Art Activity #12: Draw to Draw Part 1
Wait a minute…part one?! This activity has more than one part?
That’s right! Today I am introducing a very fun activity that I like to call Draw to Draw. I was inspired by one of my favourite artists, Carson Ellis, who calls this activity Transmundane Tuesdays (and posts prompts every Tuesday on her website). The way this works, is I draw (as in randomly select) three different prompts, which are then combined into a character design that I then draw (as in sketch). In this first part, I am going to be focusing on the second draw and showing you my sketching process. This will hopefully give you a sense of how I go from having no idea what to draw at all to a completed sketch. Let’s get started!
To complete this activity you will need:
a canvas of some sort (a piece of paper, a piece of card stock, or even a blank screen if you are working digitally)
an erasable medium (pencil is easiest)
an eraser (to erase with!)
your imagination (to bring the prompts to life)
prompts (I will post a few different options later in this post - pick the one you find the most inspiring!)
Follow these steps to complete this activity:
Pick your prompt. Scroll down to the bottom of this post to see your options! The prompt that I drew from my assortment of prompts was the following: carrying a box, has a very long tail, and wearing a ballgown.
Consider your prompt. What do you see in your mind when you read those three qualities together? What I saw in my head was an alligator-like character of a sort with a very long tail, carrying a box somewhere while wearing a very fancy dress. This is what I am going to try to draw. The fun thing about this activity is that everyone will picture the same prompts differently! Seeing a wide variety of characters drawn from the same prompts is super inspiring!
Start your sketch. The first thing I do is draw out some very light, loose, basic shapes of where I want the different parts of my sketch to be. I knew I needed space for a head, a box, arms to carry the box with, a dress, and a very long tail, so I quickly jotted down where I thought those shapes would fit on my canvas, and this is what I came up with…
These basic outlines will serve as a map for me to be able to focus on drawing each piece on its own while staying aware of where all the other elements of my drawing are.
4. Surprisingly, to make this map easier to use, we need to make it harder to see. Part of why we draw it so lightly to begin with is to make erasing it much easier to do. Take your eraser and gently go over your map, lightening it up to the point where you can make it out, but just barely. If you’re drawing digitally as I am, you can add another layer to your composition and manipulate the transparency of the first layer to make it as light as you can, as you can see in my example. I also wrote down the prompts on my sheet so I can easily refer to them, whether you do that is up to you.
5. Start to fill in the details of your sketch. I find it easiest to start where I am the most comfortable, which for me is the face. I drew the tail early on too because I was excited to see what I could do with it. Work slowly, draw lightly, and don’t be afraid to erase parts that you want to change. This drawing took me two and half hours to complete, some sketches can take ten times as long. There is no shame in working slowly, trying things out, or erasing and changing things to make your vision come to life.
6. Work from big and basic to small and detailed. As you add more to your sketch you will notice your map disappearing, which is what we want!
7. Here we have the basics done, and it’s time to get fancy and add details. I wanted to add spikes to their tail, so I sketched them on in zig zags, but quickly realized that I didn’t want the spikes poking through their dress, so I erased half of the zig zags to make it look like the dress was laying on top of their spiky tail. This was a small edit that made the finished sketch look more planned out. I erased some of the zig zag along the rest of the tail to make it all look like one piece, and I like this change as well. You can see the difference between the two images below.
8. Now we get to the finest smallest details. I find these details to be the most fun as they tend to bring the art together. I gave my creature freckles, added stripes to the critter they are carrying, and coloured some parts of it in to add shading and contrast.
Here is my completed sketch!
You can watch my whole process, including colouring, in this video:
Now that we have covered the sketching process, I am excited to present you with your prompts for this week! You can choose any of the following, follow the sketching process, and share your completed sketch with your classroom teacher on teams, and with me via my email address: smarks@vsb.bc.ca
Your Prompts
I can’t wait to see your beautiful artwork and share it here on the site!
Click here for Part 2, where we cover how to make your own set of prompts!
