EMPOWER YOURSELF WITH SIGHTING
We’ve learned how to access our RH and manage our LH. We’ve learned how to draw, now we’re going to look at proportion, i.e. how to guarantee accuracy. Remember it won’t happen straight away but if you keep doing it you will be able to draw accurately by the end of the course.
To start the second week, take a look at your hand again, “Oh no, not my hand again, I thought we’d done this!” If your Left Hemisphere is complaining, gently but firmly restate your intention and PRB (Posture, Breathe, Relax)…If not – good!
Proportion is the way things are constructed. To get a drawing in proportion means that you are putting all the elements in the correct relationship with one another. Sighting is the process that enables you to do this.
Look at your hand, it’s always there, at the end of your arm, being a hand. Take your pencil and place the tip on your thumb. Hold it horizontally and check where the pencil is in relation to your thumb. Mine is right opposite the third joint of my pinky. What a useful piece of information! What else comes along that horizontal? The halfway mark of my index finger. You can see how these horizontals are going to help you with proportion. You can use verticals too. Lay your pencil vertically on your palm. What comes directly under it? What part of your palm is your ring finger above? This is called sighting. Artists do it all the time to help them with proportion. Another tool in your box!
ASSIGNMENT ONE
Part 1
Draw your hand using sighting to get the proportions as right as you can. Understand that it won’t be perfect on your first try! Make mistakes, make them till you fill the bin, make masses of glorious mistakes and take a risk, no one ever died from an attack of drawing! Access you’re Right Hemisphere: relax, breathe, focus, change monologue, keep pencil on the paper.
Part 2
Draw your hand in a different position.
Part 3
Draw your foot. Everything changes! These drawings will be a completely different set of abstract shapes. Feel free to do more than the assignments I set and post them. The more you do the better you get. Don’t feel pressured to do this though, if you have a busier lifestyle than others.
42 Comments on “Class 1 Drawing for Absolute Beginners – Unit 5 Classroom”
My drawings;
More birds
Another;
First hand;
Second hand;
It’s great to see all these drawings Marg, I’m delighted! Well done with your hands, you’re making great progress. I can see you are keeping the pencil on the paper much more and are observing the relationships between finger widths, length and width of palm and thumb in relation to fingers. The nails are foreshortened, you are managing to override your symbols – i.e. you have new brain circuitry!
I’ve put a drawing up showing the relationship between the tops and bottoms of the fingers. It is easy to draw the pinky and ring finger too high. We think on first glance that the fingers are all on the same line at the top of the palm, but in fact the palm curves around and the ring finger and pinky are progressively lower. I have put up a drawing showing how we can use horizontals to ascertain this relationship.
In the extended palm, the top of the pinky is half way down the thumb, opposite the knuckle at the base of the index finger. As you move your hand, all these relationships change, so each time we draw the hand, we can check where the tips of the fingers are in relation to each other, the thumb and the palm and where the base of the fingers are. You can check this out by looking at your hand in various positions and holding a pencil horizontally at the tops and bottoms of your digits. Where are they in relation to everything else? You can post questions if you have them, great to hear from you!
I’ll try to get that hand right way round!
I love the way the mindfulness exercises do slow me down enough to observe.
I am fascinated by birds at present so the many bird pictures.
Will do more during the holidays.
I’ll look forward to them, 🙂
Marg;s foot 4th try! I have a foot that won’t stay still.
Wondering why I can only see my pictures?
Am I supposed to be looking else where, for others attempts?
Hoping for a happy new year to you all
Marg
You’re in the right place Marg, no one else has posted in this unit! You can see their pics in Unit four – donkeys and flowers. Well done with the foot, you have curved the toes around the upper end of the foot beautifully. Our symbol, like the hand is to have them sitting in a straight line on the end.
Check out your little toe again, in relation to the others. It may be shorter than the one in the drawing and tucked under a little more. I am very impressed with the toenail on your big toe! Look at those shifts in direction – no symbol there!
I have tried drawing a parrot today. 🙂
What a magnificent parrot George – you’re drawing!! Thanks for posting, it’s a pleasure for me to see your drawings. 🙂
Hi Kimbra!
I kind of understand the idea / theory behind this unit but I’m struggling to utilise it in practice effectively…
1. The hand gradually changes its shape ‘coz it’s slowly relaxing.
2. Drawing with one hand is challenging but erasing is almost impossible 🙂
3. Constantly switching between RH and LH (to check the horisontal and vertical lines) slows the process down significantly. I have spent almost 40 min for the attached drawing O_o You can see it’s not even 10% finished.
