8
Give Yourself a Helping Hand
Chapter
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Moving your drawing hand naturally and rotating your paper as you work can improve your artistic outcomes. In this chapter, you discover how these simple actions can quickly advance your current drawing skills.
Holding Your Mediums
The way you hold your drawing mediums can affect the look of your drawings. If you move only your fi ngers and wrist, your lines may end up looking shaky and rigid.
Creating smoothly fl owing lines requires broad, gentle movements of your whole arm.
Adjust your chair and table until you can easily move your hand, arm, shoulder, and upper body as you draw.
Choosing the most comfortable way to hold your medium depends on the following:
► Your choice of medium
► Whether your drawing surface is fl at, vertical, or on an angle
► The size of your drawing paper
ArtSpeak
Straight line provides the shortest connection between any two points. Straight lines can be drawn in any direction.
Figure 801: Several straight lines that are drawn in six different directions.
Figure 802 illustrates how most people hold their pencil when fi rst beginning to write and draw. (Remember to move your arm rather than just your fi ngers and wrist.) This method is ideal for creating small drawings on a fl at or sloped surface.
Figure 804: An ideal way to hold various types of drawing mediums for sketching.
Figure 803: How to hold a pencil when you are creating big, bold sketches.
Figure 802: Holding a pencil in the most familiar and traditional manner.
The second way of holding a pencil (Figure 803) is great for rendering a medium to large sketch (or drawing) on a sloped or vertical surface.
This method requires movement from your arm, and sometimes your shoulder and upper body as well.
The method shown in Figure 804 requires movement from your arm and shoulder, and is ideal for holding pencils or sticks of graphite and charcoal.
You can hold your pencil this way when you work on a sloped or vertical surface.
Experiment with each of the three ways to hold your drawing mediums. You may fi nd a couple of these methods a little awkward at fi rst, but with practice you do get used to them.
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Chapter 8: Give Yourself a Helping Hand
Figure 805: This drawing of an old man (including the marks and age spots on the paper) is copied from a drawing by Leonardo.
Becoming a Natural
As discussed in the previous section, you can choose from three different ways to hold your pencil. The next logical step is to fi nd the most natural way to move your pencil as you draw.
Many aspiring artists simply jump into drawing without taking the time to discover their natural hand movement.
As a matter of fact, most people don’t even know they have one!
This section explores the natural hand movement of Leonardo da Vinci, and helps you fi nd and use yours.
Leonardo the lefty
You can tell a lot about artists by examining their art.
Recently, I took the time to check out some of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. I found myself in awe of his shading lines - mostly drawn at the same angle.
I used a graphite pencil to render a study of one of Leonardo’s pen-and- ink drawings. Figure 805 shows my drawing of an old man’s face.
Leonardo’s shading lines appear to be rendered from the upper left to lower right, and from the lower right to the upper left. Examine the close-up view of the shading lines in Figure 806).
Figure 806: I turned this drawing sideways as I worked so I could imitate Leonardo’s lines with my own natural hand movement.
Finding your natural hand movement
You natural hand movement may not be the same as either Leonardo’s or mine.
Try your hand at drawing sets of slanted straight lines in your sketchbook (Figure 807). Pay attention to how you make these lines. Use many different ways of moving your pencil or changing the slant of your lines. Some will feel comfortable and others will
feel awkward. Figure 807: A sketchbook page has
lines that slant in many directions.
However, there will be one motion that feels the most comfortable. This is your natural hand movement, and you should try to use it to your advantage whenever possible.
Rotating your paper as you draw
Professional artists have many secret ways to make sure their drawings turn out well. In addition to using their natural hand movement, they often rotate their paper.
Info Tidbit
Many experts claim that Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed because of the way he drew straight lines (slanted from the upper left to lower right). This is the natural hand movement of many left-handed artists.
Right-handed artists (like me) often draw lines from the upper right to the lower left.
Art Quote
The artist ought first to exercise his hand by copying drawings from the hand of a good master.
Leonardo da Vinci
You should rotate your drawing paper as you work to take full advantage of your natural hand movement. Remembering to always rotate your paper takes lots of practice. But, before you know it, you are rotating your paper all the time without even thinking about it.
In Action 9E in Chapter 9, you can try your hand at drawing shapes by rotating your paper.
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Part 3: Go Draw!
GO DRAW!
► Action 9A: Sketching a Self-Portrait
► Action 9B: Creating Values with Squirkles
► Action 9C: Playing with Pencils
► Action 9D: Playing with Erasers
► Action 9E: Drawing Shapes by Rotating Your Paper
► Action 9F: Framing with a Viewfinder
► Action 10A: Drawing a Caveperson
► Action 10B: A Realistic Eye
► Action 10C: Mugly Wigglebottom
PART 3
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