“How To Draw A Circle”

Okay, since the last posting you’ve spent all your time finding different ways to draw straight lines. I’m sure you’ve been having a wonderful time.

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?”

1. Coffee jars
2. Wine bottles
3. Tin cans
4. Vacuum cleaner hoses and fitments
5. Broom sticks
6. Door handles (door knobs)
7. Pencils and crayons
8. 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.

“How To Draw A Straight Line”

I gave you a challenge in the last posting “What is stopping you drawing?” The challenge was to list as many different ways you could find to help you draw a straight line.

Here are 7 easy solutions to the problem of drawing a straight line…

1. Use a ruler
2. Use a straight edge (draughtsman’s square, T-square, engineer’s rule.)
3. Use the straight edge of the paper or sketch pad
4. Use the edge of the drawing board
5. Use a DVD box edge
6. Use a book edge
7. Use the straight edge of a kitchen work surface or table top

Finally… Draw a freehand straight line.

You’ll agree that it’s not hard to find a straight edge to help you draw a straight line. There are straight edges all around.

It’s easy to say that there are straight edges you can use. However, it isn’t quite so easy to understand how some of the straight edges can be used.

Let’s take a look at each device listed and see what they can do to make it easy for your straight lines…

1. Almost every school child will understand how to use a ruler. They wouldn’t think twice about placing their ruler on a piece of paper and drawing a pencil along the edge. Whether it is a cheap plastic ruler or an expensive steel engineer’s rule you can get a straight line any time you want.

2. There are many draughtsman’s aids that you can buy from your stationary store… T-squares, set squares, rulers and many other tools I have forgotten about (I used to be an engineer draughtsman).

If you want to draw a line at an angle you can easily find that there is a device that has been designed to help.

3. A sketch book has a straight edge. If you hold a pencil in your hand normally, between thumb and first 2 fingers, you have 2 fingers spare. You can use the little finger as a guide.

You draw a straight line by running your hand down the edge of the sketch book. If you want to draw parallel lines you just increase or decrease the gap between the guide finger and the pencil… really easy.

4. If you use a drawing board the same technique can be used as with the edge of the sketch book. The advantage here is that you can swivel the paper to draw lines at different angles.

If you aren’t using a sketch book and aren’t using a drawing board, this is where you improvise.

Anything with a straight edge will help…

5. A CD case or DVD box can be used a ruler.

6. The edge of a book will help you draw a line.

7. The table top or kitchen work surface that you are drawing at could have straight edges. As with a drawing board, this straight edge is all you need to draw as many straight lines as you like.

So, are you getting the idea that drawing a straight line isn’t really too hard? I hope so because there will be a greater challenge in the future…

One day you will want to draw a freehand straight line. This is hard to do but don’t worry about it… I’ll give you some thoughts that make it less scary.

See you soon

Michael


p.s. In the meantime, have some fun drawing as many straight lines as you can. Try to find as many different ways you can think of to draw your straight lines.

p.p.s. For those artists who already know how to draw… I’ve just found a figure drawing resource that sounds great. I’ll give it thorough look and let you know how good it is.