3. At first, I was looking at the hand with both of my eyes open and was measuring the lines with one of my eyes closed. I didn’t realise that the line is at a different position depending on if you keep both or just one eye open! I was wondering why my measurements were resulting in a different picture than I actually see 🙂 So, you either draw and measure with one of your eyes ALWAYS closed (must always be the same eye!) or you measure with both eyes open. If both of my eyes are open, then either the pencil or the hand image doubles when I look.
I’m thinking of trying to draw someone else’s hand instead of my own 🙂
Hi Kimbra, I’m strugling too.
My problem is that my brain gets very confused. Usually, when I’m trying to draw mindfully, I just draw the way I see the picture. If I think about the line, the brain is trying to switch to LH and kind of gets stuck in between, being not sure what to do.
Also, say I’m looking at horisontal lines… I determine their position compared to other points but then the vertical lines need to be considered as well. Otherwise, vertical proportion could be wrong. But I’m not sure how to do both horisontal and vertical lines at the same time and, do we actually have to do it? If we have to consider both horisontal and vertical lines at the same time, it becomes an extremely logical process for me where the LH dominates.
I will try to calm myself tomorrow and try again but, at the moment, not sure how and what to do.
Thanks for posting Ella and George. Ella your drawing looks fantastic but I appreciate that the time you spent is daunting!
You don’t have to measure everything you’re drawing. We use the verticals and horizontals as an aid to the eye i.e. to check the position of the tops of the digits in relation to one another, to check the top of your pinky in relation to your thumb. Only use them when you’re not sure about a relationship or if something you’ve drawn looks wrong. There is no need to use them each time you draw a contour. I’ll do a talking demonstration;
Place your hand on the table next to you and relax it as much as you can. Let it sit there for a while so that it relaxes into it’s easiest positiion. I’m going to start my drawing at the base of the left side of my hand, i.e. just below the wrist. “I’m drawing this little contour and it goes up here, along here, there’s a bump and a small depression here. This little bit goes right up here then down again, now I come along at this angle, there’s a tiny shift in direction and another one up here, this bit is straight. I am veering off at this angle and coming along straight to this tiny shift and then this straight bit and now I’m drawing this curve”
I’ve drawn right up to the top of my thumb nail, from the wrist without checking verticals or horizontals. At this stage if I want to I can place my pencil vertically to my desk at the top of my thumb and check the angle between the pencil and the contour of my palm and thumb. I don’t have to do this but if it looks wrong ,then it’s a useful tool, enabling me to get it more accurate if I want to.
Now I’ll talk in left hemispheric language so you know what I’m drawing. I come round the top of my thumb and down it’s right hand side. I see the wrinkles describing the top segment of my thumb. If I’m not sure how far down they come I can put a horizontal i.e. check what is directly opposite, to see where it is in relation to the other side. I continue drawing the thumb in RH and begin the base of my index finger where it sits in relation to my thumb. I can draw the left side of the finger without actually measuring anything by looking across to my thumb to see where the wrinkles of my finger sit in relation to it. Placing the pencil on my hand makes it easier to see the relationships when there is a distance between them i.e. the pinky is quite a distance from the thumb so it is easier to lay the pencil than it is to imagine the horizontal.
Only use the pencil to sight the verticals and horizontals when you think you need to. They are just an aid to support your eye but if you feel like drawing without actual sighting, just imagining verticals and horizontals that is absolutely fine. Ella, if you want to you can draw the hand I drew for Marg which is higher in the blog, rather than your own. I appreciate the difficulty rubbing out! I lift up my left hand to support my right rubbing out then place it back as close to the original position as I can. You don’t have to use the techniques all the time, they are there to help you when you know your drawing is wrong but you don’t know how to correct it. You can draw freehand most of the time and just use the techniques to check relationships when you’re not sure.
Artists unconsciously check verticals and horizontals in their mind when they draw, “this line is opposite this little bump, this curve is right above the half way point of that contour beneath it.” It is only when the distance is too great to guess that they actually sight with a pencil. We do it in life drawing regularly. Because I’ve done it so many times I am now able to guess the relationships reasonably accurately just by looking. If I can’t guess I hold my pencil up and sight using horizontals and verticals. Let me know how it goes – I’m appreciating your depth questions.
