When you’re drawing, it can sometimes be hard to get some of the angles right, or to draw shapes in the right size. Translating what’s in front of you to the paper is challenging. This might be the slant of a hill, a tree trunk, or the petal of a flower. You can see the line with your eyes, but it’s hard to get it right on paper.
You can make it a bit easier by using a tool you already have around anyway: your pencil! This is a classic drawing trick, here’s how it works:
Measuring angles
You hold your pencil in front of you and line it up with the angle you want to draw. Then move the pencil to your paper in that same angle, that’s where you can draw your line.
Measuring distances
To measure the relative size between objects (or within parts of one object), you’ll need to find out the right proportions. This will prevent ending up with a head that’s too small for the body, or weirdly misshaped parts of slightly more challenging subjects (like complex flowers with lots of petals).
For this you need to hold your pencil at arm’s length (this will prevent wrong measurements if you don’t remember the position of your arm).
Then find a unit for comparing different parts of your subject, this may be one side of a building, or the diameter of a round object, whatever feels like a good measurement. This doesn’t need to be completely exact. Mark this unit on your pencil with your thumb.
Compare other areas of your subject with your base unit – now you have a good way to quickly measure this and get a correctly proportioned drawing.
Sometimes our subjects seem to have weird shapes, we know they look a certain way, and shouldn’t that line be longer, because in reality it is? When objects are turned towards you in an unfamiliar angle, this can create extreme foreshortening.
The key point to drawing with the help of pencil measurements is to trust the measurements, however weird they may seem. If you measured correctly, just place the line. It will all come together in the end.
Negative space
Sometimes it’s easier to focus on the space around something than to figure out the actual object, for example when dealing with very complex small objects like overlapping leaves or petals.
Instead of measuring and drawing each object independently, try drawing the negative space – the area between the objects.
Additional resources:
How to get better at drawing | 5 tips + a pep talk
How to create three dimensional realistic drawings
I liked this drawing skills segment, I have been using a ruler for estimating angles and distances up to this point but I think useing a pencil and perhaps the ruler less will speed things up, although somethings I’ll use a ruler for-it will just depend! I like the idea of defining shape and dimensions by filling negative space-I’m used to dealing with negative space by sketching the subject and then trying to figure out how to fill in the negative space (just the opposite), I hadn’t considered both forms as process and technique. This will help me build better compositions and perhaps focus. Thank you Julia!
I lover your weekly news letters with the illustrations. Did you ever consider putting them in book form. That would be a great referace book I would buy for my library. Thank you again . Deb frasure
Hi Deb, that’s a beautiful idea. I’ve thought about it, but so far I haven’t had the time for such a big project. But it’s something that’s on my mind!