lead an artistic exploration of coastal bird life. Participants will enjoy sketching puffins and rare terns en plein air on a boat excursion from Port Clyde to Eastern Egg Rock, followed by creating collage/mixed media paintings from the source material back at the Farnsworth.

Bartlett will demonstrate his technique of using ripped magazines and paper in conjunction with paints to construct intriguing collages, as well as offering tips on composition and technique. Bartlett is a self-taught artist with a doctorate in animal behavior, and he is the guest artist of National Audubon Society.

The excursion is co-sponsored by Project Puffin in Rockland and will meet 11 a.m. at the Monhegan Boat Line in Port Clyde, returning at 6 p.m. Intermediate to advanced students with basic drawing and painting skills are encouraged to sign up.

Class size is limited to 12 students and a materials list will be provided upon registration. The fee of $100, $85 for museum members, includes the boat passage.

Simple sketch effect with photoshop

Here’s about simple sketch with photoshop.

This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to create an extremely simple sketch effect. You can apply this effect to any digital image. The greatest thing about this effect is its simplicity.

Step 1: Preparation

Open the image to which you want to apply the sketch effect. Duplicate the layer by pressing ctrl (command) + j on the keyboard. Select image > adjustments > desaturate from the menu. Duplicate this layer by pressing ctrl (command) + j on the keyboard. Invert the layer by pressing ctrl (command) + i on the keyboard. Set the blend mode to color dodge.

Step 2: Apply Sketch Effect

Select filter > other > minimum from the menu, and set the radius to 1 or 2 pixels. The larger the radius the darker the lines will be.

Step 3: Adding Color (Optional)

You can now add color by simply duplicating your original image layer by selecting it in the layers palette, then pressing ctrl (command) + j on the keyboard. Move the duplicate to the top of the layer stack, and set the blend mode to color.

That's all there is to it.

Learn how to sketch

Above about sketching tips.

1. Find a sketch pad at the next art supply store. It can't be emphasized enough. Select one of those nice sketchbooks and take it with you everywhere you go! It permits you to use every free minute for exercising your draftsmanship and draw interesting scenes you come across.

2. Save your draftings safe. As crucial as having a sketch pad (and keeping them after you have filled them) is to preserve everything you depict. Acquire a folder to store them safe and secure from harm. Never toss any of your pictures. So you will collect a nice portfolio and can consult your older works for inspiration and to follow your progress.

 
3. Pick apart your draftings later. Remember, we discussed in the part about fighting your fear of failure - don't be too judgmental about your drawings. Whenever the little critic in you wants to jump into action, outwit him. Stash away your work (in your folder) and tell him "later". In some weeks or months you can see your drawing in a very much more friendly light than nowadays.

 
4. Drawing from reality is ideal. You'll see: depicting real-life subjects seems to be more difficult than just replicating pics or other pictures. But it is much more honoring and your pictures will be much more vital and truthful. How does it work? I don't know sure enough, but I would speculate our subconscious somehow absorbs the scenery with all senses giving you additional inspiration to draw on the paper.

 
5. Do not depict complicated subjects. Stand back from subjects that are too complicated. Rather start with simple subjects you are able to understand and depict as good as you desire it to be. Then increment the level of difficulty in petty steps so your draftsmanship has time to grow with each small step you are undertaking.

 
6. Do not move into detail excessively. When drawing, less is more. Virtually everyone tend towards adding details excessively, too many little lines, too many insignificant objects. Do not try to depict all the details you can see. Rather seek to capture the scene at large, absorb how it feels and try to put this to onto the sheet using only few lines.

 
7. Exercise, exercise, exercise. Oh and did I mention ? Practice! You cannot draw overly often. All of the time bear in mind: every line you draw, every picture or sketching you complete increases your draftsmanship and moves you one stair up. Practise by drawing scenes you encounter in everydays life into your sketch pad. Practise by doing the practices I have presented. Just practise.

Mistakes beginners make for sketch

Here’s about the mistake that beginners make when sketch.

1. Drawing With a Hard Pencil

If you have no very dark shadows and the whole picture is rather pale, check your pencil. Are you using a Number2 (HB) pencil? These are too hard to draw with (though they are handy for light shading). Get a B, 2B and 4B for darker values. Read more about pencil grades.

2. Portraits from Flash Photography

This is the major cause of beginner drawing problems. Using flash photography flattens the features, giving you nothing to work with. When the person is facing you, it is very hard to see the modeling of the face, as the perspective vanishes behind their head, and add a cheesy snapshot grin and you make life very hard! Have the person turning slightly to one side so you can model their face, with natural lighting to give good skintones, and a natural expression to show their real personality.

