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Alexander Grigoriev-Savrasov

2017-11-22 at 12:11

How to learn to draw without making mistakes, whose advice will be the most effective in the countless mass of advisers, mentors, teachers?

There are so many artists, so many opinions. Some say we need to copy more, others, on the contrary, are categorically against it.

How to make sense of all this leapfrog? Yes, the dog would be with them all, let them do as they want, is there really no clear logic for a novice artist to immediately learn the basics without mistakes?

Those who seek the truth on the path of mastering knowledge argue approximately this way.

At one of the online meetings I was asked a question: name the mistakes that should not be made when working on a painting. I understand the question this way: it is necessary to identify a number of mistakes that will protect beginners from wrong actions.

I wonder how you can learn something without making mistakes? My answer: make all the mistakes, only after this experience you will know them yourself.

Do you want me to give you invaluable advice, having understood the essence of which, you will not need to think about trifles, such as possible mistakes and other nonsense?

When working from nature, we should understand what and how we see, simply understand the mechanism of vision.

It seems to you that you are drawing with your eyes, that is, repeating what you look at. You are mistaken, you draw with your brain, this is exactly how we hear, see, feel.

Imagine, you are about to paint a still life, you look at nature, you see a jug, a dish of fruit, an apple in the foreground and folds in the drapery. You see all this while your eye examines objects. As soon as your attention switches to the snow-white canvas, only a piece of the observed nature remains in your memory, for example, an apple, and you remember the rest of the objects vaguely.

You will draw the apple first, then add a jug to it, then a dish with fruit, then think about the folds, etc. You will create your picture piece by piece, fragmentarily, observing nature in parts, and never as a whole.

I repeat, every time you look at nature, you remember only a fragment of it, and no matter how many times you look at it, only a part of it always remains clear in your memory.

The artist's skill lies, first of all, in the fact that he teaches himself to see, to form full picture depicted, relying on visual memory. If you imagine how everything actually happens, then the picture with which the work is being done is not in front of the artist’s eyes, but in his imagination.

This is the secret of mastery. This is where you should look for the answer to why one person can’t draw, while the other masterfully wields a pencil and brush.

No matter how much you read and listen about possible errors artist, no matter how many tricks you spy on different masters, no matter how effective your strokes and strokes are, you will still mark time, because you do not know how to see.

The value of a painting is its integrity. Some people think that by depicting a lot of details, skillfully working with every speck, you can create interesting work. You are wrong.

As a result, your work turns into a “traffic light” screaming wild flowers or into a canvas strewn with “peas,” where the mass of worked out details has no connection. All dried, blackened, whitened works are a consequence of the inability to see nature, which means that hints about possible mistakes are empty words for you.

In the professional environment of artists there is such a concept - “he counted all the objects”, paid equal attention to every detail. It’s hard to look at such a work, there is nothing for the viewer’s attention to focus on, every piece of the picture shouts: “Look at me!”

I do not agree with the way the science of drawing, painting, and main reason in the way it is presented. Ninety-nine percent supposedly educational material on the Internet - this is “playing an artist,” and, a la the masters, they themselves play artists, without having any idea what they are talking about.

I am ready to forgive the teacher a lot: tongue-tiedness, stuttering, severity, even rudeness, but not the lack of skills and knowledge. Title “ good man“I’m not satisfied.

I understand perfectly well where people are coming from, repeatedly writing to me that they have dozens, or even hundreds of master classes behind them and a complete lack of desire to continue this way. Some have completely lost all interest in fine arts, because we never learned anything.

Not only did they not become artists (which is not at all necessary, everyone has different motives, some are looking for art therapy and nothing more), but they did not even learn to see, read paintings, or receive aesthetic pleasure from works visual arts.

Think about it, the vast majority still have no idea how to look at a picture, what to admire, admire, what to perceive?

A novice artist gets the impression that masters of fine art are those who have picked up technical tricks former lovers, but with much more experience than them. There is also an opinion about talent and inspiration, which sometimes covers the lucky ones, and they create masterpieces.

