Drawing Outlines

Drawing outlines is an excellent way to teach yourself how to draw. This is exactly how I started drawing so I speak from my own experience.

If you really want to learn drawing, somehow or another you will find a way that suits you. Just adapt every bit of advice that you read to suit your needs.

Never give up your aspirations to draw - you won't regret it!

Drawing outlines is just one way that helps you kick off your dream to draw, there are lots of options but you only need to find one that you like.

It may be your aspiration to draw directly onto paper (without preliminary sketching) but some of us need help in acquiring that ability to see with an artist's eye.

So, let's investigate the drawing basics and learn how drawing evolved.

We all know that the letters of the alphabet were originally pictures or symbols as in this example...

Through the centuries, the pictures or symbols have been gradually reduced to the way we see them today.

When we are young, we are taught to form firm letters through practice and habit.

Printing letters is good preliminary practice for your hand to get used to applying strokes while your eyes grow accustomed to good lines of simple constructive forms.

Once you master printing, you progress on to writing, where you gradually build up the forms of the letters.

It's a shame that we don't notice the artistic qualities in our printing and writing.

When we try to record the world of complex forms -- nature, animals or humans -- we encounter the problem of how to represent them. For some reason, we make it difficult.

An outline is the earliest mode of expression among primitive people, as it is with children.

The function of outline is to define the boundaries of form.

As children, we drew the human body with confident strokes, using straight lines and a large round head. We recorded our first impression in outline, without hesitation.

Unfortunately, a good majority of us weren't encouraged to draw, so we didn't develop any skills along with that confidence.

The good news is that you are never too old to learn to draw!

Drawing Steps

There are various methods you can use to get an outline of any object or figure. To begin with, you might begin progressively defining the form by a series of stages.

For instance, in this profile of a bird diagram, the form can be gradually built up by the combination of a series of lines.

A leaf form is simpler still, put one stroke for the stem and build the form around it.

I suppose you could call this the calligraphic method of drawing because it's similar to the way we build up strokes in calligraphy.

By continuously drawing outlines, the habit to observe forms becomes imprinted on your mind. Pretty soon, you won't even notice you are doing it and it becomes invaluable to you as you progress and improve your drawings.

Practice drawing forms with continuous strokes or build them up with as few strokes as possible. Make this a fun exercise by only doing it for a few minutes at a time.

Another way to assist your eye is to use vertical center lines to help get the correct outline in place. Here is an observation exercise which helps you understand more about symmetrical drawings.

You benefit greatly when you teach yourself to draw in a way that excites you.

Don't mind failures, no-one is immune to them because they are a fact of life. We make mistakes so we can learn from them.

Have fun drawing outlines, who knows, you might become the next master of outline!

Continue reading to find an alternate method to teach yourself how to draw--->>