Drawing fundamentals

What changes after them is the first move of the pencil. Instead of running a contour along the edge of an object, you start with the axis and with how the object stands, which way it tilts and which side it is turned to; the boundary of the form appears last and lands in the right place by itself. Hatching stops being coloring in: it lies along the form, value is built up in layers, and the light stays light because nobody smudged it in advance.

Drawing basics for beginners usually break down at the core shadow. The form shadow gets confused with the cast shadow, the reflected light is buried in full darkness, and the sphere comes out as a flat circle with a gray side. Next to that sits a second problem: crosshatching all over the surface, which makes the value muddy and the form unreadable from any distance. The cure is the value-scale exercise and one honest sphere drawn all the way through. Until the transition from light to halftone and on into shadow is in place, there is no sense in going on to a still life, let alone the figure.

Watch them in order, starting with hatching and value, and do not put the pencil down: the classes assume that you stop the recording and repeat what you saw. An hour of drawing value scales gives you more than three hours of watching. Once the sphere and the cylinder start standing on the surface instead of floating on it, you can move on.

Five classes are not enough for the fundamentals, and that is worth saying plainly: you will not learn to draw from scratch with one section. The continuation is scattered across neighboring sections — value scales and simple objects are covered in Light and Shade, linear construction drawing and rhythm in Composition, and after that the head and the figure begin. There is no feedback on your work here either: these are recordings of classes, not a course with review. If you need your own sheets looked at, see the Work Reviews section and the live streams.