Drawing From Life With Expressive Line

This is the last in a series of five drawing lessons that have taken you from using a viewfinder to freehand drawing and finally into fluid and expressive line drawing.

Here are all the lessons in this series.

Line Drawing Part One – How To Use A Viewfinder
Line Drawing Part Two – Draw From Life With A Viewfinder
Line Drawing Part Three – Draw From Life Using Sight-Size
Line Drawing Part Four – Enlarge Or Reduce While Drawing From Life
Line Drawing Part Five – Drawing From Life With Expressive Line

Supplies
Video

I found this excellent description of expressive line from humanitiesweb.org:

Expressive Line – A kind of line that seems to spring directly from the artist’s emotions or feelings — loose, gestural, and energetic — epitomized by curvi-linear forms; as opposed to analytic or classical line.

Expressive line is made with the pencil held in an overhand grip so that you can easily tip the pencil up to the point to create a thin line or lay it down on its side to create a thick line.

This drawing of leaves on a vine was drawn with the tip of a sharp pencil, with the pencil in a writing grip. It has some good qualities, like the rhythm of the leaves as they grow around the stem.

But all the lines are about the same thickness, making each part of the drawing look encapsulated and enclosed.

This was a good study sketch, but it was only a study of certain qualities of the plant.

This drawing of my cat is less tightly rendered. Her fur is showing some line variation. It was made with the pencil in an overhand grip.

I draw cats quickly, as you can tell I did here, because they usually don’t stay in one position very long.  And that’s a good time to experiment with varied line.

Although this drawing looks shaded, it was drawn with only thick and thin line.

The leaves and seed heads have volume and texture, and the plant has even caught the light of the day.

This sketch expresses many more qualities than the vine leaves, which is the beauty of expressive line as I try to use it.

Practice Expressive Line

Your hand swings from the elbow in the overhand grip. That gives you freedom of movement in both the swing and angle of the pencil. Experiment with this grip on a big sheet of paper. Try writing your name until you get some control.

Burdock Leaves Line Drawing Expressing Volume

I made this sketch with an HB pencil in a writing grip. Everything is in the right place, but it looks flat.

I drew over my first drawing with an HB pencil sharpened into a long point. Combined with the overhand grip, the long point allowed me to draw thick and thin lines by tilting the pencil to different angles.

When you look at this line drawing, your eye ‘reads’ the thin lines as ‘up’ or ‘light’ and thick lines as ‘down’ or ‘shadow.’ This is how our mind creates the illusion of form.

In comparison to the first sketch, these leaves look as if they’re solid, and their edges have form that undulates through space.

Varied Line Used In A Shaded Sketch

Except for the stems, this drawing starts as a straightforward line drawing.

I drew the flowers lightly with the tip of an HB lead. The stems were drawn with the side of the HB lead.

Using the side of the HB pencil, I sketched over the composition with varied line to show where the shadows were, and I let the pencil meander a little to embellish the most interesting areas of each element.

I tried to distribute the dark details evenly to create a sense of balance, so I drew some of them darker and larger than they were.

I used the side of a 2H pencil to shade the flowers and buds.

So that the hatch blended in with the side of pencil lines, I darkened the edges and shadows with a hatch made with a flattened pencil tip. I didn’t use a lot of pressure and hatched the areas several times until they darkened and blended.

I shaded around some of the highlights. In watercolor, that’s called ‘saving the whites,’ it keeps the paper clean so that the highlights are as bright as possible.

To finish, I erased the smaller detail highlights and drew the stamens.

I hope I’ve inspired you to use expressive line drawing to add life to basic line drawing style.

 

This video is of me making a very slow, expressive line drawing. You’ll see that I made lots of cuts. If I didn’t make those cuts, it’d be much, much longer, and you’d fall asleep before it was over. Oh, and sorry about the bird. He was such a harsh critic! I added photos and text below.

Dogwood Leaves With Expressive Line

So that I’d have a map to follow, I lightly drew a rough composition. Then I could draw from life and compose as I wanted to.

You can skip this step if you want to jump right in and draw ‘in the raw,’ so to speak.

To draw with a varied line in a way that suggests reality, pay attention to how the edges appear in shaded, lighted, and mid-range value areas. Some edges may be hard to see as they blend into the background; draw those with very light pressure to make a line that almost disappears.

Some edges might be clearly defined but in shadow. Draw them with a firm pressure to create a dark, crisp line. Other edges may be shadowed and blurred. Drop the pencil low and draw a wide, soft line to express them.

The overhand grip allows for great freedom of movement, so take advantage of that by allowing yourself to add new qualities to the composition as they occur to you. Let the pencil explore the shape and find even better angles and curves than nature provided.

So there you have it, my dear pencil friends. I’ve covered sight-size from every angle I can think of, and I’m ready to move on. In the coming year, I’d like to make more videos, and I’ll make more short how-to lessons that everyone seems to enjoy too. Of course, I’ll be showing more of my own art. It’s taking a turn back toward realism, I believe, so you’ll be seeing signs of that soon. Until we meet again,

Draw well, draw courageously, and never stop!
Carol