All right.
So if you're going to be drawing from life there was a couple of things we need to talk about or no
before we do it now one if you're drawing digitally you might not always have the opportunity to really
draw from life especially if it's going to be an outdoor scene or something like that and you don't
have a tablet you can take with you.
So you're stuck in a desktop that you're obviously going to have to use a photograph.
Now if you can I always recommend drawing from actual life because well it just ends up looking better.
There's more of a life and a vibrancy to it and you just get more of the gesture especially if it's
something like an animal.
But if you don't have the opportunity to do that and your second desk use a photograph that's fine if
you can go go with real life and some things that you want to keep in mind.
One of the things that always overwhelmed me when I would start to draw something from life is kind
of knowing what to include and what not to include.
So one of the first things you can do that's really going to help you is to frame or object right.
Start out by deciding what is going to be in your image and what is not going to be in your image or
if you're drawing from life taking your fingers and going like this to create a frame for your object
in being able to hold it up and show put in Atlanta you feel like OK everything inside the square is
what's going to be my canvas or my paper and everything outside of it.
I'm going to ignore that way.
You're not overwhelmed with all this detail all this information because when we look at the world around
us through our eyes there's not really a border around everything right it just kind of fades into our
peripherals.
And every time something catches our attention our eyes dart to that and then that just expands our
peripherals and more in that direction which can make us feel overwhelmed.
What am I supposed to be drawing there so much right.
So creating a frame like this and cutting out everything that you don't need to draw will help take
that overwhelming feeling down by a lot.
And once I learned that it made me feel a lot more confident when it came to doing real life drawings
and sort of feeling so overwhelmed.
Second thing is to before you even put your pencil to the paper this is a mistake I see all the time
and if some mistake I made all the time right.
A lot of times as beginner artists were really eager to just start drawing right.
And we just want to get to it.
But if you really want to do good at a still life before you even put that pencil on the paper or that
stylus on the tablet make sure that you stop and study your object look at it for a second take two
three four even five minutes to just stop and analyze your object right.
If you're drawing a still life of you know like some apples or fruit or something like that take a minute
and really look at it.
Look at where the lines intersect.
Look at how the images have the composition of the of the set up is like take a moment and study it
right.
Look at everything you can try and absorb as much information before you ever even put your pen to the
paper because that way you can start making mental notes so that as you go you already have some information
stored up to help kind of reference what you're doing as you draw and sort of jumping in and start drawing.
OK.
So take the time to study object.
And that goes for anything whether you're doing a scene still life figure drawing whatever it is.
Just take a moment and study it.
It can play the invaluable and it's really under utilized So those three things are really going to
help you when it comes to doing this and help keep you from getting overwhelmed when you start out doing
a live sketch.
Make sure.
And we'll go over this in the next lectures.
But start out with you're just getting your basic dimensions and your proportions and your shapes down.
Right.
Don't go into detail work.
Don't just try and get the perfect line on the first go first try placing like marking points to help
you understand where things are in relation to everything else.
Because if you make your first line.
Right.
Let's say you're drawing Apple next to a picture next to a bowl of oranges and you start out with the
apple and you start drawing it.
You haven't made any other marks to kind of indicate how big the apple is in comparison to everything
else because by itself the first line isn't wrong or right.
Right.
It can't.
I mean the Apple I mean if you just do the apple by itself there's no way to know if it's too big or
too small or anything like that unless you have something else in your image to compare it to.
So instead of just starting with one apple and then drying the whole apple outline and getting all that
she been in and moving on to the next thing slowly work your way around the whole image adding these
marks to help you understand where things are in correlation to each other.
Otherwise you have nothing to compare it to.
So that's it for this lecture and we'll get a jump in in the next one.
Thea.