Observational Drawing and Creative Colouring Art Mondays with Jess

Being stuck in the house has encouraged me to start drawing again. Its a skill that has to be practiced and it takes time to get good at it. Luckily I have a lot of time now! I’m going to be trying different drawing exercises which I will share with you over the coming weeks.

I decided to start with observational drawing. It’s a good exercise because it really helps you to focus, the key is to spend as much time looking at what you’re drawing as you spend looking at your paper (easier said than done) and to focus on recording what you see

My other tip is to use big paper if you have any, drawing bigger is a lot easier and mistakes look less obvious than in a small drawing.

The first thing I’ve done is to pick some objects I’d like to draw and set them up somewhere that they won’t get moved. Sometimes its easier to have several objects because you can compare their sizes and where they are in relation to each other.

Next, I mapped out the whole image using faint pencil lines. Doing this helps to get the perspective right and means that you won’t find you can’t fit everything on the page. Your will also need a rubber (a lot if you’re me). I picked out where the basic shapes were (such as the triangle shape of the teapot spout) and drew them first. I actually draw straight lines from one part of a drawing to another to work out where each object is and how big or small it is in comparison to other objects. You can use a pencil to do this, hold it out at arms length and trace the angle between things, such as where the top of the teapot is in relation to the top of the plant . Record these as construction lines on your paper.

(if you look carefully you can see my line between the teapot and the plant at the top of the drawing below the drawing below).

Keep tweaking the image until you’re happy

Next I went over the lines with a darker pencil once I was happy with the layout, rubbing out the first set of lines as I go.

Next I like to go over my lines with a black pen but you don’t have to. The image is now ready for colouring, If you have a scanner you can make multiple copies. Alternatively you can print out copies of the image below which has been sent out with this tutorial. It is useful to have more than one so you can try different things out.

Then came the fun bit - colouring in the image. For the first one I tried to copy the colours in the scene more accurately. I used a box of normal crayola pencil crayons.

Whereas with my second one I made it up as I went along. Give it a try!