131393549 You Too Can Sketch

You Too Can Sketch

Mahesh “Vyoma” Bhathttp://kalaalog.com

Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching

http://kalaalog.com/




Index

● Introduction● About Mahesh Bhat

● Secrets Artists Have Been Hiding● Drawing Basics

● Form● Light● Visualize

● Sketching Process● Change Something● Practice● Secrets Revealed

● Final Sketch





Introduction

You Too Can Sketch, is a guide to sketching. It is a guide to sketching approach. If you have been frustrated earlier by attempts at sketching then this book is for you. If you want to try out any of the visual arts like drawing or painting in any medium, sketching is usually a prerequisite – and this book would be helpful.About Mahesh BhatI was born in India, and I had my education in a town – Manipal. I completed my graduation as an Electronics And Communications engineer – but I have always had interest in visual arts. My note books would be filled with sketches I made

when I should have been studying. I used to paint with water colors and poster colors – but I shifted the medium to oils when I moved to a different city. I have had no formal education in the arts, but I keep experimenting and learning. I have tried my hands at Computer Graphics and also post rather regularly at KalaaLog.com. This book is an outcome of the observations and studies I have had all my life, and aims at creating interest in people for visual arts. This book aims at helping those people who seek fulfillment in this hobby.All the text and illustrations in this book are copyright of Mahesh Bhat K. You may

not copy parts of this book and publish it else where with or without modifications. However, you are encouraged to share this book with anyone. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you may do so, using the contact form at: http://kmaheshbhat.com/contact.



http://kmaheshbhat.com/contact



Secret Artists Have Been Hiding

Ever looked at the paintings of the masters and wondered what talent they have for them to create those artworks? Ever been awed by looking through the works they created? Even the sketch books of these artists leaves the audience amazed by their control of the pencil or the pen over paper.You might have even tried drawing something up and then got frustrated by how grotesque the output was, and abandoning it all together. These artists who create these artworks must have something in their genes that lets them draw what they want. There is nothing that you can do to draw something of decent quality. Or is there?Is there some secret that these artists have been hiding and they have not disclosed to the general public? Is there some kind of secret world wide society that guards this secret with their life? Do they disclose this secret to only those who join them, but only when they swear to not disclose it to anyone else?It sounds preposterous. To imagine such a secret society exists would be deemed as something foolish. Everyone knows there is no such secret society of artists. But, if there were would we know? If we know, then it would not remain a secret – would it?I consider myself an artists at the expense of sounding too jaunty. I consider myself a self taught artist – I have had no formal training in any form of visual arts. I do not do great works of arts yet, I am still learning – but I can say that with some effort and time, if I sit down, I am able to draw or sketch almost anything that I can imagine.To do this, I have observed the works that others create. I studied them all the years, and have been practicing what I learned from observations, and also what I learned from few books that I could get in libraries, and what I learned from reading articles, journals and blogs on the Internet. At this point in time, even though I may not be called one of the brethren of artists, I strongly believe there is some kind of organization that closely guards a key to successful drawing.Continue reading this book, and learn how to create good looking drawings. Continue reading this book if you want to be left satisfied after a session of sketching and drawing.Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching




Drawing Basics

Let us look at the approach to drawing anything. By the end of this section, you will know the preparations you need to do before sketching or drawing something.To draw anything, you must first visualize it in your mind. You must imagine what you want to draw, and then you can proceed to draw it. You will need to visualize two basic things to get a decent sketch or drawing.● Form● LightYes, that is all you need to know regarding the subject you are drawing. Understanding the form and light of a subject lays down the basic foundation you require to draw.

FormForm of any subject is the underlying shape that defines the subject. If you take a ball – the underlying shape is a sphere in the three dimensional space. For considering the form with respect to shape you can forget that it exists in a three dimensional space, and take the basic underlying shape as a circle. Remember – the choice of the basic shape may not be always as simple.





What if you want to draw a tennis ball at a very high closeup level? Then the underlying shape would be a curvy line, some basic form of the furry layer.

Yes, it does not look like much. It looks too simple to look like a close up of a tennis ball. But that is the beauty of deciding the form based on the composition.Do not worry about composition initially – it is an advanced technique that involves the human mind. Just choose a composition, and try to decide on what the basic form of the subject is depending on how you want to draw it.Almost everything has an underlying form to it. A mug of beer? It has a basic cylindrical form. A pen? Again a cylindrical form but much thinner and elongated. A chair? It would have boxy shapes that are at different angles.





