You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (19 page)

3. Continuing to work on the first circle, use more curving dashes to fill in the left side of the circle, creating the illusion of shading with texture. You can use texture to shade an object.

4. Let’s take this one step further. On the second circle, draw sharp lines around the outside, creating the “feel” of sharp spikes.

5. Place your light source in the top right corner of your page, and add a few more rows of spikes to the left side of the shape.

6. Draw scribbles around the third circle. Keep scribbling more circling lines around and around the shape to create a messy-looking ball of dryer lint. Continue to explore this idea of texture as a tool for shading.

7. Now, time for the start of this lesson—the koala! Begin with a light circle.

8. Lightly sketch in the ears.

9. Lightly slope down the shoulders.

10. When you draw in the “tapered” nose, be sure to leave a small white area. This creates the illusion of a light reflection off the shiny nose. You will do this same thing when drawing other animals: cats, dogs, bears.

11. Draw the koala’s eyes, transferring the idea of reflection by leaving a small white spot in each pupil.

12. Let’s take a closer look at the ear. This is what is known in the art world as doing a “study” of a small portion of a picture: for example, the hand of Michelangelo’s Adam as he reaches out to God in the panel “Creation” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the overlapping petal of Georgia O’Keefe’s
Lily
. In this study of our koala’s ear, draw the top edge of the ear, the “helix.”

 

13. Draw the overlapped line of the “concha.”

 

14. Draw the bump at the bottom of the ear. This is the “tragus.”

This is a perfect example of how effective visual communication can be. I could write for pages explaining what a concha is, where it’s located, and what it looks like. Or I can draw a few lines on a page and point to it. Now take your finger and lightly trace the helix, concha, and tragus in your own ear. What do you know? We humans have nearly the same ear structure as koalas, and in fact all land mammals’ ears have a helix, a concha, and a tragus. In future drawings you create, you’ll be able to transfer this detail to other animals you want to draw.

 

 

 

 

15. Repeat this ear structure on the right ear.

16. Look back at the furry ball you drew at the beginning of this lesson. Notice how you created the soft feel of fur as compared to the sharp feel of the spike ball. Draw the soft, furry texture around the outline of the koala.