Everything is much simpler and more complicated at the same time. How you apply paint to the canvas is important, but there is another side to mastery, which lies in the ability to see, form a picture in your own imagination, and understand its design.

My article is not about how to learn to see - this is a separate topic. I want to draw your attention to the importance of this skill and devalue the desire to get tricks and tricks. You must invent them yourself, since they will become your creative language, your style of expressing yourself.

You may ask, is it really possible to learn to see? There is such a technique, but isn’t this talent? I answer, there is no methodology, there is awareness, a deep understanding of the process and a sequence of actions.

Talent is one percent out of a hundred, where ninety-nine is conscious work, that is, you always know exactly what you are achieving in your work, and do not rely on intuition and miracles.

I believe that my articles are interesting, first of all, to thinking people who want to understand the secrets of mastery, and not to spy on tricks. Anyone who is looking for miracles in my texts and online meetings will not find them.

Unfortunately or fortunately, everything in the world is achieved through work. Even if you have all the knowledge, without practice, without overcoming yourself, you will not achieve results. It is also true that without knowledge, nothing can be changed by work alone.

Being an artist means constantly working on yourself, your technique and constantly developing. This is part of the growth of any artist, and a person may change techniques several times throughout his professional career. Developing your skills is a long journey, but the results can be worth it if you move forward slowly and patiently.

Steps

Buy everything you need

Work on your skills

Place dates on all drawings. Sketching doesn't have to be complicated: five minutes spent sketching out a facial expression will be more rewarding than half an hour spent trying to create a detailed image. If you have half an hour, it's better to do several different sketches. Try to do everything right, but don't strive for perfect execution. You can achieve good technique if you practice regularly.

Choose your favorite subject to draw. It could be a cat, a flower, a stone, a bottle through which sunlight. Any subject that you would like to learn how to draw well and that is dear to you will do. Keep drawing the same thing over and over again in different ways. Regularly working on one object or a group of similar objects (for example, your cat, a neighbor's cat, postcard cats, a cat's paw or a cat's nose) will give you an idea of ​​the anatomy and proportions of the object. Once you've done enough sketches of your cat, it will be much easier for you to draw a tiger the first time. If you draw small stones all the time, then it will be very easy to draw a mountain.

Sketch everything you see. This could be a tramp with his arm outstretched or a little girl running down the street with a balloon in her hand. Draw anything that seems interesting to you!

• Beginners should start with still lifes because they are easier to draw - the objects don't move. First, choose the simplest objects: an undecorated vase, a few stones, a flower with a few petals, an empty bottle of an interesting shape, and so on. As a practice, draw each of the objects separately, then start combining them in different ways to see if they go well together. The stillness of the subject is a big plus of still lifes, and if you are painting indoors, the lighting does not change throughout the day.
• You may like to draw animals. Start with your pets. Draw them when they are sleeping, even if the pose is not very interesting, because drawing stationary object easier. Draw animals from photographs. Go to the zoo and take pictures of every animal you like and use the pictures in your drawing. Look online for photos of animals that are not protected by copyright, and for other images that are not prohibited from drawing. You can even write to photographers who take good pictures of animals and post them on Facebook or Flickr and ask for their permission to use the pictures. Many will happily agree and want to see your drawings. Once you learn how to draw animals quickly, start drawing in zoos or wildlife(for example, draw birds that flew to the feeder). Drawing from life is good way learn to quickly record movements and poses.
• Draw buildings and others architectural structures. Study perspective, because when working with buildings, perspective is responsible for the realism of the image. Find a book on perspective and do all the exercises. Be careful when drawing from photographs, as the lens can distort space, so to be able to draw from a photograph, the photograph must first be corrected. This is one of those drawing objects that never loses its relevance. As with still lifes, you can paint your subject from life without fear of it getting up and walking away.
• Landscapes are classic theme for drawing and painting. Make small sketches of your summer cottage, sometimes larger, sometimes a little wider. Go on hikes, go to parks with a sketch pad. Make a few quick sketches to outline the main elements of the composition, then choose a design you like and repeat it in detail. Don't start with small leaves because it will take you an hour to cover the entire tree branch. It is much easier to work out the details than common features. Drawing landscapes requires the ability to work with textures, shapes and changing light, so learn to draw quickly. First fix the shapes and shadows, because after half an hour the lighting will be different, and because of this everything will look different.
• You can also draw people. Start with friends and family who you can convince to sit still for at least half an hour while you draw them. Paint portraits of people you care about. Make sketches of all the people that interest you. Here, too, try to sketch out the most important features in a few quick lines before the person moves on with his business. Sketching in a public place is great way meet someone because people come up all the time and ask what you do. In this case, you always have a topic of conversation - art. This topic is loved by many and is not that confusing.

