Chapter Five - Day Five: Seeing and Drawing lines

OMG this chapter was like pulling teeth. I know what a bloody lines look like! I felt like I was in kindergarten again and the teacher was explaining it all over again ‘This is a straight line, this is a curved line!’’ I know they said drawing for dummies, but blimey!  So, once again it’s back to the good ole’ pep talk!  ‘’Brenda did warn us that these next few chapters would be tough, she even likened it to eating your vegetables and that if you don’t you can’t have dessert. Stick in there and have a little patience’’

So starting again...Chapter Five, what a great chapter it taught me all about lines, curved ones, angled ones and straight ones, and if you didn’t already know those are the only 3 types of lines you get :). But moving on there was some very interesting information about lines, according to the book they each illustrate different concepts.  Horizontal lines reflect stability, peace and serenity. Vertical lines reflect strength, grandeur and dignity while Diagonal lines offer a sense of movement and power to drawings.

Brenda also points out that it is perfectly acceptable to use a ruler to draw your lines if needed, but does suggest learning to draw them without having to use one, as it offers far more freedom while drawing.
If you want to practice drawing straight lines, mark two dots across form each other on your page and them simply connect them.  Don’t just move your wrist though to draw the line but instead move your elbow to create the continuous flow across the page.

There are a lot of visual exercises in this chapter, that take you through the art of finding the lines between the space, as she calls it. All it is is basically showing you how to go about seeing an object as a simplified outline. Below is an illustrated example of this:

There are two sketchbook excersies in this chapter, the first one is labelled “getting comfortable with lines.’’ This one is really tricky but quite a lot of fun. The objective of this exercise is to draw your subject without looking at where your drawing but rather at what your drawing. You take your paper and type it down so it doesn’t move, find your object you want to draw (make sure it is a simple one) and as your eyes follow the shape of your object so you hand draws the lines.  The purpose is to coordinate your vision with your drawing hand, it is an integral aspect of drawing so definitely worth practicing.  I have added a few pictures that Brenda drew just to show you how experience proves to be something quite amazing.

Project Five: Fragile Melody.   In this project, the aim was to identify the lines of your subject by observing the negative space and visual measuring propositions. In plain english we divided our drawing block into 4 squares and copied the illustrated guide step by step, learning to see where to place the lines within those blocks. And to put it in even easier terms see pictures below.

You start off with the picture being upside down

Steps 3 & 4 completes the image

This is my attempt, not to sure whats happening with
the shoulders there.  Better luck next time! 

A tip form the book: Warming up to drawing - by exercising your hand and relaxing your mind, you are able to get into an artistic frame of mind. To do this the book suggests writing your name backwards a few times and doodling.

Next we look at Exploring the Third Dimension with Chapter Six.

(Please note: that photo examples are taken from "Drawing for Dummies by Brenda Hoddinott'' and the  above views are not representative of her and are purely based on a 3rd party view being Me! All snippets taken directly from the book are stated as been so)