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Tag: Amy Vail

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Monday Morning Art School: How long does it take to get good at drawing?

Yesterday’s outdoor church service and picnic, drawing by Carol L. Douglas. I knew I didn’t have time to draw each figure, so I made them a single mass.

On Sundays, I have between 35 and 40 minutes to draw, because that’s how long Quinton Self will preach. After decades of drawing in church, I can tell you exactly where the pastor is in his or her sermon; I almost always wind up at the same time.

It’s helpful to know how long you have to draw, because you can choose your level of finish in advance. A 30-second gesture drawing and a three-hour portrait can both be stylish, finished drawings that tells the viewer something about the subject. But for either to work, they must be planned.

A preparatory drawing for a painting.

What’s the difference?

Gesture drawing captures the essence and movement of a subject quickly, focusing on flow and rhythm. A finished drawing involves refining details and form for a polished representation. The technique in gesture drawing is loose and spontaneous, whereas finished drawings require precision. Gesture drawings may take just a few seconds, while finished drawings can take hours or even days, depending on complexity and detail.

A quick sketch, not more than ten minutes.

Why draw in the first place?

I primarily draw as the first step in designing a painting. It’s far faster than sketching out the idea in paint, only to realize that the composition I had in mind is weak. I’ll draw when I don’t have time to paint or it’s not appropriate (as in church). But all that implies that drawing is somehow lesser than painting. Drawing is a powerful form of expression on its own.

Sometimes I’m the only one who’s amused. From a poem by John Betjeman.

How long does it take to get good at drawing?

It’s a disservice to beginning painters to not insist that they first learn to draw. It’s also a disservice to let them think that drawing is a magic trick or something we’re born knowing innately. Anyone of normal intelligence and vision can draw; they just need to learn how.

It doesn’t take long at all to learn. I taught my friend Amy Vail to draw in one short session; a week later, she was drawing like an old pro.

And sometimes I’ll work out something I don’t plan to paint.

From sketch to realized work

Sometimes you need to sketch before you can draw. Finished drawings require composition, proportion, lighting and perspective, just as finished paintings do. Andrew Wyeth created many drawings before he dragged out his paint kit, and many others just for the sheer joy of drawing.

Knowing how long you have to draw is your best tool to finish strong. That’s not always possible; for example, you will never know how long you have to wait at the doctor’s office. But when you do, you can direct your pencil to what matters in a sensible way.

I don’t have a drawing class scheduled, but if you want to take it next time it’s offered, email me here and I’ll put you on a list.

An apology

Right before I left to teach aboard American Eagle last week, my laptop converted itself to a brick. (That happens to me frequently, and I can’t really explain why.) Friday’s blog post was written on my phone, and it reads like it. Sorry about that.

When I got home, I told my daughter I needed to order a replacement. “Don’t do that!” she said. “Your new one is already there!” I’m typing on it now, using remote desktop. Any bumps in the road going forward are just from reinstalling software and restoring my last backup. I hope this one lasts longer than 29 months I got out of the last one. Sigh.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: please learn to draw

The illustrations in this post were from Monday Morning Art School: Drawing a Globe, and done by Sandy Quang and me on a stormy night before Christmas. The original post is here.

Ten years ago I wrote about teaching Amy Vail to draw. She’d made the cardinal error of telling me she “lacked the gene to draw.” Since I know there’s no such gene, I challenged her to let me teach her, and she made great strides in just one week. Drawing is not a magic trick; it’s not a talent. It’s a technical skill no different from reading, writing or arithmetic.

Drawing is first and foremost a technical skill.

I know people who paint by tracing photos or photo-montages, but that prevents the non-linear part of the mind from getting involved. Art has always been about deeper things: reflection, aesthetics, ideas, feelings, spirituality and other forms of higher-order thinking. It makes no sense to shut out the part of your mind that processes these.

I’m writing syllabuses for my January-February classes (and I’m sorry, but they’re both sold out). This is the first time I’ve taught drawing outside the context of painting. What is important and how do I teach it?

Most complex shapes are riffs on simpler shapes.

Observation Skills

The ability to closely observe and analyze a subject develops hand-in-hand with the physical act of drawing. One can photograph a scene without paying too much attention. Drawing and painting from life is how skilled realist painters sort out what matters. The best way to really see something is to draw or paint it.

Details are almost the least-important part, although it’s amazing how much one glosses over them until one actually sits down to draw. What really matters is proportion and the relationship between elements. That comes down to distance and angles. That is why painters can get away with leaving out detail if they get the proportions and relationships right. Anyone interested in abstracting the landscape had better have top-notch drawing skills.

Even a line drawing conveys volume, but shading is that much more expressive.

Basic Shapes and Forms

Almost every complex shape is a combination of basic shapes like cones, boxes, spheres and columns. For example, the spinet piano next to me is fundamentally a tall box with another boxlike structure (the keyboard) attached to the front and supported by two columnar legs. Get the size relationships of those big shapes right, and the fluting and scrolls are almost extraneous.

In their 2D form that means circles, squares, triangles, and ellipses. That doesn’t mean, however, that you get to ignore dimensionality, which leads us to…

Perspective

Everyone should learn how 1-, 2-, and 3-point perspectives work, and then never use them again. They’re a theoretical construct that shows you how to avoid errors, but they’re not ‘true’. The vanishing points in the real world are infinitely distant, and that’s hard to achieve on paper. However, understanding perspective will save you from lots of mistakes.

The more you draw, the more fluid your painting will be.

Volume and shading

Yes, one can imply volume with line drawing alone, but shifts in value tell a broader story. They will also form the basis of painting composition.

Expressive mark-making

This is where drawing suddenly gets fun. Expressive mark-making takes time to develop, but experimenting with different line weights and styles is the first step in that exploration.

Work up from simple objects and nothing will be too difficult for you. (Drawing by me.)

So how do you start?

Drawing is the cheapest and most liberating of all media. All you need is a sketchbook (this is the one I use, and I go through them like candy), a mechanical pencil, and some kind of straight-edge.

Then start drawing every day. It’s that simple. This is the text I recommend to those who like learning from books, but you can also find a lot of free instruction on this blog.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025: