Line confidence

Setup

The ghosting sheet or a blank page, and your pen. Sit or stand so your whole arm can move freely.

Steps

1. Pick a pair of dots, or mark your own.
2. Hover the pen just above the paper and rehearse the stroke from the first dot to the second 3–5 times, moving from the shoulder.
3. Without pausing, lower the pen and draw the line in one stroke at the same speed as the rehearsal.
4. Don’t correct it. Move to the next pair. Mix straight lines and gentle curves, short and long, in every direction.

Why

Rehearsing the stroke plans where the line goes, and the speed keeps it smooth. It’s the same habit you’ll use for every long edge of a building later on.

Success looks like

Smooth lines with no wobble and no blobs at the ends. Most lines land within a few millimetres of the target dot. Being a little off target is fine, but a wobbly line isn’t.

Ghosting as taught by Drawabox, Lesson 1.

Setup

Your pen, a sketchbook page and a timer. Three subjects in order: your own non-drawing hand, a crumpled paper bag, then a plant. Turn your chair so the paper is beside you and out of your line of sight.

Steps

1. Fix your eyes on one point on the subject’s edge and put the pen on the paper.
2. Move your eye along the edge very slowly, and let the pen move at exactly the same pace. Imagine the pen is actually touching the edge you’re looking at.
3. Follow every bump and turn, including edges inside the shape: creases, folds and overlaps.
4. Don’t look at the paper until the timer goes. Start with 5 minutes and work up to 15.

Why

It forces your eye to lead your hand and stops your brain from drawing a symbol of a “hand” or a “leaf”. It trains the slow, specific looking that every later module relies on.

Success looks like

A distorted, scribbly drawing packed with small, specific wiggles. If the proportions are wildly off, that’s normal and doesn’t matter. A smooth, simplified outline means you went too fast.

After Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw (1941), and the “pure contour” exercise in Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Setup

A potted plant with clear leaves, your pen and a sketchbook page you can see this time.

Steps

1. Draw the same way as blind contour: slow eye, slow pen, edges in and out of the shape.
2. You may glance at the paper, but only to place the pen where a new edge starts or where two edges meet. Then go back to the subject.
3. Aim to spend about 80% of the time looking at the plant.
4. Do a second drawing of the same plant from a different side.

Why

It’s the bridge from pure looking to a usable drawing. You keep the observation of blind contour and gain enough control for the drawing to hold together.

Success looks like

Mostly single, unhesitating lines. Leaf edges have their own scallops and folds, and overlapping leaves show which is in front. The plant is recognisably this plant, not “a plant”.

After Betty Edwards’ “modified contour”, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Setup

A small scene: a doorway with a chair, a corner of the kitchen, or a shelf. Use your pen and a timer.

Steps

1. Put the pen down anywhere and don’t lift it until the timer goes.
2. Travel from object to object along edges. To reach somewhere new, cross over shapes or double back along a line you’ve already drawn.
3. Keep moving at a steady, slow pace. You may look at the paper.

Why

Without the option to stop and restart, you have to keep looking and decide where to go next. It also loosens your hand and shows how one line can hold a whole scene together.

Success looks like

One unbroken line, and the whole scene readable from it. It will look busy and loopy, which is fine.

After Liz Steel’s continuous line exercises in SketchingNow Foundations.

Setup

An object with a clear, curving shape, such as a jug, a botijo or a kettle. Use your pen. You won’t need an eraser.

Steps

1. Draw the object at a comfortable speed, looking often.
2. Each time you see a line is wrong (a belly too thin, a handle too low), draw the correct line beside it.
3. Leave the wrong line where it is. Keep going.
4. When you finish, look at which lines you restated. That tells you which shapes you misjudged.

Why

Ink can’t be erased, so you need a way to correct that keeps you moving. Restated lines also add life to a drawing, and you’ll see them in the sketches of most good draughtsmen.

Success looks like

A finished drawing where the corrected shape is clearly right and the first attempts are still visible. No scribbled-out patches and no abandoned starts.

After Bert Dodson’s “restatement”, Keys to Drawing (1985). Verify against book

Setup

A simple building front from life: a doorway, a shed or a house end. Sit somewhere comfortable and use pen only.

Steps

1. Look at an edge until you know where it starts and ends. Ghost it once in the air.
2. Draw it in a single stroke. Don’t sketch it in with several small ones.
3. Press a little harder on shadow sides and where things touch the ground, and lighter on lit and distant edges.
4. When the drawing is done, fill in two or three of the very darkest spots in solid black, such as inside the doorway or under the eaves.

Why

This is the line you’ll use under every wash later on. It’s confident, varied in weight and economical. The few solid blacks give the drawing punch for almost no effort.

Success looks like

Each edge is one stroke, with no hairy patches. Line weight visibly varies, and a few small solid blacks are in the deepest places.

After the line and spot-black passes of Marc Taro Holmes’ three-pass sketch, The Urban Sketcher (2014).