1. Look for painting and drawing classes. Now such lessons are available in many places. Remember that you will have to spend money on this, but it will be worth it.

   • Search the Internet for tutorials, art videos, and DVDs on painting and drawing. Many professional artists They produce video lessons in different formats. On some sites like http://www.wetcanvas.com you can also find free lessons, where volunteer teachers give tasks, evaluate the result and help in every possible way. Sites like http://how-to-draw-and-paint.com have many free instructions and e-books, available for download. Before you buy lessons, read reviews and watch a trial video to see if the presentation style suits you and if you like the teacher.

2. Subscribe to special magazines. There are magazines that publish articles on how to draw and paint. The more you read, the easier it will be for you to master different techniques. The accumulation effect is important here. Drawing may seem easy because it comes easy to people who draw, but in reality it is a long process that requires effort, patience and constant learning. All this is included in the concept of talent, because talent is such strong love to his business, that a person is ready to come to terms with mistakes in order to learn to do everything well. People believe that a person has talent when they can recognize real objects in drawings.

   Learn composition and design. Read books about design and composition, take design classes. Good composition distinguishes a real artist from an artist who spends his entire life making copies of other images. Learn to frame an image correctly, select objects, direct the viewer's gaze to the most important details paintings: to the eyes of the person depicted, to a sunspot in the landscape, to an animal bending over the water, to people on the beach. Some objects are eye-catching on their own (like cute kittens), but you can make your painting hard to look away from if you learn the rules of composition.

