The Essential Book of Drawing & Illustration: A step-by-step guide to artistic excellence

By Peter Gray

If you have always wanted to excel at drawing, then The Essential Book of Drawing & Illustration is for you. All you need is a pencil, a blank piece of paper and the expert guidance you will find in these pages. This book will systematically teach you the basics of drawing and help you to develop your own drawing style.

Suitable for beginners and improvers alike, the easy-to-follow exercises and demonstrations tackle all aspects of our environment, from simple object drawing to people and landscapes. Including advice on sketching and observation, perspective and techniques, this practical guide contains everything you need to know to create striking artworks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: Mar 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398832626

Book preview

Introduction

I often hear people say, ‘I wish I could draw’. Perhaps you too have found yourself uttering those words. The response that immediately springs to my mind is ‘Why don’t you?’ Of all the pursuits open to us, drawing is perhaps the easiest to take up, requiring only minimal equipment: a pencil and some blank paper.

The fact is that nearly everyone draws already. Who has not sketched a rough map to give directions, or made doodles on a telephone message pad? In these activities are two of the essential elements of drawing: selection and simplification, and uninhibited mark making. The third element is observation. In ordinary life, people see what they have already learnt is likely to be there, but through the process of drawing we overcome our expectations and notice subtleties of shape and structure, texture and pattern, light and shade. We develop sight into insight.

Drawing is a form of art, and art does not recognize boundaries or fit into neat pigeonholes. However, to make this vast and varied activity approachable, this book is divided into broad areas of subject matter. From simple object drawing we move on to tackle all aspects of our environment, people and animals. A certain amount of art theory will necessarily be introduced along the way, but I’ve tried to keep this to a minimum and explain things, wherever possible, through practical demonstrations.

The book is designed as a course, with each new subject following naturally from the previous one. To get the most out of it, work your way through from page one. Suitable for complete beginners as well as those who have some experience, the book opens with the most elementary drawing exercises. You may be inclined to find your own way through the book and skip to subjects and techniques that suit your interests. With this in mind, a comprehensive index should allow you to check back to previous exercises and pick up any information you have missed.

There is so much more to drawing than acquiring the facility to copy from a picture or object. It is also about developing your own subjects and compositions and finding individual means of expression. Unlike many other drawing manuals, this book aims to direct you towards imaginative end results, introducing in each subject area ideas for developing your sketches into various forms of illustration and design. When following the step-by-step exercises, try to resist simply copying mine. Find similar subjects of your own and work through the stages to create new pictures rather than mere copies.

I hope to debunk some of the myths that persist around the practices and processes of drawing. It is true that some people are born with exceptional gifts, but these are rare and most artists achieve their proficiency through fascination and sheer persistence. You may look at an artist’s drawings and think that they were produced effortlessly, but that’s what they want you to think. Behind every successful drawing lies a great deal of thought, application and a history of mistakes and false starts. Even the most advanced draughtsman will always see their faults and strive for improvement. In that light, an accomplished artist’s drawings are no different from your own faltering first steps; all are mere stages on a journey that has no end. Interesting discoveries await at every turn. The going may sometimes be arduous, but there will also be times when things click into place and you surge ahead. Above all, drawing should never be boring, so if you find a subject tedious, accept that it’s not for you at that time, and move on. The best way to stay the course is to enjoy yourself. Like so much of life, what you get out of drawing is dependent on what you put in. It is an activity that calls for dedication, experimentation and play, and rewards you with satisfaction and a heightened appreciation of the world around you.

Peter Gray

THE FIRST MARKS

Before a drawing begins, the artist opens his or her sketchbook, chooses and sharpens a pencil, and then there comes a brief moment of anticipation, excitement and even fear. It takes something like courage to make the first mark on the virgin paper, but once that mark is made, the others soon flow.

This chapter deals with the first marks you make coming to the activity as a complete novice and aims to steer you around some of the mental stumbling blocks that could be awaiting you. From the very start you should aim to draw with confidence and expression, even at the expense of precision. Some very simple exercises should limber you up and get you comfortable with holding a pencil and pushing it about on the paper.

If you have some experience of drawing, much of the information contained within this short chapter will probably be familiar to you already. Whatever level you feel you are at, it never does any harm to be reminded of the basics, so I urge you to at least read the early pages, even if you choose to give the exercises a miss.

Basic materials and equipment

One of the great things about taking up drawing is that you need very little equipment to get started. There is a large and highly profitable industry in artists’ materials and some of the elaborate items on show in art shops can be very tempting, but fancy media and equipment generally do little to improve skills and can confuse the issue of learning how to draw. To start with you’ll need pencils, paper, an eraser and a knife, but throughout the book we’ll look at other materials and tools you might want to experiment with and add to your kit.

Pencils

Although any pencil will do for mastering the basics of drawing, cheap ones can be scratchy and unsatisfying to work with. It’s well worth splashing out on a few good-quality pencils from an art supplies shop. They are graded from H (hard) to B (black) with a number prefix indicating the degree of hardness or blackness. A useful starting set would be H, HB, 2B and 6B.

Eraser

An eraser is a vital part of your kit. There’s absolutely no shame in erasing mistakes and rough guidelines – they are an important part of the