Five Principles of Observational Drawing
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008Many thanks to PhillEvans for contributed this tutorial, which he originally posted in this forum post.
Five Principles of Observational Drawing.
The aim of this tutorial is to look at the five principles of observation which apply to drawing from life. These are:
1) Lines and edges.
2) Space and shapes.
3) Relationships
4) Light and shade
and
5) Gestalt (dont panic, its not that big a deal, you will see!)
These principles can be found discussed in much greater depth in “Drawing on the right side of the brain” by Betty Edwards Harper Collins pub., a book I can’t reccomend highly enough if you are wanting to improve your drawing skills. If one understands them and applies them in ones drawings, they can stand in for any amount of learning about perspective, proportions and how many heads make a human body.
An Autopsy of a Sketch.
I spent a happy hour sitting on the banks of the Llangollen Canal in North Wales and made this sketch. It took one hour exactly (it had to, I was on a wife-set schedule…) and I drew it in fineline pen over pencil. I scanned it in as-is and didn’t remove the pencil lines as they didn’t detract from the finished drawing. The drawing in original size is about A5.
What I would like to do in this tutorial is to look at the process I used to develop this drawing (all my drawings in fact) using the five principles. I will not talk about mark making, tools & techniques or composition as these are for another lesson!
Firstly, Lines and edges. By identifying the basic lines of the view we are concentrating on we can begin to develop the drawn image we want to put on the page. I began here by looking at the view as if it were a series of directional lines. I have faded out the finished drawing and strengthened these in the next image:
These lines begin to develop the structure of my drawing. The also begin to identify the edges of objects and areas in the view I am concetrating on. These edges define for us the seperate objects we are drawing and the spaces which they occupy. By identifying these we can move on to clarifying the spaces themselves… Here I have concentrated on the edges of the canal and house as well as the basic flow-lines of the larger trees. These were roughed in lightly in pencil in the original drawing.
In this second image I have highlighted the various spaces within the view which I am concentrating on in my drawing. The word “spaces” in this context can also mean “shape” or “area.” When we draw, our images are broken into filled spaces (”positive space”) and the area between them (”negative space”.) It is by correctly recording the shapes of these (positive and negative)spaces that we make a recognisable image of the scene we have chosen. However, even if we record each space exactly, the drawing will suffer if we don’t pay attention to the relationships between each space. By this i mean that, for example, the tall tree to the left of the house leans to the right over the roof. How far over the roof does it lean? What is the relationship of this tall thin tree-space to the apex of the main roof? To the top left hand corner of the chimney? And so on. As we draw we should be constantly referring to these relationships, but if you get it right at this stage before adding too many details it can save a lot of heartache later! In this next image I have identified a few of the relationship lines between some of the spaces I identified before.
I have concentrated on the relationships of the lines of the house because, unlike the chaotic nature of the trees and bushes, these can be pretty unforgiving when drawn. I have noted the width of the spaces which are the walls facing the canal and are almost sideways on to us. I have marked in the differing levels of the gable roofs which are side on to us and the position of the chimney, windows and doors. Once these are noted, I can draw in the things themselves in their spaces as I wish without worrying about details like straight lines. The viewer looks at the spaces, lines and edges of my drawing and sees a house, regardless of the lack of ruled lines… Mission accomplished!
Once the lines have been drawn in to define the spaces, their edges and their relationships to each other one could call the drawing finished. However, left like this it would lack depth and character and might look like a diagram or a colouring-in picture (not that there is anything wrong with these but that’s not what we are aiming at here!) The missing element is a representation of light and shade. When we see shade on and around an object, this is a cue to our brain that the object has mass and depth. If we leave out shading it makes our drawing look thin, flat and washed out. In this last image I have roughed in the main areas of shade as they were in the view I was seeing.
As you can begin to see, the light was coming predominantly from the right of the scene which therefore made the shade to the left (I know…its obvious but its handy to point it out so that when you draw you notice it consciously…then you are in control of how you draw it!)
So, to recap, we have developed a sketch by identifying the main lines of the scene, these forming the bare bones of the sketch. We then worked over these lines looking at the shapes of the objects and areas within the scene which made up the positive and negative spaces of our drawing. We paid special attention not only to the spaces, but to their relationships with each other. Once these spaces and their relationships are accurately recorded in our drawing we then looked at and filled in the areas of light and shade which give our drawing a sense of physical depth and mass.
The final principal, that of Gestalt, is the most tricky to put into a tutorial. “Gestalt” is a German word for form or shape but in this context it means the way a drawing represents the whole thing. A definition from Betty Edwards’ book is “a whole pattern or structure perceived as something greater than the sum of its separate parts.” So, when we are sketching a scene or making a life drawing or drawing from our head we are trying not just to record the four principles I have identified above, but to do that in such a way as we capture something of the essence of the scene/object/thing-in-the-drawing. When you have done it, you will know what it is and if you do not you will see its lack in your drawings. Like all of the five principles it is easily taught but tricky to master! The only way to do that is to practice, practice and practice.