Work in the field related to art

• If you're getting frustrated because you can't draw everything exactly the way it looks, take a deep breath, count to 10, and take a short break. Then try to draw something simple that you already know how to draw. If you are a beginner artist, try to draw very quickly and tightly set time. As an object, choose a stationary object: an eraser or a drink can without a sticker. Complete a sketch in 2 minutes and move on to the next one. Realistic drawings begin to work out only thanks to permanent job. In the same way comes a sense of perspective, skills in light and shadow drawing, a sense of proportions, etc.
• To achieve perfection, you need to practice. Better yet, abandon the idea of ​​perfection, replacing it with the idea of ​​beauty. Errors can lead to unexpected results. Even the most experienced artists sometimes they make mistakes and always rejoice at them, because they learn from mistakes. Ridiculous accidents can create a masterpiece, and this happens often. Perfectionism stifles art, so give up this approach. Try to enjoy the process and perceive everything like an artist. You'll find that when you learn to draw things realistically, you'll be able to see the world in new ways, even when you're not drawing. Learn to draw portraits, and you will begin to see beauty in every face, and in the faces of people who are considered ideally beautiful, you will notice small flaws - that is, what makes a face memorable.
• Do not hurry. It takes years to become a professional.
• Working with landscapes is easier. If you make a mistake (like drawing a mountain too high or placing a tree too far from the foreground), you don't have to worry. If big picture it looks good, which means you intuitively corrected the look. A painting is not a photograph. It doesn't have to convey everything very accurately. the smallest details, unless you want to capture famous place or a statue, but even in this case you can change the appearance of bushes or clouds. You might be able to convey something more accurately if you moved closer or sat down. In any case, don't worry if something doesn't turn out the way it actually looked.
• Buy cheap children's toys: plain blocks, balls and cylinders without patterns. It is very useful to practice drawing such figures, as it allows you to learn to see more complex designs as a combination geometric shapes. Place them on the table so that the light falls from above or from the side and draw them. This will help you practice your chiaroscuro drawing skills and understand what lighting does to these shapes. This exercise is in almost all drawing textbooks, but drawing from life is much more useful. Draw in color with pencils or watercolors to understand what reflected color looks like and how color interacts with light. When you later paint complex still lifes with silver, lace or glass, you can add brighter shades to the painting. If there is no room for colored figures in the composition, you can always put some bright figure nearby so that the color is reflected on the silver side of the decanter.
• Draw the piece of paper into squares, and then do the same with a printout of the picture you want to draw. Draw in each square clean slate what you see in the printout squares, millimeter by millimeter. This will allow you to get a very accurate image on the first try. Make the mesh very fine so that it can be erased if necessary. Renaissance artists used this technique by placing gridded glass between themselves and the model. This method allows you to achieve clear and regular lines.
• You can also draw point by point if you want to be precise. Measure the distances between important points on the object you want to depict, for example, between the corners of the eyes, from the chin to the hairline on the forehead, etc. Lay everything out on paper based on these measurements. You can change the scale up or down using a ruler. Capture the most important parts of the face so that the eyes are in the right place compared to the nose, chin, cheeks, hair and shoulders. Use as many points as you see fit. The more dots, the more accurate the image. Then connect the dots as smoothly and neatly as possible. Over time, this will become faster and easier, and then you will only need a few dots to mark the top and bottom of the face, cheeks, corners of the eyes, nose and corners of the mouth. This method can be used to depict any objects - here we give a portrait only as an example.
• Try transferring an image from a photograph to paper using a grid. Try to convey the shadows in each cell as accurately as possible and don’t worry if the outline is not entirely correct. Once you learn this, it will be easier for you to draw from life.

Warnings

• Do not use photographs that do not belong to you for copying without permission from the copyright holder. Choose photos that are not copyrighted or ask the photographer for permission. Follow the law and always cite the source if asked. If a photographer forbids you to sell an image copied from his photograph, do not argue. It’s better to practice on your own photographs and learn to draw from them. So you will take photographs in order to draw later, and not so that the photograph itself acquires significant artistic value. Of course, you can combine different photographs and change them beyond recognition on paper or canvas, but this requires certain skills and experience. Don't use photos from magazines unless you already know how to do so.

If you have a desire to quickly learn how to draw, so that your friends and acquaintances admire your work, then my free course with drawing lessons using the method of one of the greatest draftsmen, Albrecht Durer, who worked at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries. Even if you don't know how to draw at all.

And if you are already a good drawer, thanks to the course you will improve your technique and understand that you can draw anything from life - any still life, landscape, and even a portrait. If you prefer to work with paints, you will still find this course very useful. You will discover a lot of new things for yourself, because I will talk about basic principles drawings that are needed by both graphic designers and painters. The most important thing for an artist, as I have written many times, is to learn to see like an artist, and then capture what you see on canvas or paper.

First of all, during the course we will focus on developing artistic vision, and we will also learn to draw not with objects and shapes, but with lines and spots. Teaching a person to draw without developing his artistic vision is a pointless exercise. Because when a common person looks at the landscape, he sees the street, houses, trees, people. And when the Artist looks at this landscape, he sees lines and spots. If the Artist draws with a pencil at this moment, he sees dark and light spots; if he paints with paints, he sees colored dark and colored light spots.

The artist sees lines and spots, transfers them to the canvas, and the viewer distinguishes on the canvas - streets, houses, trees, people. Here it is magical transformation, and you can’t go anywhere without him. If you want to learn how to draw anything from life, regardless of shape and material, try to see not objects and objects, but lines and spots.

What does it mean to see lines and spots?

In proper teaching, drawing is taught general principles(formulas), thanks to which a novice Artist can draw all similar objects from life and imagination.