You might naturally ask now, can everything be resolved into simple forms? I mean, there are much more beautiful and intricate things that one can imagine – how can it possibly be reduced to a simple shapes and be designated as form?What about a beauty of nature – a swan or a duck swimming in the lake? What kind of form would that have? I would say that it too would have a form, but may be we cannot name all the shapes. The form though would be simple enough.Examine the same sketch with the form highlighted.

You might have guessed it by now – that form is nothing but simplification of the final artwork. Why would we want to simplify anything to draw it?The key lies in the fact that our human mind cannot visualize things as much as we would like it to. The minds eye sees things vaguely until it actually sees it. It would be difficult for us to imagine something we would like to create in the future – because there is nothing in front of the physical eye and the minds eye finds it hard to imagine it. But figuring out what the basic shape and thus the form of the subject, you can easily conjure it up in front of your minds eye, and it will help you in drawing.LightTo get a decent sketch, most of the times, the basic form is more than enough. But to add some more details and intricacies to the artwork, there is one more thing that you would need to visualize.Light plays a major role in giving depth to the sketch or drawing. Remember, in the last section about visualizing the form of the subject, I mentioned that the subject exists in three dimensions and that we are representing or projecting it to Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching




the two dimensions.To add depth to the drawing that you draw in two dimensions, you need to visualize light. You need to visualize the position of the light source with respect to the subject. Start off with a simplest of the simple form of the subject and assume a light source.

Once you imagine that it becomes easy to imagine where the shadows are formed. In the direction of the light, behind the subject, if there is something then a shadow is cast. Also, the light decides which areas of the object are brighter and which of them are dull.





Visualizing the form helps in visualizing the light. Since the form is simplified, the play of light is much more simple when compared to the complex interactions in real life.Remember there can be multiple sources of light, like in real life. The multiple sources of light may come due to actual multiple light sources, or because light reflects off some surface – in which case that too acts as a light source.But to begin with – choose a simple form, and then choose a light source and visualize the way the shadows are formed.VisualizeIt must be evident by now, but I would state it again. The key to good sketch is visualization before even you draw one line on the paper. Decide on what you need to draw and then based on how detailed you need to go – decide on what the basic forms would be. Be ready to visualize different lighting conditions and also see in the minds eye – the play of light and shadow.You have not yet started to sketch the drawing. This process that you follow before drawing will reduce a lot of frustration and artist's block you may face. Because when you have the pen or pencil ready in front of you and sit in front of the paper, the blankness wont glare back at you.

On the paper, you will see the image your mind's eye has created and drawing on it would be almost like tracing a picture.So, is this the secret I was talking about? Is this what all the fuss was about?Well no. And since you have patiently waited through this chapter, I promise I will spill the beans in the next chapter.Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching




Sketching Process

So, you have decided on the subject and visualized the form and light. For sake of illustration – I will choose the subject as 'Aztec Pyramids'. And the basic form would be that of a pyramid with its top chopped off. (Of course, Aztec Pyramids are kind of stepped – but since it is the form we are deciding on – I simplify it). And I will choose the light source to be the sun and it is situated behind the viewer and at the top – a little to the right.

Take a paper and a pen or pencil. Nothing fancy is required. You do not need to spend a lot on a sketch book or art paper or anything like that. Take any blank piece of paper and start sketching. Even the brown paper you got as a grocery bag would do.

Do not worry if you make mistakes. Just draw the basic form you have in your mind that you decided upon earlier. If any particular line seems to be out of place – then do not touch the eraser – just draw over it. Use the wrong stroke as a guide Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching




and try to edge the line towards the correct one. For example, in the above sketch – I find that the right most slant is a bit too vertical. It should be more slanting.

I did not erase that wrong stroke. I kept it as a guide and then drew again. You might not even get it right when you do this – but do not erase that. Draw again, and try to get it right the next time.Once I am satisfied, with the basic form of the subject, I proceed to draw few more secondary things – like trees in this case.

Just draw over the right set of lines again, and make them a bit darker and more defined. This will give you practice and that is good. Proceed to draw the shadows and shading. Once you are done, take a step back and what do you feel about it. It is messy – of course, but now visualize how it would look with all the details.





Is it what you wanted?Change SomethingYes – change the form or light source or both! The form and lighting you chose in the beginning must not be set in stone. Now, try and visualize a different setup, looking at the rough sketch you have in front of you and draw again.Take a fresh piece of paper, and start sketching again.

