You could have thought that drawing straight lines was difficult. In practice it has been easy for you… Apart from the occasional slip of the pencil, drawing straight lines with straight edges has made it simple.
The only difficulty you will have is to draw a freehand straight line without the aid of a straight edge. This won’t surprise you too much… it’s like jumping from an airplane without a parachute… only the landing is just a little less painful.
We’ll come back to the subject of freehand lines (and curves) in a future posting.
Now its time to think about circles and arcs using the same tricks…
“How many things can you find in your house that have a round shape?”
- Coffee jars
- Wine bottles
- Tin cans
- Vacuum cleaner hoses and fitments
- Broom sticks
- Door handles (door knobs)
- Pencils and crayons
- DVDs and CDs
You can easily add to this list. There are endless items that are round shaped. Each round shape can be used to draw a line around to create circles. With a variety of different household items you can quickly draw any number of different sized circles.
As a child, I remember there was a toy called ‘Spirograph’ that used different circles with gear teeth and holes for pens to point through that gave intricate patterns and designs… it kept me quiet for hours… great fun.
But, you don’t have to spend a single penny. There are hundreds of things you can draw a line around. You don’t need to use clever toys. You don’t have to buy expensive designer equipment to draw circles.
I know this will sound dumb… Using any round object gives you exactly the same possibilities that high cost drawing tools give you.
Provided you have imagination, you can create complex and wonderful designs using items that you use every day.
Here’s your challenge for today…
Using a few different sized kitchen items (bottles and jars) try to create some intricate designs…
- Circles inside circles
- Circles that intersect (cross) other circles
- Circles inside circles combined with circles that intersect
- Circles that combine into flowing links and chains
Let your imagination go wild while you create your designs… don’t worry if you don’t get anything remarkable. My bet is that you will surprise yourself with incredible patterns and flowing shapes.
The idea is that you will be confident that you can draw a good circle any time you want.
If you want to make things more challenging try to create a design with just one circular item alone…
I’d like to see your results.
See you soon
Michael
p.s. Don’t forget… an arc is nothing more than part of a circle… so nothing dramatic here.
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