Free-hand Drawing
A picture made by the hand and eye and without the aid of a rule and compass is called free-hand drawing.
To be able to do free-hand drawing is one of the nicest accomplishments you can have for then you can sketch the things you see and want to remember; and, further, sketches made with a pencil or pen and ink are, to my way of thinking, just as interesting as photographs provided they are well done.
Talent versus Practice.
—Some fellows have a natural bent for sketching and are what you might call born artists, while others seem to be entirely minus this talent and the only way they can ever learn to sketch is by following certain rules and then practicing.
Now the chances are you have a little talent but whether you have or not if you will follow the simple instructions I have written down in this chapter you will be surprised to find what really clever pictures you can draw.
Pictures for You to Draw.
—There are two kinds of free-hand sketches for you to do and these are (1) of life models and (2) of still life, that is, fruit, flowers, furniture and inanimate objects of all kinds.
I shall tell you first how to make simple drawings of living figures including man and beast and by beginning where your savage ancestor left off you will be able to at least represent anything your fancy dictates.
Simple Line Sketches.
—As you will see by looking at A and B in [Fig. 42], the sketches of the man and horse consist of merely straight lines but you will also observe that A looks like a boxer because the action is there.
Fig. 42. a simple line drawing of a man and a horse
This is because when I sketched it I was careful to note the exact position of the boxer’s head, arms, legs and body as they appeared at that given moment. The keynote in sketching a figure in action is always to draw it, not as you wish or believe it to look but as it actually is.
The line sketches [A and B] only look as like a man landing a right, and a horse coming down the home stretch as they do because (a) all the lines are properly proportioned, that is, of the right length when compared with each other, and (b) they are set in the correct positions. The way to become a good judge of proportion is always to notice the relative sizes of the things you draw.
Sketching Simple Outline Figures.
—When you can sketch straight line figures to show men and animals in action you can then draw outlines around them and so make them much more realistic as shown at A and B in [Fig. 43].
Fig. 43. simple outline drawing of a boxer and a race horse
To do this draw a straight line sketch first and then draw the outline around it, when you can rub out the straight lines if you want to. In these outline sketches you will see that only the lines that are actually needed to give the picture the contour, that is, the shape of the figure, or body, are used.
The Proportions of the Human Figure.
—If you will remember when you are drawing a picture of the human form that the whole figure from neck to toe should be 7 times as long as the head; that the body proper, or torso as it is called, is 4 times as long as the head; that the arms are as long as the body, and that the legs should be 4 times the length of the head measured to the inside of the crotch, as you will see if you will look at [A in Fig. 44], you will have it in proportion.
Fig. 44a. the proportions of the human body
How to Draw Faces.
—You can easily draw fairly natural looking faces if you will rule off a number of squares on a sheet of paper as shown at [B] and [C in Fig. 44].
The full view of the head of a human being is shaped like an egg standing on its small end, and the profile (pronounced pro´-feel) view, that is the side view of the head, is more nearly square; if in the latter case the square is divided into two triangles, the face will be found to nearly fill one of them and the hair the other.
Fig. 44b. a full view of the face
Both of these figures show the right sizes to make the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, that the eyes are on a line with the helix, or upper border of the ears and that the top of the nose is on a line with the lobe, or lower edge of the ear. It is mighty good practice to sketch the faces of your friends in this fashion.
Sketching Still Life Objects.
—It is always more or less hard to sketch inanimate objects with anything like a true portrayal of them from memory but it is quite easy to do so if you have the object itself set up before you to pattern after and then draw it as you see it.
Fig. 44c. a profile view of the face
If you can do a creditable drawing in this manner with your eye and hand alone it is art, but if you use a rule or a pair of dividers to measure off the proportions and then mark them on your paper, it degenerates into a purely mechanical process; but you can take your choice and do it whichever way you want to.
Drawing in Perspective.
—The first thing to know about drawing in perspective is what perspective means. To do a drawing of an object or a view on a sheet of paper as it appears to the eye you must draw it in perspective.
As an illustration, when you look down a railroad track you will see that the rails look very far apart at your feet, but in the distance they seem to come to a point and then vanish; this is quite natural for nearby objects always look larger than when they are at a distance.
So too, when you look at the top of a box the edge a will seem longer than the edge b, which is farther away from the eye, and the lines c and d which form the other edges would meet if they were projected as shown by the dotted lines at [A in Fig. 45], and the same thing is true for the front and the side of the box.
Fig. 45a. the vanishing points of a perspective drawing
The Vanishing Point.
—So when you draw a box or any other object in perspective the lines will meet if you draw them out far enough and then vanish, and hence this is called the vanishing point.
To find the vanishing point of the surface of an object, such as the top of a box, hold a pencil out in front of yourself at arm’s length and shut one eye, as shown at [B]; then tilt the pencil until it follows the side line that you are going to draw; now open your eye and you will see that the line of the box that seemed at first to be straight is really slanting.
Draw a line on your paper at this slant, or angle as it is called, and do the same with the other line and draw it, when the two lines will meet and this is the vanishing point. You can draw in now the front and back lines of the top.
Fig. 45b. how to find the vanishing point
Houses and all other objects should be drawn with vanishing points if they are to conform to the first principles of art, but for certain kinds of mechanical drawing art is sacrificed for the sake of showing the sizes of the object and an abnormal picture results which is called an isometric perspective.
But houses and all other large objects should be drawn with vanishing points or they will not look real. A barn drawn in this way is shown at [C], and you will see that the roof looks perfectly natural since the lines forming it run to vanishing points.
Fig. 45c. the vanishing points put to use
How to Shade a Drawing.
—When you do a drawing from an object you will see that the light falling on certain parts of it seems white, or high lights, as they are called, and on other parts where it does not fall it is dark.
To shade your drawing so that it will show the lights and shadows exactly as the object does, you should study the latter, and put the shading, as it is called, on the former just as nearly like it as you can. But in shading a drawing there must be no sharp lines to show where the light leaves off and the shadow begins, but you must make them merge gradually one into the other, as shown at [A in Fig. 45].