Check Out NMA    About our Partnership    Collapse this Ad

direction of line

8:45 PM, Sunday September 13th 2020

Hi all

I'm new to Drawabox today. I graduated from art school many years ago, but am seriously out of practice. So I'm here trying to get my eyes, hands and hopefully my brain back in sync.

I'm just workng my way through lesson one and am interested in what Irshad says about having a naturally dominant direction for drawing a confident line. It makes sense of course, but I've never thought about it before. I'm right handed and it does feel quite comfortable drawing at a 45 degree angle from lower left to upper right. However, working in this direction means that my hand obscures the destination point making it difficult to hit the mark ( I know that accuracy is not the primary objective at tis stage, but it will be necessary at some point). Working from right to left is perhaps slightly less naturel, but I can see the direction of travel.

I'd be interested to hear other people thoughts on this.

Thanks

Report
2 users agree
10:49 PM, Sunday September 13th 2020

I just move my head and can see the destination point quite easily. Ghosting to the point helps too.

12:07 PM, Monday September 14th 2020

Thanks

2 users agree
11:44 PM, Monday September 14th 2020

You shouldn't need to see the end point. This is part of the reason for the ghosting method, to ingrain the muscle memory of the movement so that you don't need to see exactly where you're going and to be able to execute confidently and later, after much practice, accurately.

0 users agree
7:35 PM, Monday September 14th 2020

I'm using the Staedtler pigment pen, that works fine even when it's not at 90 degree. So if moving my head isn't enough, I simply lower the angle to gain more visibility. Hope it can help!

0 users agree
11:04 PM, Thursday September 17th 2020

I'm a lot like you in what is comfortable for me. I like to go from lower left to upper right and I am right handed. I found that if I shifted the angle just enough so I could see the destination point, then that was a workable solution for me. It isn't quite 45 degrees, but close enough I can deal with it. Also, turn your paper as much as you need to so you can get then angle you want. I noticed Uncomfortable recommends turning your paper as much as needed. Hope that helps.

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 we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Framed Ink

Framed Ink

I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.

Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.

Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.

Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.

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