Blog

Jul 11 2022

How to Draw Rabbits

All year long (except perhaps winter) at the Pence ranch in North Texas, we have lots and lots of bunnies. (They drive our little dog, Skeeter, crazy!) So this week we’re learning to draw rabbits. I’ve assembled a collection of Web sites that offer step-by-step tutorials on how to draw rabbits, along with a few sites that feature paintings and/or sketches of rabbits.

STEP BY STEP TUTORIALS:

HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY STEP BY STEP — This one’s cartoonish, but it’s also easy, so it will be good for younger children. Instead of starting with an outline, you work from basic shapes to a finished drawing. It also comes with a printable drawing guide!

https://www.easypeasyandfun.com/how-to-draw-a-bunny/

DRAWSKETCH.ABOUT.COM: DRAW A BUNNY — This step-by-step tutorial follows a similar process, but you work from a photograph of a rabbit. It’s a more challenging approach and the final result is a more refined drawing. Middle graders and up should find it a challenge.

http://drawsketch.about.com/od/drawanimalsstepbystep/ss/drawbunnyrabbit.htm

EASY DRAWINGS AND SKETCHES – HOW TO DRAW A RABBIT — This is the most challenging of the step-by-step tutorials. However, it also offers you the opportunity to learn a little about drawing with a grid. Instead of using shapes, you sketch the rabbit by first drawing a 3×3 grid and then copying portions the image “box-by-box”. This page also has clickable images that enlarge to give you a better visual to work from.

http://www.easy-drawings-and-sketches.com/draw-a-rabbit.html

RABBITS IN ART:

If you’re interested in seeing a sampling of sketches and artistic treatments of rabbits, check out the following Web sites:

http://www.linesandcolors.com/2011/04/22/jonathan-jones-top-five-rabbits-in-art/

http://www.sketchingeveryday.com/2008/08/more-rabbits-and-bunnies-oh-my.html

VIDEO

Here’s a very brief demo of how to draw a realistic-looking bunny. It’s pretty basic (no shading), but good practice. Watch it and then try it yourself.

Jul 04 2022

How to Draw Horses

My wife Laurel and I live in Texas and, although we don’t have any horses, they are all around us. As a matter of fact, we occasionally feed our next door neighbors’ horses when they are away, and it’s always an amazing experience.

Our neighbors have a long driveway that crosses the horses’ main pasture. When we walk over there, they know it’s “goodie time.” As we walk up that driveway, these two huge animals come up and walk right alongside us. Sometimes they’ll even nuzzle our ears as we walk. It’s an awe-inspiring experience. I’m 6’1″ and they’re both taller than I am!

This week’s how-to-draw post is about horses. I’ve pulled together some great Web resources for your homeschool art class, with suggestions for children from Kindergarten on up. So get out your pencils and let’s have some fun.

STEP-BY-STEP

“Cartoonish” Horse (for K-1) — http://printables.scholastic.com/printables/detail/?id=27738

This is great for K-1st grade (and maybe a little older). It’s a cartoonish style, but its simplicity is what makes it useful. Very easy for young children.

Easy Horse Line Drawing (Elementary to middle school) — http://www.samanthasbell.com/horse-drawing-step-step/

This step-by-step is a more realistic drawing, but it’s still fairly easy. Good for middle graders.

Advanced: Horse drawing — http://drawsketch.about.com/od/learntodrawhorses/ss/draw-horse-head.htm

PRINTABLES

Horse Activity Pages — http://www.printactivities.com/Theme-Printables/Horse-Printables.html

Here’s a page full of “horse-themed” printable activity pages, including some coloring pages for younger children.

VIDEO:

Finally, here’s a short video about how to draw a horse “portrait” (just the head). It’s a good project for an intermediate student.

Jun 27 2022

How to Draw Eagles

Today, we’re going to have a (sort of) patriotic theme by learning how to draw eagles. The Web sites I’ve listed below will give your children several different approaches to drawing eagles. Some are fairly easy and others a bit more challenging. I hope you’ll have fun with this.

Four ways to draw an eagle:

The following link from Wikihow gives you four different approaches to drawing an eagle, including how to draw an eagle “in flight.”

http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Eagle

How to draw an eagle in 8 easy steps:

This tutorial takes you through an 8-step process of drawing an eagle. The web page also lists some interesting facts about eagles.

http://www.wedrawanimals.com/how-to-draw-an-eagle/

How to draw a cartoon eagle:

If your child is interested in cartooning, this Web page shows how to draw a cartoon eagle.

http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/cartoon-eagle.html

VIDEO:

How to draw a “cute” (cartoony) eagle

Jun 20 2022

The Elements of Art – Introduction

Have you ever heard of the seven elements of art? Do you know what they are?

Try comparing them to the elements found in nature: hydrogen, oxygen, iron, gold, etc. Just as everything we see is made up of some combination of natural elements, so all art is made up of some combination of the art elements.

There are 118 physical elements on the periodic table, with 94 occurring naturally. However, there’s a difference of opinion on the number of art elements that can be identified. Some people suggest only five, others six, but most lists include seven.

If you plan to teach art at home, the elements of art are foundational. So today’s post is focused on helping you understand the elements and incorporate them into your homeschool art curriculum.

Here’s a list of the elements. Some of the terms are self-explanatory, but others might need a bit of explanation:

Line – Just look around you and you’ll see lines everywhere. Thick and thin. Short and long. Straight and curved. Zig-zagged.

Shape – The next step up from a line is a shape. Circle. Triangle. Square. Trapezoid. Blob. (Sounds like we’re back in geometry class, except for that last one!)

Form – A form is a shape with dimension. Whether it’s an actual object or a drawing of something that is rendered to look like it’s 3-D.

