As mentioned in the introduction, you are not meant to go through these chapters one at a time. You need to revisit these practice sessions and move on to the harder versions of these exercises in the same chapters.

This chapter is about drawing from observation, but don’t stick with this chapter until you think you are good enough to move on! The following chapters, the ones on memory drawing and drawing 3D forms and gesture drawing, contain exercises that will help you become better at drawing from observation. You will become better at doing the exercises in this chapter by also doing the exercises in the chapters ahead.

Observation is the first thing you have to focus on when learning to draw. Your hand is accurate enough to write, so it is precise enough to draw. And if you can read, your eyes work well enough. From there on, it’s all about what happens in your brain. Observation happens in your brain.

You go through life, and you see things. Your brain receives an enormous amount of information and simplifies it into symbols. It has to, otherwise it would be way too much information. That also allows you to act on that information quickly.

If you, for example, see a lion walking around, then your brain reduces that to the symbol “predator,” and you know you need to run.

You don’t go and look at the proportions of the lion, the shape of its body, the way the tail curls, the way daylight plays in its fur. You don’t have time for that; you need to run!

But when you are drawing or painting a lion, you do need all that information.

What happens when you are a beginner artist is that you draw the symbols and what you remember of the thing. You draw the reduced symbol. And it doesn’t look like a realistic lion.

Unfortunately, that makes people think they can not draw. Perhaps you don’t have a natural talent for drawing, but this isn’t an indication of that. All our brains work like that!

To draw something well, you need to learn to truly see it, noticing all the details that are important for accurate representation.

Learning to see, to actually see what is there, isn’t just crucial for drawing. When you learn to look carefully, it helps you evaluate your own drawings better, see things in other art, and learn from them. Seeing, really seeing, is a crucial skill when it comes to making visual art in any form.

This course is slightly different from others in that it focuses on training your intuition. I want to guide you to a more intuitive form of measuring: by sight. I want to show you how you can start to feel where lines should go, instead of using boring (to me) approaches that involve measuring with rulers and such. You will discover the advantages later: you get to play with what is correct, unshackled from measuring, set free from the reference you used. After all, the purpose is not an accurate drawing, but rather a good-looking drawing, and for that, it doesn’t necessarily have to have the same exact dimensions. It doesn’t have to be a copy of the image, although it can be if you want to.

The approach in this course is thus to develop your intuition for where the lines should go. I myself find that a much more fun way to draw.

In this practice session, we’ll go through a few exercises, from easy to hard, to get you used to drawing what you actually see. The focus will be on two dimensions, on shape. Later, we will develop those two-dimensional shapes into three-dimensional forms. Let’s start with the simplest one.

Observation Assignment 1: Draw Shapes

YouTube Video - The Composition Doesn't End at the Canvas

 

Watch me do the exercise in the video above, and try it yourself while listening!

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This assignment is about getting you used to drawing simple shapes.

On the page linked below, you will see a random shape generator. You can click on the “Change Shape” button until you arrive at a shape you like, and then draw that shape from observation.

Notice the relative angles of the lines, the relative positions of the endpoints, and the relative lengths of the lines.

We are starting with this exercise because it is the easiest one. That is because these are arbitrary shapes, and after you have drawn them, you won’t see mistakes in them because you will not have a record of what the original shape looked like. Clouds and trees are also easier to draw because their shapes can also be arbitrary, so it is harder to draw them incorrectly.

This is different for things like hands and faces, especially the faces of women and children. These are much harder to get right because we know exactly what they are supposed to look like.

Observation Drawing - Easy

If you want, you can have some fun and turn the shapes into faces, animals, poses, props, cars, spaceships, or anything. Let your imagination run wild!

Remember that you are also supposed to have fun with this.

Now follow two exercises that were originally from the excellent book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards.

Assignment 2 gets you to draw something upside down. The idea behind the exercise is to disable the part of your brain that tries to reduce things to symbols. By drawing something upside-down, all you can do is copy the abstract elements you see, the shapes and lines. Surprisingly, at least when you are a beginner, the drawing will come out better if you draw it upside-down.

You’re not going to draw everything upside down for the rest of your life, of course! But to copy faithfully, you should copy the shapes you see onto the page, so that the same image can magically reappear on the page. Don’t think of something as a “nose”; instead, copy the abstract shadow shapes you see, and notice how the nose reappears on the page. If you draw a “nose”, you’ll draw a simplified symbol of it.

Observation Assignment 2: Draw Upside Down

YouTube Video - How To Feel Good About Your Art

 

Watch me do the exercise in the video above, and try it yourself while listening!

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Visit the link below, choose one of the upside-down images, and copy it.

Focus on the shapes and forget what you are actually drawing.

Carefully notice the shapes of the black areas. Notice the relative sizes and positions of the black shapes relative to each other.

Note how the shapes are aligned to each other horizontally or vertically.

When finished, turn the drawing around, and (hopefully) be pleased with the end result.

