The Shapes of Things
Drawing Art Lessons 1

The following lesson is an excerpt from "The Shapes of Things" Drawing Art Lessons course that will be available soon.

Introduction

In this series of drawing art lessons we are going to look at the basic shapes that make up our world and thus make up most of the objects and things we will draw or paint.

I am speaking here about spheres, cubes or box shapes, cones and cylinders and their related two-dimensional shapes: circles, ovals, rectangles and triangles.

When you learn to see things as simple shapes, drawing and painting them becomes easier, and your paintings will improve. Consequently, these The Shapes of Things Drawing Art Lessons are also part seeing lessons and part painting lessons.

Learning to see and think in terms of simple shapes is very useful.

There will be times when you are working from life, a photograph or your imagination that you will find it hard to figure out the structure of what you see or what you want to see and how to depict it.

In those instances, go back to your knowledge of basic shapes to simplify the problem.

For instance, maybe you want to include Aunt Marge’s sugar bowl in a still life and the old bird would rather have a stroke than let you touch it.

Most people wouldn’t consciously recognize that Aunt Marge’s sugar bowl is a slightly flattened sphere. Because you remember the shape of the bowl and you know how light and shadow appear on a sphere, you might choose to work from memory.

Or, at least you might after finishing The Shapes of Things Drawing Art Lessons.

When you begin to recognize these basic shapes and see them as parts of objects or things, you are beginning to see like an artist.

One last point before we dive into these drawing art lessons. You will notice that many of my illustrations are done in black and white. That is because I want these pages to appear on you screen faster and I don’t want to take you into the intricacies of color just yet.

Box Shapes

Most of us know what a cube is. It is a three dimensional object whose length, width and height are all the same distance. Other than dice, we don’t meet many perfect cubes in our daily lives. We do, however, run into box shapes quite a lot.

What I am calling a box shape is just a cube that has its length and width and height (or maybe only two of its dimensions) changed so each is a different distance. Simple examples include refrigerators, microwaves or the bricks that make up Aunt Marge’s fireplace.

All these examples are solid objects. As in all the drawing art lessons, let me introduce the idea that a simple shape could also include empty space.

Think of a simple bench. It has a horizontal seat supported at each end by two uprights. As an artist you could think of the empty space between the seat and the ground as part of its overall shape.

Why? Because it is helpful to think of it in terms of its largest, simplest shape first – a box.

Using large simple shapes also keeps us from getting into details until we are sure our subject is where we want it, the size we want and the shape we want it on our paper or canvas.

This is true whether we are doing a realistic depiction of the object or not.

"Why do it that way? I just want to draw it and get it done."

I’m suggesting you start with large simple shapes and get your placement and proportions the way you want them for two reasons.

First, creating box shapes (or any of the shapes in these drawing art lessons) helps train your eyes to see proportions and helps train your mind to simplify what you see.

By proportion, I mean the distance relationships between the parts of the thing we are drawing.

Does the depth of the seat compared to its length look right? Does its height above the ground look right compared with its depth? And so on. Even if you are not doing a realistic interpretation of the object, you still want to ask yourself: Have I gotten the overall size and shape the way I want it?

Second, it is a lot easier to make changes at this "blocking in" stage than after you start putting in details.

Believe me, I know the frustration of getting midway through a drawing or painting and suddenly realizing that "oops" my proportions are off.

Something is too long or too short or too something. Then I’m faced with either erasing what I’ve done to correct my mistake or start over.

That is when a part of my mind whispers, "Oh, that’s probably close enough". I’ve learned that if I listen to that lazy twerp, I almost always find after finishing the drawing or painting, it really wasn’t "close enough".

Something more complicated

In this drawing art lesson, an example of why I suggest working this way is when we want to draw a more complicated subject, perhaps something like an old street car.

With all the different parts on it, the last thing we want to discover when we’re almost done is that we made a mistake in the beginning and now it doesn’t look right.

So, the first thing I would do in this drawing art lesson is draw a box that represents the main part of the street car and get its shape the way I want it and then draw whatever details I want to show.

And remember, just because I see details on the photograph I’m using doesn’t mean I have to show them when I draw the streetcar. And even if I choose to put details in my drawing doesn’t mean I have to show them when I paint the streetcar.

Whatever I choose to put in the drawing is only a guide.

Practice Exercise:

Look around you today. It should be easy to count 50 or more box shapes in your immediate environment. How many can you see when you really begin to look? Also look for things that could be grouped together and drawn as a box shape, like that stack of CD’s for instance.