Chapter Ten - Day Eleven: Planning your drawings

As we enter part 3 of the book, I’m feeling strangely optimistic and excited.  Part 3 is labelled ‘Time to Start Drawing‘ and the topic up for discussion is planning your drawing.  So lets get started!

In order to plan your drawing you need to concentrate on composition and the book highlights 7 elements of composition, these are listed as follows:

Focal point:        Your primary center of interest
Overlapping:      Visual separation between fore and background
Negative space:  The empty space within your drawing
Lines:                 These guide the viewer through your drawing
Balance:             A stable balance of objects within your composition.
Contrast:             Difference between your light and dark values
Proportion:         The amount of space allocated to the various components of a drawing.

Sounds like a lot to take in but if you grab a picture of a painting done by a fairly good artist it will be quite easy to pick out all the above points within that picture.  Next Brenda explains how to go about placing your focal point within the picture and how to emphasise it.  I will warn you now that this chapter is full of tips, so this might be a long one...

There are a few rules when working with your focal point; number one - always place your focal point off center, if you place your subject in the middle it will command all the viewers attention. Rule number two - Make good use of secondary focal points, by drawing less interesting objects around your focal point you help direct the viewers attention back to you focal point. Rule three - Use objects within your drawing to point to your focal point, i.e a fence or road etc and rule four - draw your focal point in more detail and with greater contrast to the rest of the objects within your drawing.

So far so good, it’s not all that complicating now comes the most important rule of all, the rule of thirds!  Anyone doing photography will know this rule all to well already.  The rule of thirds is really simple and the best way to describe it is to show you.  In the picture below where the circles are drawn at the overlapping intersections is the best place to place your focal point/main subject. Simple!

The book explains about leading lines and how different lines create different effects/emotions as explained in chapter 5, so I'm not going to go into too much detail.  One tip worth mentioning though is that most viewers look at a drawing from the lower left hand corner which makes this the ideal place to have your leading line.  If you place your leading line on the right side of your drawing it may lead the viewers eye out your picture. It also suggests not to place your leading line in a corner as it will act like an arrow pointing straight out of your picture.

Next up is balancing subjects in composition, here the trick is to keep things asymmetrical and to remember that objects in the distance become smaller. You can also create balance in your drawing by balancing dark and light values, the same way you would your objects.  It will also help by using odd numbers of objects together in your drawing as apposed to even numbers i.e maybe three tress on one side counterbalanced by five on the other instead of four on one side and four on the other.

To help you decide what the best composition for your drawing is you can use the SOUL method.
This is probably also best explained using pictures and Brenda definitely knows how to do that.

S: Uses curved lines to help the viewer move through the picture

O: Uses objects to frame the focal point

U: uses your object to frame the picture 

L: Places your objects on one end and leads them through to the opposite end

Almost there, I did warn you this was a long chapter.  Next we cover ‘plotting out your photograph’ start with drawing a grid on you picture and then duplicate that grid on your drawing paper, this will help towards the accuracy of your drawing. You may need to take the following into account, Scaling up or down.  If you are drawing your picture larger than the photograph you will need to take your photograph grid measurements and multiple it to get the size you want, or dived it if you want it smaller.

So to end it all the last tip for the day is: Make a frame that you can use to help find composition/pictures, it helps by blocking out access visual distractions. You can make it any size although it is suggested that you keep it small.

Project 10: Planning composition, takes you through the above 'plotting your photograph' paragraph and shows you how to create a picture from two separate scenes. The pictures below will demonstrate the steps Brenda uses to plot and plan her drawings.

These are the pictures Brenda would like to combine and draw

Step One: Grid and composition basics

Step 2: Draw the outline of the objects that you would like incorporated

Step 3: Rough sketch of shading & Step 4: Re draw and shade properly

Looks easy hey :), well with enough practise I'm 100% confident that anyone can reproduce the images they wish to draw.

Next up is Chapter 11: Recording your life in a sketchbook. Sounds exciting.

(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)