I felt that having the perspective from above the pyramids, would not make it look grand and I wanted that feel – I wanted to make it look grand. So, I changed the perspective (keeping the light source same). What I got was close to what I wanted.Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching




Since you have not spent much effort on detailing the previous sketch, since it is just a rough sketch – you are not emotionally attached to complete it. You can ruthlessly discard it if you want to, and work on another rough sketch – albeit a better one. But do keep the older one at hand – use that as a guide to the next sketch. Draw the basic form, and then shade it with light source in mind.If you are not satisfied with it, then stop working on it. Change the form or the light source and draw a new rough sketch.This cycle of drawing rough sketches again and again – adjusting one aspect or another, one after another is one of the secrets to the success of a great artworks.Unless there is no proper composition of form and lighting, no matter how great you put the detail into the final sketch – it will look crappy.

So, is that all there is to the secrets of great artwork?There is one more thing.PracticeYes, once you get a rough artwork with the proper setup of form and light, you repeat doing rough sketch with the same setup again and again. It gives confidence Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching




to your strokes. You start to do small experiments to see if there is something that would add to the aesthetic quality of the drawing.

You should draw the same subject in the same finalized setting again and again. Every time you draw the rough sketch, you should add a bit more detail. You can experiment on few minor things, trying out minor variations and comparing it with the previous version of the rough sketch.It is this practice that makes these artists what they are. If you ask them, is there any secret to their skills – they would say that you need to practice. They may unintentionally not reveal the fact that they would have spent a lot of time practicing the same aspect or a same subject again and again.The practice of the same aspect lets you apply the previous secret – variation or change. This grows your innate knowledge of sketching the form and light effects on the subject.Secrets Revealed

● Variation● RepetitionI know, for those hoping for something spectacular, for those hoping for a holy grail of creativity – this might turn out as a disappointment. But these secrets are nothing but uncommon common sense.Change or variations is the key basic key to move towards perfection. Every time you draw a line wrongly, it would be that one string of knowledge of how not to draw. The next line you draw would be close to the proper way.





Repetition, or practicing the same subject again and again, helps you grow confident in the skill you learn. It is not by fluke that you get some drawing look good. You know, as you draw again and again, what makes a particular drawing of a particular subject look good. Because every time you repeat and draw again, you will be using your earlier drawing as a reference subconsciously. You would know what things you had drawn wrong and you would draw them better this time. You might even miss what you have drawn right, and draw it wrongly now – but even that will educate you.We will round up this chapter with the following note. The secret to a good drawing is practice of the same subject with the application of variation and repetition. Vary something that you think is wrong. Repeat something that you think is right. Either of your judgment, if you happen to err in it – you will know. Correct it and draw again.Remember, we have not yet started on the final artwork. What you have done until now, was just a study – just a practice.





Final Sketch

Take a clean sheet of paper and sharpen your pencils. This time around, take a good paper – you will be sketching the final artwork now.You have two options here.● Sketch by reference● Sketch by traceHave your latest versions of rough sketch handy and then refer to it and start drawing. You may also draw faint grid lines on the blank paper and the rough sketches and start drawing grid-box by grid box. As you draw, attempt on clean lines and erase any unwanted lines. This will be your final artwork and you do not need unwanted lines like in your rough sketches.You may also place the rough sketches under you paper and start drawing with the faint rough sketch as your reference. You would not be able to do this if you had been drawing your sketches in a smaller scale.But in any case, this time around, you do not have the fear of going wrong. Because you have drawn the wrong lines a number of times in your rough sketches and you have over come them. Even if you draw a wrong line, you know what the

correct line is – you can erase and redraw. This time around you will not be feeling Mahesh Bhat K © 2007 | http://kalaalog.com | You Too Can Sketch – A Guide To Sketching




around in the dark, but you will be drawing with confident strokes. Draw the basic outline and draw all the details. Detail it to your hearts content. You do not need to fear of going out of proportions. Your basic outlines would form a boundary and keeping everything in proportion.One you are done with the outlines and hard shadows, proceed to work on the shading with finer strokes.Since you have practiced the lighting in your rough sketches, you know which areas you need to leave untouched and which areas you need to darken by drawing

criss crossed fine lines. If you want a particular area to be dark, just draw more criss crossed lines.When you are done, stand back and look at your work. You will be a lot more satisfied with it than if you had right away drawn it.As they say, practice makes perfect. Take a break, go sip a cup of coffee (or tea if you are a tea drinker), and then show it to all your friends and family.





131393549 You Too Can Sketch

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