The #1 Secret to Drawing

As I start the school year, it is standard practice to get to know my students and I always ask the class the same series of questions – ‘Who enjoys art? Who enjoys drawing? Who enjoys drawing but doesn’t think they’re any good at it? And who wants to get better at drawing?’ No matter what the responses are for the first three questions, students always answer a resounding YES to the last. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve met anyone who said they didn’t want to be able to draw better.

It might surprise you that my #1 secret to drawing is not about drawing at all. It’s about seeing. To make better drawings you need to know about proportion, perspective and light and shadow. Everything we draw can be broken down into lines, shapes and tones. Learn how to look at those things and you can learn how to draw well.

Last year I read “How to Think like Leonardo Da Vinci” by Michael J. Gelb. Da Vinci is among the greatest geniuses in history. The book offers seven principles to live by in order to think like the great Da Vinci and find your own genius. One of these principles is “Sensazione”, meaning “The Sensations”, or senses, of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. Da Vinci embraced all of these to enrich his experience of life, but it was sight that he valued most. Saper vedere (knowing how to see) was one of his mottoes and the foundation of his artistic and scientific practice. His ability to see was extraordinary, as is documented in his “Codex on the Flight of Birds”. Da Vinci recorded in impeccable detail the movement of birds’ wings and feathers during flight. It wasn’t until the technology of slow-motion pictures became available was it confirmed that Da Vinci’s drawings were indeed accurate.

Leonardo DaVinci's study of birds in flight

Da Vinci spent a lot of his time sketching and observing everything around him. I encourage anyone who wants to improve their drawings skills to do the same, myself included. Learn to look closely and draw what you see. Many people draw what they think they see, not what they actually see. For example, many young students draw eyes up the top of the face, when in fact eyes are positioned in the middle. This is because they have not learned to record what they see.  

"One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil." Balthus

Many people, especially my students, like to work from reference images, but I recommend drawing from life. That way you have the full 360 degree experience. Our eyes see things differently to a camera, our focus and perspective are different somehow and I think being with the actual object helps build a better visual memory of the item. You can shift it around and draw it over again from a different angle.

My blind drawing of DaVinci

My favourite drawing activity to teach students how to see is blind drawing. Sounds kinda counterintuitive, right? But blind drawing is simply drawing without looking at the paper. Instead, the attention is sharply focused on the object. The object is broken down into lines and shapes – the length of the line, the angle of the line. The curvature of the shape. The highest point and the lowest point. Just keep eyeballing the object and try to draw what you see on the page. Blind drawing is a lot of fun, especially the big reveal at the end. The results are often hilarious, as the drawing hand has wandered from the original starting point and the individual parts don’t meet up. But, just as often, there are parts of the drawing that are accurate. In the end it doesn’t matter what the drawing looks like, the activity is about the process of learning how to see. If you haven’t tried it before, give it a go!

Happy drawing!

Until next time,

Erin