Tuesday's Tip: Negative Space

So it's Halloween and you remember how awesome I am and decide to make me some pumpkin shaped sugar cookies (slathered with orange colored frosting of course). You roll out the dough, press the cookie cutter down, and remove the cookie. What do you have left? A pumpkin shaped hole in the dough. The whole is nothing but empty space, a lack of dough, it is negative space.
Now that I've completely confused you, take a look at the illustrations. In this example, the girl, the subject of the drawing, is the positive form. The rest, the background, the space around the girl, is the negative space. You may have a preconceived notion of what a girl looks like which probably contradicts what your eyes actually see. The negative space is just a shape; one you probably don't have any preconceived notions about. This forces, or allows, you to focus on the the shape itself as simply a shape, not a girl, not a pumpkin or a cookie, but just a simple shape. Sometimes it's easier to draw the negative space than it is to draw the outline of the subject.
As far as composition goes, negative space is every bit as important, and in some cases more important, as the positive form itself, but that's another topic altogether.

Tuesday's Tip: Change the way you hold your pencil.

This is the way I've always held my pencil. Until recently I never even thought there was any other way. Good control for detail.
Another common handle, a bit looser.
Try holding the pencil further back. Good for loose, light sketching.
I've been playing with this one a lot lately. Most of the motion is with the arm. Nice and loose. Much more comfortable when I hold my sketch book vertical.
Sometimes the pencil just doesn't want to cooperate and you need to let it know who's boss.

Tuesday's Tip

Gesture Drawing
Don't think I've got this one mastered quite yet.

Tuesday's Tip

Some quotes from Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing. Yeah, I know it’s about writing, but it’s loaded with good stuff on creativity in general. The formula Bradbury proposes in this essay is simple: work, relax, don’t think, in no particular order. Work and work often. Don’t worry about the outcome or what anyone else thinks. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come out right, even if it’s just plain bad. Focus on the work for the work’s sake, the process for the process’s sake because that’s what it is, that’s what life is, a process. But Bradbury sais it way better than I can.

“And work itself, after awhile, takes on a rhythm. The mechanical begins to fall away. The body begins to take over. The guard goes down. What happens then?
Relaxation.
And then the men are happily following my last advice:
Don’t think.
Which results in more relaxation and more unthinkingness and greater creativity.”

“Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits, single landscapes of incredible control and beauty.”

“All arts, big or small, are the elimination of waste motion in favor of the concise declaration.
The artist learns what to leave out.”

“The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers.”

“To fail is to give up. But you are in the midst of a moving process. nothing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a lesson to be studied. There is no failure unless one stops. Not to work is to cease, tighten up, become nervous, and therefore destructive of the creative process.”

“What are we trying to uncover in this flow? The one person irreplaceable to the world, of which there is no duplicate. You.”

“ A sense of inferiority, then, in a person, quite often means true inferiority in a craft through simple lack of experience.”*

I’m a long ways from perfecting this process, but I can say when I’ve impressed myself the most, progressed the most, is when I work often and don’t worry about the outcome. The drawing may be horrendous, but there’s almost always something I like about it.
Anyway, I hope you find some inspiration here.

*Bradbury, Ray. Zen in the Art of Writing. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Print.

Tuesday's Tip: Turn It Upside Down

As a kid I discovered everything looks completely different upside down. Later I learned, when drawing from a picture, turning things upside down is a good way to check your accuracy.

It's also good practice to draw with your reference upside down. Shapes that are all too familiar become unfamiliar and you are forced to draw what your eyes see, not what your "left brain" tells you you see.

Check out Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, p. 55.

Tuesday's Tip

Blind Contour Drawing

Except I have a difficult time going slow.

Tuesday's Tip

So I was thinking. Dangerous, I know. I thought I might try to post a tip, exercise, or link that might help or inspire anyone looking to learn to draw, improve their drawing, or find more enjoyment in it. Then I thought it would be cool if those who cared to would post their own tips, etc, by leaving a comment or posting it on their own site and linking it back to Tuesday’s Tip. This is mostly for myself, I guess, for I figure I still have a long way to go, and I could use all the help I can get. If this works, I hope I won’t be the only one who profits by it.

So here’s my first tip:
Draw with your off hand. If you normally draw with your right hand, draw with your left. If you normally draw with your left hand, you’re a freak. Just kidding. You get the picture. The key is to not worry about the outcome, it’s going to look bad. Enjoy yourself and you may actually surprise yourself.