For example, if you watched the lessons on the site, you may have seen the following lesson: “SHADOWS ARE DIFFERENT, HOW TO CONVEY VOLUME.” In that lesson, I talked about how to make objects look three-dimensional by placing light and dark spots correctly: a highlight, light around the highlight, halftones (penumbra) around the light and shadow (the darkest places). This is a general formula for adding volume to any shape, from a ball to a person's face.

And it doesn’t even matter whether you know how to hatch or not! The main thing is to correctly find the place of dark and light spots.

I'll try to show with an example that it's as if I don't know how to hatch. It looks something like this:

But if the object is at least a little transparent, then in our formula light and shadow change places.

That is, there will always be a dark place around the highlight, and where opaque objects usually have the darkest shadow, transparent objects will have light.

Something like this:

Let's check this formula on grapes:

On an average bottle, everything is the same: there are dark spots around the highlights, halftones around the dark spots, and light spots in the shadow itself, only the shape of the spots changes:

And even the iris of the eye is drawn according to the principle (formula) of transparent objects:

So, just by swapping the shadow and light in places when drawing any object, you can create the illusion of transparency! I hope you noticed that the principle of drawing and the stages of drawing different objects were the same.

If you are starting from scratch - complete zero, like me, and wanted to learn how to draw with a pencil - read the chronicle of a lazy, mediocre artist. Last time I drew while still at school. I drew like everyone else, averagely.

How can you draw with a pencil after 50 hours of practice?, and how to learn it. I started drawing from scratch.

I did not draw regularly, on average 15 minutes a day, for six months. And you can learn in a couple of months, drawing 60 minutes a day!

Drawing - copying skill

I started drawing the following drawings in the belief that I was mediocre at drawing.

But since I know that almost everything I know about myself is not true.

The time indicated is based on reading the textbook. Drawing itself takes half as much time.

Cube

Basic building brick of any design.

Cube Modifications

Drawing texture with a pencil

Flags and rose

Drawing cubes - advanced level

Drawing spheres - advanced level

From this stage you obliged to buy shading - paper pencil.

In previous tutorials I blended with my finger, then blended with #3.

All the magic of penumbra: volume, small shadows in the corners, when drawing an eye and a portrait - thanks to shading.

It's like your drawing ability is multiplied by three! You'll be amazed when you compare your results.

Flags, scrolls

Cylinders: volcano, cup

Drawing a living tree

Room in perspective

Street in perspective

Drawing in central perspective: castle, city

Inscription in perspective

Learning to draw a portrait

Learn to draw a hand

Exam: first portrait!

Drawing people is much more difficult than roses or anime. The face cannot be distorted - every mistake is immediately noticeable.

You need to learn to draw people when you feel confident that you can draw a recognizable outline and sketch of a face.

Portraits cannot be drawn quickly; diligence and care are required.

This is the portrait of my wife I ended up with:

Learn to draw pictures from scratch

I painted eight paintings in a total of 24 hours, half the time. I also practiced with a pencil for one day.

You can learn to draw to the same results, even if your hands are growing out of your ass, in 50–150 hours.

In terms of TV series, this is 2-3 seasons of Dr. House. Vasya Lozhkin took 6 hours to paint his first acrylic painting, “I Like You.” First level, and then it’s only more fun and easier.

How to learn to draw

Let's draw with a simple pencil .

A fundamental drawing tool. Almost all illustrations, sketches and paintings are drawn first in pencil.

Let's draw Then it is rubbed down to barely visible lines, or we paint on top with paints. Errors are easily corrected. #1 for beginners..

gel pens





A simple tool for drawing in color. The drawing technique is similar to the technique of drawing with a pencil - after all, it is a pen, not a brush.

Errors can only be corrected in Photoshop. We draw with felt-tip pens. Analogues: markers and professional “copies”. More variety of colors than





gel pens

. The set will cost less. After 1–2 years, the markers dry out and you need to buy a new set.

The felt-tip pens saturate the paper a little and it begins to become limp, which is why I don’t like drawing with them.

• You can draw 2-3 times and the line becomes more saturated, you can draw penumbra.

