DRAWING AND PAINT

You can easily learn to draw. "But..." you will say in reply... "I can't even draw as well as a child at school" In reality it doesn't matter how bad your drawing is...

Let's list a few popular drawing subjects... A Car, A Dragon, A Wolf, A Tree, A Rose or other flowers, A Cat or a Dog, A Lion or a Tiger, A Horse or a Pig

Yes, it's difficult to draw a realistic Car. It's hard to draw a Dragon because they don't exist. And, an animal doesn't keep still unless they are asleep.

So... "How do you draw a picture when you can't draw well?" Here are 3 artist's secrets...

• Use a grid to Copy
• Use clear tracing paper to Trace
• Use a projector to project an image

Even professional artists use any or all of these methods... I have used all of them to produce paintings and drawings. They can't make your drawings look perfect but they are great drawing guides that can help you.

Although you are unlikely to get a perfect copy the 3 methods are great for... Getting an idea of shape and form... Getting drawing layout right (repositioning objects and figures)... Increasing and reducing object size (Scaling)

So... "Where can you use the 3 copying methods...?

Imagine you want to draw portraits of your children as they grow up...

You will have photographs of them from the time they were babies through to leaving school. Why not use one of these photographs to learn to draw?

1. Use A Grid to Copy

Get some transparent graph paper and draw the outline of the face, the nose, the ears, the mouth and eyes.

To draw a picture the same size all you have to do is turn the paper over and draw around the outline with a pencil. To transfer the image to your drawing you turn the paper again to the top side and draw around the original pencil marks.

When you have finished the picture will be copied through to your drawing

2. Easy Image Enlargement

It is easy to enlarge the image... scale up using larger squares... use 10 squares for every 1 original square and you have increased the image size by a ratio of 10 to 1.

3. Use A Projector

Perhaps the easiest way to increase the scale of a photograph is to use a projector, projecting the image directly on to the drawing paper.

These techniques may be considered by some people as cheats... Do you care if they help you learn how to draw what you want?

Get your Free Drawing Lesson and discover how simple lines and circles help you create a Moonscape Drawing.