3. Incorrect Head Proportions

Because of the way we focus on a person's features, we usually draw them too big and squash the rest of the head. Learn about the correct head proportions

4. Twisted Features

Because we are used to looking at a person straight-on, we naturally try to make their features look level when we draw them. If their head is on an angle, this results in strange distortions in the picture. Sketch guidelines first to ensure that the features are on the same angle as the rest of the face. Learn more about drawing the human head.

5. Pet Drawings from Human Eye Level

When you take a photograph standing up, you are looking down at your pet. They have to look up, and you end up with their head seeming much bigger than their body, and a rather odd expression on their face. Have someone distract them so they aren't staring down the lens, and squat down so the camera is at their head level, and you'll get a much better reference photo. Read more about pet photography for drawing.

6. Being Afraid of Black

Often when shading, the shadows don't go past dark gray. If your value range is restricted to in some cases half what it ought to be, you are limiting the modelling and depth in your drawing. Put a piece of black paper at the corner of your drawing, and don't be afraid to go dark. Really dark. Improve your range of tone.

7. Outlining in Value Drawings

When value drawing, you are creating an illusion with areas of tonal value. When you use a hard drawn line to define an edge, you disrupt this illusion. Let edges be defined by two different areas of tonal value meeting. Read more about Value Drawing.

8. Drawing on the Wrong Paper

If your drawing is pale, it might be the paper. Some cheap papers have a sheen on the surface that is too smooth to grab the particles off the pencil. A thick notepad has too much 'give' under the pencil to allow you to apply enough pressure. Try a basic photocopy/office paper, or check the art store for cheap sketch paper. Place a piece of card under a couple of sheets to give a firmer surface. If you are trying to do even shading, some sketch papers can be too coarse, giving an uneven texture. Try a hot-pressed Bristol board or similar smooth drawing paper. Find out more about paper

9. Scribbled Foliage

Don't use circular scribbles to draw foliage. Use more convex shaped scumbling - like crescent shapes and scribbly calligraphic marks - to draw the shadows in and around clusters of foliage, and your trees will look much more realistic.

10. Wiry, Pencil-Line Hair and Grass

If you draw every hair or blade of grass as a pencil line, you'll end up with a horrible, wiry, unnatural mess. Use feathery pencil-strokes to draw the shadows and dark foliage behind areas of grass - just like drawing short hair in this drawing hair tutorial.

Sketching is different from painting

Above about why sketching is different from painting.

Because the result is more immediate, I never spend more than one session on a sketch and rarely go back to adjust it later. This makes sketching more like a musical practice session. Before starting, I decide what new technique or criteria I want to work on...color harmony, focal point, mood, perspective, source of light...right now, you can tell from my previous tips, I am working on composition and hope that establishing the darks first may be helpful. When painting, there are a lot of things to consider and one must address them all at once. With sketching, the process and not the result, is what is important. So with each specific sketch, I can concentrate on getting one thing right...warm or cool colors, line quality, scale, soft or crisp edges, foreground vs. background. You know the list.

Artists can't use black

Here's about why artist can't use black.

For some reason student artists are told they should not use black. So they end up using too few darks and their paintings often lack strong contrast, punch, or what is sometimes called "eye pop." The no black rule may come from the theory that color mixes are interesting while black is just one pigment. After years of following the no black rule, I now use Winsor Newton's Sepia for a warm black and sometimes make a cool black by adding a Paynes Grey wash over my black ink.

Talks about watercolor with ink

Above about watercolor with ink.

Many artists say that transparent watercolor is more difficult than oil because white and light areas must be reserved during the painting process while, with opaque oils, highlights can be added for the final touch. Try starting with hot press watercolor paper, a waterproof black ink such as Platinum Carbon or Noodler's Bulletproof, and a waterbrush. Sketch with the ink and, with the brush, pull gray washes of every shade from the black lines. After the ink and washes dry, use watercolors to glaze hues over the varying gray tones. To me, this initial placement of darks on my paper, makes it much easier to arrange objects in a picture and create a balanced composition that will pull the eye in to a good focal point. Teachers have sometimes used a similar method by having students first sketch in charcoal to establish tones and spray with fixative before painting with watercolor. New waterproof inks offer an easier technique.

Sketch when inspiration comes

Here's tip of sketching.

Keep your smallest fastest sketching kit next to the spot where you read newspapers or magazines. When you see a reference picture you like, grab your tools and take five minutes to put it on paper right then...not later. You can also sketch when you are viewing videos online. Just pause the frame at an inspiring scene, animal, or person. It's like asking your own live model in motion to hold the pose for five.