You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (2 page)

The Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing create the illusion of depth. They are as follows:

It is impossible to draw a three-dimensional image without applying one or more of these fundamental laws. These nine tools are foundational elements, never changing, always applicable, and totally transferable.

In addition to the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing, there are three principles to keep in mind: attitude, bonus details, and constant practice. I like to call them the “ABCs of Successful Drawing.”

1. Attitude: Nourishing your “I can do this” positive attitude is a crucial part of learning any new skill.

2.
B
onus details: Add your own unique ideas and observations to your drawing to make it truly your own expression.

3.
C
onstant practice: Repeated daily application of any new learned skill is absolutely necessary for successful mastery of the skill.

Without exercising these three principles, you will not be able to grow as an artist. Each one is essential to your creative development.

In this book, we’ll also focus on how the Nine Laws are applied to the four basic “molecules,” or building blocks, of three-dimensional drawing: the sphere, the cube, the cylinder, and the cone.

With each lesson, I will be introducing new information, terms, and techniques, but I also will be repeating definitions and applications you’ve previously learned. In fact, I’ll be repeating myself so often that you will undoubtedly start to think, “This guy sure repeats himself a lot!” But I have found that repetition, review, and practice produce success—and they also keep you from having to jump out of your lesson to hunt for the original explanation.

The biggest criticism I have received in thirty years of teaching is, “You are teaching students to copy exactly what you are drawing! Where’s the originality? Where’s the creativity in that?” I’ve heard this comment countless times and always from a critic who has never drawn a lesson from my books, classes, website, or public television series. My response to this is always the same: “Have you ever tried to draw a lesson with me?” “No.” “Here, sit down with this pencil and this ‘rose’ lesson, right here at this table, for twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, after you complete this lesson, I’ll answer that question for you.” Most critics walk away, but a few adventurous souls actually do sit down and draw this “rose” lesson. For these idea explorers, the possibility lightbulb could almost be seen shining over their heads as they leaned over the table, drawing the rose.

The point I’m trying to make here is that to learn how to draw, a person first has to draw. A student has to be inspired to actually pick up a pencil and make lines on a blank sheet of paper. Many people I meet are truly terrified of this idea. That blank sheet of paper is an unsolvable problem that only talented artists can master, they think. But the truth is that learning how to draw with the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing will give you a solid foundation of confidence, which will enable you to enjoy drawing as a personal form of creative expression.

We all, every single one of us, loved to draw when we were toddlers. We drew on everything! We drew on paper, on tables, on windows, in pudding, in peanut butter . . . everything. All of us were born with this amazing gift of confidence and creativity. Every picture that we drew was a masterpiece in our minds. The castle with the flying dragon was a perfect illustration of medieval action. Our parents strengthened this confidence with encouraging comments like, “So, little Marky, tell me about this wonderful drawing!” Somewhere along the way, sometime between the third and sixth grade, a few people began to say to us, “That doesn’t look like a castle with a dragon flying over it! It looks like a pile of poop (or some other unflattering comment).” Slowly over time, enough negative comments eroded our amazing artistic confidence to the point that we began to believe that we just didn’t have the “talent” to draw or paint or create. We moved on to other interests, believing for decades that we couldn’t draw.

So here we are together now with this book. I will prove that you
can
learn how to draw by:

Now, back to the critic’s question, “Where is the creativity in copying exactly what I draw?” I sometimes answer, “Did you copy and trace letters of the alphabet in first grade?” Of course, we all did. That is how we learned how to confidently write our letters. We then learned how to write words and put them together to make sentences: “See Mark run!” Then we put the sentences together to make paragraphs, and finally we put the paragraphs together to create stories. It’s simply the logical progression of learning a communication skill. I take this same progression in teaching the visual communication skill of drawing. You never hear anyone say that they can’t write a letter, a recipe, or a “Meet me at Starbucks” note because they just do not have the “talent” to write. This would be silly. We all know we do not need talent to learn how to write as a communication skill.

I apply this same logic to learning how to draw. This book is not about learning how to draw a museum-quality masterpiece or drawing animated sequences worthy of a
Shrek
sequel. But this book will give you a foundation for drawing that image in your head or that photograph you have always wanted to sketch, for drawing those driving directions for your friend, for drawing that icon or graph on that office report, or for drawing that image on the dry erase board in a meeting without the obligatory, self-deprecating “Sorry this looks so bad. I never could draw.”

Let’s follow your historical path a bit longer. You were in a high school or college art class, and the teacher put a pile of objects on the “still life” table and said, “Draw that. You have thirty minutes.” That’s it! No instruction, no road map, except perhaps a few vague comments about “seeing” the negative spaces surrounding the pile of objects. So you gave it a valiant effort, you drew your heart out, and despite the art teacher’s wonderful supportive encouraging comments, “Great effort! Good job! We’ll do this one hundred more times and you’ll nail it!” you saw the result of your effort glaring at you from the paper: It looked like a pile of scribbles.

I remember annoying my college art teacher to no end during still life drawing exercises. I’d constantly chatter to neighbors on both sides of my easel. “You know,” I’d whisper, “if you try drawing that apple lower on the paper, and the banana higher on the paper, you would make the apple look closer, just like it does on the still life table.”

The prevailing methods of teaching Drawing 101 force the student to figure out how to draw through a long process of trial and error. This method dates back to 1938 and an extraordinary book by Kimon Nicolaides,
The Natural Way to Draw
(a book you should add to your library!). In it he states “ . . . the sooner you make your first 5,000 mistakes, the sooner you will learn how to correct them.” This approach just doesn’t make sense to me. With all due respect to this book as a profound work, a classic in teaching art students how to draw . . . but, Why? I ask. Why discourage students with such a daunting task of failing 5,000 times when I can show them in just twenty minutes how to succeed? Why not build up their skill, confidence, and interest all at the same time?

The thirty-day method in this book will increase your success, inspire your practice, build your confidence, and nourish your interest in drawing for life.

I urge you to take a small creative risk with me. Give me thirty days, and I’ll give you the keys to unlock all the drawing talent already within you.

1. This book.

2. A spiral-bound sketchbook or blank journal with at least fifty blank pages.

3. A pencil (for now just grab any pencil within reach).

4. A “drawing bag” to hold your sketchbook and pencils (anything will do: a recyclable grocery cloth bag, a book backpack, a book bag with handles. You want to make it very easy to quickly grab your drawing bag whenever you have a spare couple of minutes to scratch out a few drawings).

5. A day planner or calendar (probably the most important item in this checklist). You will need to strategically and methodically carve out a small twenty-minute chunk of time each day to draw with me. If you plan now, today, you will be able to follow through with our thirty-day plan.

Get out your planner and a pencil—let’s schedule some drawing time for just this first week. I know your days are intensely busy, so we’ll get creative. Imagine that the pencil in your hand is a steel chisel and you’re going to carve out one twenty-minute chunk each day for seven days. If this is too difficult, try chiseling out two chunks, ten minutes each. Ideally, these time chunks will be at your desk, your kitchen table, or some fairly quiet table space. My goal is to get you to commit to one week with me. I know that once you accomplish the first seven days (seven lessons), you’ll be totally hooked. Immediate success is a powerful motivator. If you can draw daily for a week, you’ll successfully finish this book in a month. However, it is perfectly acceptable to take a more leisurely approach and focus on only a few lessons a week, spending much more time on the lesson steps and the fun bonus challenges I introduce at the end of each lesson. I’ve had a few students do amazing work by completing just one lesson a week. It’s totally up to you. The key is this: Just don’t give up.