Practising Lines and Basic Shapes

Why start with lines

Every form in a drawing comes down to lines and the areas they enclose. If a line wobbles or fails to stop where you meant it to, the shape looks wrong on paper even when you are seeing it correctly. Once you can draw a line of the length and direction you want, transferring what you observe becomes far easier. Line practice looks dull, but it pays off quickly: after just a few days of steady work you will notice your lines wobbling less. Think of it as the basic fitness that every other drawing skill relies on. Use an HB pencil for practice and do not be stingy with paper; spread out across the sheet. Working only inside small boxes keeps you on the wrist and never builds the feel of using your arm. Do not bother sorting good lines from bad ones. Aiming to fill a page densely and simply doing more gets you there faster in the end.

Draw from the arm, not the wrist

Moving only your fingers and wrist, as you do when writing, produces short, curved lines. The wrist rotates in an arc, which makes long straight lines difficult. The trick is to change which joint does the moving according to the length of the line.

• Fingers: very short lines and fine detail
• Wrist: short lines about the size of your palm
• Elbow: medium lines and small circles
• Shoulder: long lines across the page and large circles

Joining dots and ghosting

The most effective straight-line exercise is to mark two dots and join them. Do not draw straight away. Hold the pencil just above the paper and move it along the same path two or three times in the air, then, keeping your eyes on the end point, draw the line in one go. Your hand learns the route in advance, so the line comes out straighter and ends more accurately. It is fine if the line misses the dot at first. Speeding up slightly actually straightens the line, because a slow stroke records every small tremor of the hand. Once this feels comfortable, move on to filling an area with evenly spaced parallel lines. That becomes the basis of hatching, which you will later use to build up shading.

Circles and ellipses

Do not try to draw a perfect circle in one pass. Circle lightly over the same spot several times, then firm up the roundest path. A circle seen at an angle becomes an ellipse, which turns up constantly in drawing: the top of a cylinder, the rim of a cup, a wheel. An ellipse has a long axis and a short axis that meet at right angles, and it is symmetrical about both. A common mistake is drawing pointed ends; the ends of an ellipse are always rounded. When drawing a cylinder, line up its central axis with the short axis of the ellipse and the form will not look twisted.

Turning objects into basic solids

Even complicated-looking objects can mostly be explained as combinations of boxes, cylinders, spheres and cones. Books, phones and buildings start as boxes; cups, bottles and tree trunks as cylinders; fruit and heads as spheres; funnels and party hats as cones. Get into the habit of naming which solids make up a subject before you draw it, and you will capture the large form first instead of getting lost in detail. When drawing boxes, it is especially useful to sketch the hidden back edges lightly too. Drawing those hidden lines shows you how the faces connect and quickly exposes any perspective that has gone astray.

A fifteen-minute daily routine

Split the time below with a timer and you can do the same amount every day. For the first week, this alone is plenty. From the second week, try using the last six minutes to draw real objects from your desk as basic solids.

• 3 minutes: straight lines joining two dots, in many directions
• 3 minutes: filling areas with evenly spaced parallel lines
• 3 minutes: overlapping circles and ellipses at different tilts
• 6 minutes: boxes and cylinders from various angles, hidden lines included

Common mistakes

Habits that often appear in line practice, and how to correct them. Keeping each one in mind while you draw makes a difference quickly.

• Stringing short strokes into a hairy line: decide the length and draw it in one stroke
• Drawing too slowly: learn the path, then draw at a steady speed
• Pressing hard from the start: search lightly and darken later
• Erasing a mistake immediately: leave it and draw again beside it to compare
• Keeping the paper fixed: turning the sheet to a comfortable angle is fine