by Jason Hernandez

Created on: June 30, 2008

When learning to draw, the most important thing is to try to forget what you are drawing. What? Draw without knowing what I'm drawing, you say? Yes. Let me explain.

Most people, when they want to draw, say, a flower, have a mental image of a flower; a symbol, in effect. It will be a generalized image, with a round center and petals forming a ring around, and a stem going down. But if you draw this mental image, you will tend to get a childish-looking drawing, static and lifeless. To draw a flower with life and interest, you need to stary by putting an actual flower in front of you. Try to set it up in such a way that it will not move, and that you can look at it from exactly the same angle throughout your drawing.

Then, forget that you are drawing a flower. Instead, look at the lines. Block out of your mind the fact that you are looking at, say, the first petal; try to notice only the line formed at the edge. Draw that line just as you see it. If one petal bends behind another, the line stops right there, cut off by another line. For now, do not try to draw what is hidden behind something else; pay attention only to the actual lines you see.

There is only one time when it matters what is behind. Say you have a stem that goes behind a leaf, then comes out again on the other side. Obviously, you want the lines of the stem to line up on both sides, and this is the time to - very faintly - draw the part that is behind the leaf.

Okay, that's great, you say, but I'm not drawing a flower; I'm drawing a city street scene, with some buildings far away and some closer. Again, though, I cannot stress enough the need to look at actual city street scenes, and forget what they are. Try to notice how the lines relate. As a street goes straight away from you, you will see that, visually, the lines slant inward toward each other. On flat ground, they converge much more quickly than when looking uphill. This is true of every straight line in our three-dimensional world: the only horizontal lines you see are walls you are directly facing.

When drawing people in your city scene, once again, it is important to have looked at the real world first. See where people's heads, arms, hips are in relation to the heights of doorways and windows.

One of the most common mistakes when drawing faces is putting the nose at the center. Actually, if you measure with your eyes the height of a human head, you find that the bridge of the nose, right between the eyes, is at the center. So begin by drawing a faint horizontal line dividing the head in half, and draw the eyes on that line. Tip of the nose goes about halway between eyes and chin, and mouth halfway between nose and chin. Ears are level with eyes. Hairline can be wherever looks right to you.

Even in fantasy scenes, the real world is never far away. Artists who draw unicorns have to know the lines of real horses; fairies, although they may be differently proportioned than human beings, are still based on the same physical scheme. Even such beasts as dragons have to have believeable bone and muscle structure; a natural history museum with dinosaur skeletons can be a good place to see what is possible and what is not.

The same principles apply to shadows and shading. In every form of drawing, the more you notice the lines and details of the world around you, the better an artist you will be, even if you draw from your imagination. The artist's eye is an observant eye - observant of life, of mankind, of nature, and even of art itself. Train your eye to see the lines, the details, and training your hand to capture those lines and details will be far easier.

Learn more about this author, Jason Hernandez.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.