  We paint with watercolors.

  
  

• Let's draw Cheap materials, and familiar from school. They are diluted with water, so a new layer of paint blurs the previous one. .

  It is difficult to master how she will behave. From scratch, on your own, it’s not easy to learn how to draw details.

  The advantage is accessibility.

  

• Let's draw We draw with gouache..

  Matte color, thicker than watercolor, is also diluted with water.

  
  

  Great for beginners: it's easier to correct inaccuracies than watercolor. Cheap material. acrylic paints The most affordable professional material. Acrylic dries quickly, 5-15 minutes. It is easy for them to apply a second coat and correct flaws.

  
  

• If it is of high quality, it is resistant to water.

  Acrylic paint on canvas. You can also draw anything: a wall, a stool, a cup, a helmet, an ashtray, a T-shirt, photo frames.

  I recommend then opening the work with varnish from a can.

  

pastel – dry and oil The technique of drawing with pastels is unusual - you need to draw with crayons, rubbing them on paper.

Drawing technique

oil pastels

This is known to all drawing teachers, but unknown to most students.

It seems that the trick is in how to do it. What are we looking for? How to draw... What?

You see, the whole problem is that you cannot skip any of the stages. You can’t immediately learn how to do it if you don’t see and understand.

Out of curiosity, I entered “how to learn to see” into the search bar... I wonder what people want to learn to see?

This is what the search engine returned:

Hmmm... So we will go very far from drawing...

You see, the difference between an artist and a non-artist is not that he knows how to draw certain things: a rose, or something else. He sees differently.

But as? It's very difficult to explain. In general, it is difficult to explain simple things; for this you need, at a minimum, to have a good command of words. What I can’t brag about... That’s why I was so happy when I found ready-made guide on this topic from word creation pros.

Let me make a reservation right away: this book is not only for writers. It's about creativity in general.

"First, Golden Rule(mastery), Saint-Exupery proclaimed: “You need to learn not to write, but to see!”.

This is already from the book. A thousand times YES!

I decided to pull out one of the pieces of advice for you (although, generally speaking, it’s a very bad thing to take phrases out of context).

“Dive deeper into yourself, look for the Creator within yourself and by any means possible ways evade the terror of the internal editor and controller.

At first, the internal editor is our fear of being sincere. Something is bubbling and wants to escape from the very heart, but the controller does not allow it. “So what's good about that? - he asks reproachfully. - Why shout about it? the whole world? What will they think of you after this?”

Internal controller smooths out sharp corners, polishes the relief of the event and sensations, extinguishes the dazzling brightness of colors and strives to give everything a decent appearance.

Feel free to say what you want to say. Don't worry about whether it's right or wrong, whether it's polite, whether it's appropriate. Let it spill out. Write about someone close to you, about what you have experienced, about what is boiling over. Catch the intonation with which you talk to yourself and scald!

I would even say this: don’t think.

The buzz in our business is the main thing. As the sages say, in general you need to stay close to people who are in love relationships with Life."

This is the beginning. Everything you need to get started. Runway. Accept and use!

Further - on the technique of work and the development of artistic vision. Really wise advice, passed through yourself, accompanied by examples and stories. It’s a pity I can’t publish everything - the book is voluminous) It’s best to find and read it. Traditionally, I provide a link to the store where I buy books myself:

If you want to learn to draw, learn to see. It is not difficult. Teachers of art disciplines have a saying: “Nature will teach.” You just need to treat nature carefully and be ready to learn from it.

P.S. My special thanks to the author for the portrait recommendations! Because he considers the requirement that a portrait have a complete resemblance to the person being portrayed as too primitive, if not absurd, and teaches how to paint (and it doesn’t matter here, in words or with a brush) a portrait on a more subtle level. After all, “Whatever topic we take on, whatever genre we work in, we will draw a portrait of a person” (end of quote).

“The breakthrough is real right now, but for some reason we are delaying and postponing. Shakespeare said: “We know who we are. But we don't know what we can be."