[Today’s run: rest day]<\/p>\n
I college I took two semesters of freehand drawing.\u00a0 I never was very good at it.<\/p>\n
But, I was pondering this morning,\u00a0 I really had the wrong attitude when I took that class.\u00a0 I remember feeling like there was some secret to it, that other people in the class knew more about how to do it and that I just didn’t have a talent for drawing.\u00a0 Mechanical drafting class had some “how-to-do-it” rules and steps.\u00a0 But freehand drawing was just put it down on paper the way you see it. \u00a0 Class after class it was a deer-in-the-headlights feeling.<\/p>\n
I think my attitude is changing.\u00a0 Partly that is because I now see my wife doing such a good job with her oil paintings.\u00a0 And she didn’t have any training in drawing or drafting\u00a0 (that I know of).<\/p>\n
Another thing.\u00a0 I thought at the time that there was a “right” way to do freehand drawing.\u00a0 Like it would be cheating to lay things out with a ruler, or take a picture and then trace the picture.\u00a0 Now I’m not so sure.Before cameras were invented, various gizmos were around which could be used to project a scene into a flat surface.\u00a0 An artist could put some paper on the flat surface and trace the outlines of the scene.\u00a0 Anyone who has actually tried this knows that it makes things sound easy, but it really isn’t much easier.\u00a0 There is still the need to simplify down to the basic elements.<\/p>\n
So my point today:\u00a0 if you are learning to draw\/paint, or learning a musical instrument, or a new sport, or how to write sonnets,\u00a0 it is not cheating to use whatever means are at hand.\u00a0 The number one thing needed when starting out is persistence.\u00a0\u00a0 Almost anyone with average hand\/eye coordination can eventually learn to draw a straight line or a pretty good circle.\u00a0 But it takes a lot of work.\u00a0 Using some helps, if they help you persist, maybe will get you into a part of the learning curve where your talent can start to come out.<\/p>\n
I do remember some starting-out exercises we used in the freehand class:<\/p>\n
1 – make two dots on your paper, not too far apart.\u00a0 Draw a straight line from one dot to the other.\u00a0\u00a0 Do that a lot, until you can almost always hit the dot in a straight shot.\u00a0 Start spreading the dots farther apart.\u00a0 Do it right to left, left to right.<\/p>\n
2 – draw a line.\u00a0 estimate the center point of the line and draw a dot there.\u00a0 You can test your center by folding the paper in half so the ends of your line meet.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do that a lot.<\/p>\n
3 – draw a straight line, estimate the center.\u00a0 Draw another line that goes through the center dot of the first line.\u00a0 make marks on your two lines, 4 marks, all of equal distance from the intersection.\u00a0 Draw arcs to make a rough circle.\u00a0 Do that a lot, making your circle more circlish.\u00a0 Eventually try making a circle by just selecting the center and four radius dots.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: rest day] I college I took two semesters of freehand drawing.\u00a0 I never was very good at it. But, I was pondering this morning,\u00a0 I really had the wrong attitude when I took that class.\u00a0 I remember feeling like there was some secret to it, that other people in the class knew more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2592,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2590\/revisions\/2592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}