Texture – Smooth, rough, bumpy, jagged, shiny, dull.

Space – Space is a bit tricky, especially when you’re thinking in terms of a “flat” painting. Essentially, space is the area taken up by an object. However, often artists will use “negative space” (the space around an object) in their work.

Color – As opposed to a “neutral” such as gray, black, or white.

Value – The lightness or darkness of an object.

Now that you know the basic elements of art, how do you teach them to your children? Here are several Web sites and videos that may be of help. Check them out:

This link will take you to a brief “slide show” that covers the basic elements:

http://www.slideshare.net/kpikuet/elements-and-principles-of-art-presentation

Here’s a link to a web page that lists ideas for teaching your children about the elements of art. (Note: This site is from the U.K., so the terminology is a bit different. But it’s still a good resource.)

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/art/elements.htm

The following article from arthistory.about.com explains why the elements are important.

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/elements.htm

Finally, the following super-short video (about 1 min) will give you a quick reference for understanding the art elements. This video lists 8 elements (see what I mean about a difference of opinion regarding the number?), including Type (as in print/typeface) as an element.

Jun 13 2022

Drawing Bootcamp 2: Modified Contour Drawing

Last week we learned how to do a blind contour drawing. If you’ve had a chance to practice it–and I hope you have–you probably experienced more than a little frustration. After all, when we draw we want to be pleased with the results. But that’s not easy with blind contour drawing. In fact, more often than not, our finished “drawing” actually looks more like a two-year-old’s scribbling.

Don’t get discouraged. Remember, blind contour drawing is not an end in itself but rather a means to an end. It’s like an athlete warming up before a game. When football players, stretch out before a game, the stretching isn’t an end in itself. People don’t pay big bucks to go watch 22 men sit on a field and stretch. Football players stretch partially to prevent injury and partially to maximize performance. The more limber they are, the better they can perform.

Blind contour drawing is kind of like stretching. The more you practice it, the better you will be come at drawing what you see.

Today we’re going to take it one step further and do what is called modified contour drawing. It’s almost exactly the same as blind contour drawing with one small change. In blind contour drawing you are not allowed to look at the paper at all. With modified contour drawing you are allowed to look back and forth between the object you’re drawing and your paper.

Here’s how to do a modified contour drawing. My subject again is going to be a coffee mug.

1. First, set up your work area. If you are right-handed, your coffee mug will be on your left and your paper will be off to the right. Reverse this if you are left-handed.

2. Next, choose a place on the coffee mug (or whatever object you’ve chosen to draw) where you will focus your eyes. Then place your pencil somewhere on your paper. (Make sure that you’ve got enough space to draw the mug.)

3. Now as you did before, trace the outside of the mug with your eyes and allow your hand to move in the same direction. I tell my students to pretend that there is an invisible cable connecting their hand and their eyes. This time, it’s okay to flick your eyes back and forth from the mug to the paper. You should still spend 90% of your time looking at the coffee mug, but by checking the paper every now and then you can make sure that your hand isn’t trailing off somewhere.

The key to this is going very slowly. Don’t be in a rush to complete the drawing. And remember that you’re only drawing the contour (that is, the outside edge). You don’t need to worry about shading or any of the details. At this point, we just want the basic shape.

Here’s the modified contour drawing that I just did of my favorite coffee mug. Now you give it a try.

Jun 06 2022

Drawing Bootcamp: Blind Contour Drawing

How to Do a Blind Contour Drawing

Athletes stretch their muscles before they work out. Do you know how to stretch your drawing muscles?

No, I’m not talking about flexing your fingers and wrists so your hands don’t get sore when you draw. I’m talking about teaching your hand and eyes to work together.

One of the first exercises I give students in my drawing classes is called blind contour drawing, and it’s a great way to begin learning how to draw what you see.

In blind contour drawing, you will draw the outline of an object without looking at your paper.

(My students usually freak out the first time I ask them to do this!)

“It’ll look terrible!” they protest.

Yes, it probably will. But turning out a beautiful, finished drawing isn’t the purpose of this exercise. The goal of blind contour drawing is to train yourself to sketch exactly what you see. And the more you do this, the better you will get at it.

So how do you do a blind contour drawing? Here’s how, step by step:

1. Choose any object you’d like to draw. For your first few tries, I suggest drawing something simple, like a coffee mug, a piece of fruit, etc. You want a basic shape, nothing too complex.

2. If you’re right handed, position the object in front of you, but over to the left, so that you have to turn your head away from your paper to see it. If you’re left handed, put the object to the right and the paper on the left.

3. Now, put the tip of your pencil on the paper.

4. Look at the object and slowly draw the outline of the object without looking at the paper (don’t take your pencil tip off of the paper).

[TIP: Begin by focusing on a particular location on the object, then try to follow the outline of the object with your eyes as you draw.]

When you’re finished, look at your finished drawing. Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t look anything like the object. Remember: the idea is to train your hand and eye to work together.

To give you an idea of what a blind contour drawing looks like, I just did a drawing of one of my favorite objects: a coffee mug. (It’s not that I particularly like drawing mugs; I just like coffee, so I always have one handy!)

Here’s my blind contour drawing of my coffee mug. (Note: I went back over the lines with a darker pencil, so it would show up better.)

Now it’s your turn. Blind contour drawing may be frustrating at first, but if you stick with it, your blind drawings will eventually look less like “chicken scratches” and more like the object you’re trying to draw. And the better you get, the more complicated images you can try drawing this way.

Challenge: Do at least one blind contour drawing each day for the next week.

Next time, I’ll show you how to refine the process so that your drawings look more realistic.

Keep drawing! – Jim Pence