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Lesson - Part One
Lesson - Part Two
Lesson - Part Three
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Portable Drawing Kit
"Messenger" style book bags make great drawing kits. They're just the right size for medium drawing pads and have plenty of compartments for other supplies.
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Drawing Tool Tip
Spin the tip of your battery powered eraser on an emery board to sharpen it to a fine point.
Use its tip to "draw" delicate details, like animal whiskers and reflections on metal, and to create textures, like distant leaves or weeds.
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Drawing Tips
Vegetables make great drawing subjects for beginners. Choose light colored veges which have interesting shapes and textures.
Here are some suggestions:
- Squash
- Peppers
- Onions
- Garlic
- Oranges
Do a study of each one, or arrange them into still lifes.
Powdered graphite can be applied with a bush to create delicate tonal washes. It's great for making skin tones and flower petal textures.
You can read more about how to make and use it on my powdered graphite page.
Make it easy to practice drawing. Keep extra pencils and paper near the chair where you watch TV at night and draw during commercials!
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| Drawing Tips
Instead of shading around highlights, try working from the middle.
1. Fill the entire subject to a mid-value.
2. Darken the shadows.
3. Erase the highlights.
4. Add the more subtle value variations.
Use a value scale to help you see the true values of the subject.
Value scales are especially helpful for interpreting challenging color combinations into gray scale, such as red roses in front of a green background.
You can download a value scale and find out how to use them on my Free Drawing Tools Page.
Drawing is like any skill. You have to practice regularly to be good at it!
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How to Draw a Horse
Part Two
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Details - Second Stage
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 Lips to Nostril Tops
His face details range from a 5 value to an 8 value. Darken the lip edges to their true value with a brush or stump tip. (Remember, you will always be adjusting your values as you work so don't feel bad if you have to do it several times during the drawing.) Darken the details under his nostrils in a more detailed way using a 4h or 5h lead. If you lose the highlights along the bottom edge of his nostrils, just erase them back out. Use a brush and a little ground graphite to darken the area between his nostrils.
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 Blaze and Cheeks
Darken the line inside his blaze along the left side. This line has a lot of hair texture in it so you can leave your fill a little rough. This broken line continues almost to the level of his eyes. Use a hard lead like a 7h to make the little shapes that make up this line.
Darken the right cheek up to his right eye using a 4h or 5h lead.
Darken his left cheek using the darkened detail lines as your guide lines.
Using 4h or 5h lead, start to darken the detail under his eyes. Be very careful to follow your detail lines.
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Details - Third Stage
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 Eyes and Eyelids
Using a very sharp 2b, carefully outline the eyes. Use a sharp 4b to fill in the rest of the eye.
His eyelid creases are very dark. Use a 4h and a 2h to carefully darken the creases. His eyelids are a little complicated and there are creases on both top and bottom lids. Use your detail lines to help you place them correctly.
Here are some hints for handling area with small details like his eyelids:
- Try using a stump to lighten a too dark area instead of an eraser.
- Use your stump to make gentle transitions.
- Save your highlights by drawing around them when you can.
- If a detail seems to elude you in one area, come back to it later when you have a fresh eye for it.
- Remember that you can always come back and add, subtract, or change detail.
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 Mane Forelock
Use a 2h to start filling in the dark streaks (10 values) in his forehead and neck mane. Don't be overly concerned with correct positioning, just try to get the shadows in the general areas they should be in.
A good way to get the hair shadows shaped well is to "turn off" seeing the hair and "turn on" seeing the shadows. It's a mental shift that takes some concentration but you can see that the shadows do have a rhythm and pattern if you really look at them. Just get the general pattern of the shadows blocked in and you'll have the general lay of the hair right.
Use a 4h and to darken the next darkest shadows (9 & 8 values). Use a 5h to block in next darkest shadows (6 & 7 values). If the highlights of his mane (the strands you haven't touched yet) look too light, use a stump to darken them by softly stroking them into 3 to 5 values. Use your stump to darken the soft mane hair across the bottom of his ears, too. The hair at the bottom of his ears is soft looking, so blur the hard outline lines with the tip of your stump.
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 Mane on Neck
His neck is very dark and the bottom of his mane almost disappears into its shadows. To create that effect, fill in the entire area to a 6 or 7 value with a 2h lead. Then use a stick eraser that's been sharpened into a wedge shape to lift out the details of the hair. Try to lift of the hair strands in curves that follows the form of his neck. You can soften and refine this effect later.
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