Upside-Down Reference Illustrations

The following exercise will be helpful for the rest of your drawing journey. The task is to draw the outline of something, the line between the object and the space outside of it, also called drawing the negative space. Here are some examples:

After you drew the outline, you can also go in and draw the details inside the outline.

For now, this exercise helps you forget what you are drawing, allowing you to focus on the abstract shapes you see and faithfully copy what you actually see, rather than the simplified symbol you remember.

The approach of first drawing the outline remains useful later, though!

It is particularly helpful when you try to draw something complex, like a hand. If you find you have trouble drawing something complex, like a hand, then try this approach. Draw the outline first, and then draw the hand inside the outline. This helps you focus on shape first.

Drawing the outline first has another advantage: if you ever found you were drawing something and it fell off the page, didn’t fit, or overlapped another drawing, then this approach helps you with that, too. First, draw the outline of the object. You can also do that in pencil and erase it later, but it will help you position something on the page.

So, after doing the exercise below, consider drawing outlines first in the future when drawing something.

Observation Assignment 3: Draw Negative Space

YouTube Video - Breaking The Rules Isn't Enough

 

Watch me do the exercise in the video above, and try it yourself while listening!

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Draw the negative space of things as described above: draw the lines that separate an object from the space outside of it.

You can use the following set of images that were chosen specifically for that purpose:

Negative Space Drawing From Reference

When you are finished drawing the negative space, you can try your hand at drawing what is inside these lines. You will find that easier to do now, as the negative space outlines act as a kind of scaffolding; you can reference the outlines while positioning and placing details inside the outline.

After that, also look around you. See if there are objects in your surroundings that have interesting negative space shapes.

Next, we’ll move into drawing the smaller shapes inside a reference object. To draw from observation is to draw the abstract elements you see, the shapes.

Which shapes? You can choose to draw the shapes that represent “the same thing”, like, for example, the outline of the coat someone is wearing, or their hat. When the image has enough contrast, you can also draw the light and dark shapes that are formed by the light and shadow.

When you are finished doing exercises 4 or 5 using the Timed Drawing Session page and you want to see how well you did, you can click on the “(Open as flashcard)” link beneath the image, and then click on the “Compare to drawing” link beneath the photo on that page.

That will lead to this page but with the right image preloaded for you. On that page, you can project the image from the camera on your phone over your drawing by pointing your phone at it, then compare how well you did.

Freeze the camera feed, and tap on the image to download it so you can study it more carefully, see where you were off, where you got proportions or angles wrong.

Then, try doing the same drawing again.

This is a good approach to improving. You observe, draw, then verify and correct. The advantage of doing this is that you discover what you typically do wrong, and you learn to pay attention to it. I, for example, tend to draw lower legs too short, so I make sure to pay attention to this detail.

Observation Assignment 4: Draw Shapes Inside The Outline

YouTube Video - Practice Drawing Abstract Shapes

 

Watch me do the exercise in the video above, and try it yourself while listening!

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Next, we’ll move into drawing the smaller shapes inside a reference object. To draw from observation is to draw the abstract elements you see, the shapes.

Which shapes? You can choose to draw the shapes that represent “the same thing”, like, for example, the outline of the coat someone is wearing, or their hat.

When the image has enough contrast, you can also choose to draw the light and dark shapes that are formed by the light and shadow.

In general, you will not actually be drawing these shapes when making finished pieces, because you want to have the option of hiding edges in places. But it is a good exercise because it helps to see the shapes in your mind’s eye while adding details to the drawing, ensuring the proportions inside the outline are right.

Timed Drawing

This is for anyone who wants to improve their drawing skills and build their visual library. Never be without photo reference to draw from again. Hundreds of images are ready to be drawn and chosen for you automatically. You determine the drawing intervals: short intervals for gesture drawings or longer intervals for more finished pieces. If you want to draw something specific, there are many categories to choose from.
Check it out

Now you can put it all together.

Observation Assignment 5: Draw Objects From Observation

Go to the timed drawing sessions: see link below.

Choose a reference and try to draw it from observation using what you learned from the previous exercises: draw the outline shape first, and then draw the details.

You can also look around you and draw the things you see from observation.

Timed Drawing

This is for anyone who wants to improve their drawing skills and build their visual library. Never be without photo reference to draw from again. Hundreds of images are ready to be drawn and chosen for you automatically. You determine the drawing intervals: short intervals for gesture drawings or longer intervals for more finished pieces. If you want to draw something specific, there are many categories to choose from.
Check it out

Up to this point, we have looked at single shapes and then how shapes formed into objects. Now, we are going to draw complete scenes. This will give us a feel for how things look when they are placed in a scene, how they overlap, and how they become smaller as they move into the distance.

As a bonus, it is an exercise you can do almost any time and anywhere.

The Morning Sketches APP provides reference images, organizes everything, and schedules all the exercises in this course for you.

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