In regard to it feeling like a logical process George, yes I agree it can feel like that to begin with. Applying new techniques is to do with evaluating and analysing, (LH) and that’s part of the learning process. LH evaluates, understands and applies new techniques which are then repeated and archived in the unconscious mind to come up in RH when required. As I said in the above comments just apply the techniques only when you really need to, then you will experience the feeling of drawing as well as assimilating the logical aspects of the process.
George when you feel as if you are trying to do things at the same time , your Left Hemisphere is feeling overwhelmed with all the information and believes it has to understand it all at once so that it can find a resolution. It has a tendency to do this and that is what causes stress. As it becomes overwhelmed our Beta brain waves shift gear to a faster rate and we move into flight/fight. This is designed so you can take action. In this case the action to take is to have one little thought at a time. Just say in your mind, ” I’m checking the horizontal that relates to my thumb and my pinky i.e. I’m looking at the part of my thumb, that is opposite the top of my pinky, now I’m drawing this contour.”
I’ll do a talking demo of the process;
“I’m drawing this contour and it goes up here and down about this far, here’s a little bump, I’m just going to sight with a horizontal the position of the little bump in relation to the contour opposite. I see it is about two thirds of the way along it. Now I’m drawing up here and along this straight line which then turns down here and around this curve. I’m just going to check where the next contour is in relation to what’s directly under it (you are now sighting with a vertical). I wonder what is directly opposite the top of this shape? I’ll imagine a horizontal across to it, ahh, I see that it comes half way up the right contour of the shape I have just done. Am I breathing? I’m just relaxing my jaw. Now I’m drawing this contour. I wonder where it starts in relation to what I’ve just drawn. I’ll check by using a horizontal, i.e. see what is directly opposite. You may then draw for a while without sighting at all and your words will fade and you have built new brain circuitry!
OK here I am again after a longer than planned break! So I have done a series of drawings of my hand and a foot. The first hand is here and I added on a horizontal line afterwards so I could see where it really should have been.
And my second attempt and I could see that one side was a bit too thin and the other a bit too wide.
Gosh, it goes on and on! Here is my next attempt where I think I have got it a bit better proportioned. Not too keen on including all the big veins on the back of my hand!
Then I had an enforced break and thought I might have forgotten what I was meant to be doing. So I tried a couple more views of my hand in different positions. This was a bit different and I found it quite to get the nails and tips of the fingers rightish.
Then I tried a clenched fist and the thumb went a bit strange and I wasn’t quite sure why. I must say I haven’t spent the amount of time Ella has been on each one and I can see they are not quite right but haven’t been able to see exactly why. But I have been checking a vertical and horizontal after I have done them and that seems to be more or less ok.
And finally a very quick attempt at my foot. I am far too old to spend much time with my foot up where I can see it clearly! Anyway, the toes are pretty bumpy and unsightly in real life and made some interesting shapes to try to reproduce.
Well done for repeating the drawings, the third is nicely proportioned, whereas the first two may be slightly elongated. It’s very easy to elongate hands, feet and bodies in general – been there, done that! You can use sighting to help establish the width of the palm, in relation to the length.
Place your pencil horizontally on your palm, with the tip on the left hand edge and your thumb and finger where the pencil intersects the right hand edge. Keeping thumb and finger in position, turn the pencil vertically and see how long your palm is in relation to how wide it is. Sighting can be confusing so let me know if you don’t get this and I’ll put up a drawing. The top half of my palm, not including my thumb is about one seventh narrower than the length of my palm. The bottom half, from the knuckle joint of my thumb on the left, to the right hand edge of my palm, is about the same as the length. You can also sight your longest finger in relation to the length of your palm. Everything is measureable!
You don’t have to draw every vein on the back of your hand – I know the feeling! You can render them by drawing one side of the vein with a broken contour and suggesting the other side with an occasional little contour in the places where you think the shadows are. You are doing well Jenny, the drawing with the foreshortened fingers is great! I can see you changed your monologue and looked at the fingers as abstract shapes, that’s the only way to draw complex visual information. The closed fist is also a very credible hand and well proportioned. The more you do the better you get! :
Hi Kimbra, thank you so much for your detailed explanations! They really help. Turns out I was overthinking once again ? My LH is so strong! ?
