The humble beginning

I want to be able to draw animation, but I can't draw. I'm sure that question gets asked more than often. And in my case this particular same question keeps popping up in my head. I like to watch animation, although I'm older than 40. I like it so much, I want to do it myself. Not as a career, but just to entertain myself.

But where to begin?

It is obvious that if you can't draw, there is no point in trying to animate, at least, not the cartoon animation I want to draw. After some searching on the Net, I found this little site:

• Drawing 101

Lesson one tries to explain that drawing is actually seeing thing in basic shapes and construct those shapes into the form you want to draw. That seems obvious. If something is complicated, just make it simpler, less complicated. So, no surprises there.

Lesson two tells you before you can construct the complex form out of basic shapes, you'll need to be able to draw these simple shapes:

• circle (which is a ball in three dimensions)
• square (which is a cube in three dimensions)
• triangle (which can be a pyramid or a cone in three dimensions)
• cylinder (wich is a cross between a circle and a rectangle)

Now the author of the site tells something important he learned in artschool. When you want to be able to draw complex shapes, you should first be able to draw simple shapes. If you're not able to draw simple shapes, there is no point in drawing the complex ones.

Here's the exercise he gives his online pupils:

Beginners should practice drawing these simple shapes daily. Start out with the circles- draw big ones, small ones, circles within circles, fill up the entire page and most importantly- stay loose and IN CONTROL! Once you feel comfortable with circles, move onto the next shape- like a square or box. Take your time in learning these shapes- if you can't draw simple shapes, then there's no point in moving on! Once you feel condfident that you can draw any shape at ease, try constructing ordinary household items, like a TV, or a chair, a table, computer, radio, etc. Remembe- sometimes you have to go back to the basics just to move ahead!

If we see past the spelling errors (perhaps the author is dyslectic), this is actually very good advice, which I haven't seen in any of the drawing books (perhaps it was in there, and I simply read over it). So that's just what I will be doing... drawing circles until I drop, and then some more...

Bye, until next time.

Tags: drawing_101