Check Out NMA    Learn More About our Partnership
Close and Enjoy Drawabox Ad-free
View Full Submission View Parent Comment
2:21 AM, Monday February 3rd 2020

I do have a video in lesson 1's page on this topic, and it is on my list of videos to redo so I'll try and address it more at that time. It's not going to be coming up in the next few weeks though as I'll need time to recover from all the work that has gone into the community platform.

That said, there is one important thing your question overlooks, though that may be understandable if you haven't gotten too far into lesson 1's exercises just yet: we always rotate the page in order to give ourselves as comfortable an angle of approach as we can. That is, that's what we do in the context of these lessons, in order to build up the general understanding of how the arm works, and how best to use it. Outside of Drawabox, you apply that understanding, but you aren't bound to any such rules.

3:17 AM, Monday February 3rd 2020
edited at 4:11 PM, Feb 3rd 2020

So then in general is it possible to make a stroke that starts with the elbow and then switches to the shoulder in a fluid, flowing motion, or is it universally always better to try and use only the shoulder? It feels like it'd be a useful skill to have, especially if you want to hit lines at weird angles on a surface that you can't rotate. Also, if you want to draw a large cirlce in front of you, it feels like you can either have your arm hanging at your side and make the motion by using both elbow movement and shoulder movement, or else you have to have your arm out in front of you and bend your elbow at a 90 degree angle, which lets you draw the circle without moving your elbow too much but it feels really exaggerated.

I think I just want to be able to draw without worrying about whether I'm using too much elbow movement or whatever. It seems like it'd be stressful to have to keep track of something like that constantly.

edited at 4:11 PM, Feb 3rd 2020
3:24 AM, Monday February 3rd 2020

Is it possible? I'm sure it is. Is it worth actually putting the work into developing that skill when you could instead be moving onto concepts that are vastly more important when it comes to drawing? Probably not.

A lot of students get caught up on that with the topic of being able to draw from any angle rather than rotating the page to find an angle of approach that feels comfortable and using that most of the time. The comparison is basically between a student who was able to do that and move on to learn other concepts and develop their overall drawing skills, and a student who got really good at drawing lines in any direction. The latter's a novelty.

Once you've got the wider array of skills down, then you can absolutely come back and hone the areas that will actually benefit you - but until then, it's not a good use of your time.

4:30 PM, Monday February 3rd 2020

Sorry, I didn't notice the "view more comments in this thread" button, so I had edited my comment thinking that you hadn't replied yet, but I'll ask my other question here too.

If you're drawing a large cirlce, counterclockwise, in front of the center of your body, and your arm is hanging plumb at your side, don't you have to use both elbow and shoulder movement so your arm can maneuver around your torso? Aren't there times during a motion like this where your elbow is almost touching the side of your body and you're not physically able to move your arm any further using your shoulder, necessitating elbow movement? I feel like this applies to almost all other curved lines too, and that during these, even if the motion starts with the shoulder, you have to add in some elbow movement in order to move your arm around your torso.

The only way I can imagine to make the circle or curved line without using a lot of elbow movement is to either draw the whole thing far to the right of your body, away from your torso, or to hold your arm out in front of you with your elbow bent at a 90 degree angle, which sounds awkward. Is this how you want us to do this?

View more comments in this thread
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

Right from when students hit the 50% rule early on in Lesson 0, they ask the same question - "What am I supposed to draw?"

It's not magic. We're made to think that when someone just whips off interesting things to draw, that they're gifted in a way that we are not. The problem isn't that we don't have ideas - it's that the ideas we have are so vague, they feel like nothing at all. In this course, we're going to look at how we can explore, pursue, and develop those fuzzy notions into something more concrete.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.