So, I took your suggestions on and use LH from time to time just to check the accuracy and drawing is so enjoyable once again! ?
Here is my first finished hand. Fingers were slightly bent but it’s not very noticeable on the drawing for some reason.
Next is my fist.
…and a foot.
Also, any special techniques for drawing with cats? J ? I think Jiji was asking me to draw his portrait instead of my hand ?
Haaahaaa – they are just the same as everything else – abstract shapes. Completely gorgeous ones!
Well done Ella, yes I can see this worked out for you, I’m so glad my explanations help. I have a strong LH too, it will be a good thing for your drawing, because you will gain an in depth understanding of the process. I think it is part of the highly sensitive persons deep experience of everything. As you can see there is always a way forward! These drawings are just lovely! 🙂
In relation to your comment about the fingers not looking as bent as they were – this is because the curves describing the segments of your fingers could be more curved. You could check this out again, (I don’t mean do another drawing, just have a look). When the fingers are bent the curves describing each segment are very pronounced – this gives the appearance of them bending.
Yes indeed, I think it’s the HSP part that makes me think too much. Haha, I even used the word “think” twice in one sentence ? I just can’t utilise skills fully unless I understand all aspects of a subject and all details. Hope it will be beneficial for drawing as you say ?
As for the curved fingers, I can now see where I went wrong. Thanks! ☺
It will all work very well for you Ella. The left hemisphere’s capacity to evaluate can be very beneficial – “I have done this drawing really well but it is not quite in proportion; if I make this angle a bit more acute and this contour longer, then it will be more accurate.”
Or it can be scolding, “This is a really hopeless drawing, I can’t draw, I need to give up.” It is a question of which voice we believe! :):)
Indeed! 🙂
hey! bits of this look like my hand! shock horror. (trying to be positive here when i am actually writhing in embarassment!) whew
Well done! Hands are very challenging to draw, there’s lots going on. It’s also challenging drawing your own hand because it is immobilised which creates some discomfort, so to have held it there and observed it as well as you did, whilst measuring with the verticals and horizontals is great, I can see that you have done that because I’ve drawn my hand in the same position (or as close as I could get) and the finger tips are in about the same places – you did well!
The issues you are picking up are to do with some other factors. I think we are seeing more of the top of your palm than may have been visible. Enlarging the foreshortened palm is entirely normal at this stage because you know how wide your actual palm is. Here it is slightly in perspective, i.e. moving away from the eye, so we see less of it than we would see if it was flat directly under our eyes. Have another look at the wrinkles describing the finger joints. Some are surprisingly straight, concave rather than convex, with unexpected shifts in direction.. All these little contours enable us to “read” the positions of the fingers and the structure of the joints. They have some shifts in direction and straight lines. We tend to think they are all curved in the same direction.
The sleeve of your jersey describes the form of the wrist, which is comprised of two planes, one flat on the top, the other falling away to create the side of the forearm. This creates a shift in direction on the sleeve describing how it turns around the arm. Have a look at your sleeve and notice the way it describes these planes. All good Shan, keep em coming and with each one your understanding will grow. Each drawing you send is the perfect place for you to move on. 🙂
You can measure the length of your palm in relation to it’s width by putting the end of the pencil at the top of your palm and your thumb on the pencil where it meets the bottom of your palm. Then turn the pencil horizontally on the palm to see how much wider the length is in relation to the width. Make some little marks on the paper to indicate this relationship. You can also plot the position of the tips of the fingers by putting in dots before you start drawing.
When we plot in this way it’s only a guide – you may change those relationships as you go. Changing your mind by using a rubber is part of the process. If you find you’re using a rubber alot, it may mean you have slipped into your LH – breathe, relax and change your monologue to visual language – I’m just drawing this one little line…
Without making excuses (?!) my eyesight is a bit compromised at that distance but anyway… i’ll do some more tomorrow! thanks for the great feedback, i especially loved seeing your drawing and reading your comments about the sleeve. I tried harder with the hem of my jeans to draw what was there. Off to get a pedicure now!! Ha ha! xx
Well done with the foot. I can see your growing awareness of the shifts in direction and how many of them are followed by a tiny curve then a straight line. I really like the way you’ve drawn the toes and toenails. Each contour and tiny shift in direction describing the structure. Yes, you handled the jeans very well., each shift describing the structure and volume of your ankle. Your observational skills are developing – exciting!