Time Saving Drawing Tips
Lesson 1
Cleanliness
This class will focus on the three D’s of time mis-management in the studio: dirtiness, disorganization, and desperation.
In the first class, we will focus on cleanliness, because it is the easiest of those three to fix.
Just keep in mind that there are three different levels to consider: your studio space, your hands, and the drawing surface.
Psychologically, you will do better if you start your work on it uncluttered clean surface, so your first step to cleanliness is to pick up your studio.
Make sure that the table that you’re drawing on is physically clean and that there are no sticky patches, crumbs, or other things on the surface that could affect your drawing.
Clear a nice, large area big enough to draw on without feeling cornered or hemmed in, and keep nothing on it except the tools that you need for the drawing.
Keeping your hands clean is also relatively easy.
First of all, make sure that when you’re working on your drawing, you work from top to bottom and don’t add the heavy tone that is most prone to smearing until the final stages.
While you are in the middle of the drawing, try to avoid touching the surface as much as possible.
There are many things you can use to help you do this.
White cotton gloves with the fingers cut off except for the pinky will ensure that no oils from your hands mar the surface of your paper.
Also, a mahl stick or a artists bridge will help you to keep your hands lifted off the paper.
If you want to rest your hand on the drawing while you work, make sure that you use a clean sheet of paper to rest on, and as you work, don’t let that paper shift around and smear the drawing.
To keep the drawing surface clean, there are steps you should take both while the drawing is in progress and after the drawing is complete.
To keep the drawing in progress clean, cover it with a clean sheet of tracing paper, and tape across the top to make a window shade.
This way, when you’re done working for the day and it’s time to close your sketchbook, the tracing paper will stay in the same place and will minimize smearing.
You can also use a workable fixative spray and spray the drawing after passes of heavy tone.
A workable spray will allow you to continue to erase, but will minimize smearing and smudges.
When the drawing is finished, you can spray it with a permanent fixative.
Storing your finished drawings is another consideration.
You can frame some of them, but obviously you tea won’t have wall space for everything you draw, and some of your drawings aren’t going to be frame quality, but you’ll still want to keep them in good condition.
The best solution for this is to either buy a professional portfolio, or make your own.
Portfolios will keep your art clean and easy to transport, as well as allowing other people to look at your work with greater ease.
Lesson 2
Organized References
Finding references, or, the things that you use to draw from, can take up hours and hours of valuable time.
To avoid that time trap, you need to start a library of references that are organized in your own studio space.
This organizational system should include reference material from photos, magazines, and books.
Photo boxes are an inexpensive and efficient method for organizing your photographs.
You can purchase them at craft or scrapbooking stores, and will usually spend less than four dollars per box.
To develop your photo organizational system, sort through your photos, and divide them into categories that are based on what you have, and what you like to draw.
For instance, if you have a lot of photographs of cats, you will probably have to break your “cats” category down further into “short hair,” “long hair,” “kittens,” and so on.
Your goal is to have no more than 50 photographs in each category, and fewer than that would be even better.
The fewer photos you have to sort through, the easier it will be for you to find what you’re looking for when you need it.
Label the front of each box according to its contents, and divide the categories of photographs inside with index cards that have raised titles so that you can see at a glance where each category is.
To organize your magazines, avoid keeping the entire magazine if possible.
That will take up too much space. Instead, flip through the magazine and tear out the reference photo that you want to keep.
Then, use a system of folders to sort and categorize your magazine pictures the same way as your photos.
I have found that using a simple piece of computer paper folded in half with the name of the contents written on the front is a fast and efficient way for me to sort find and re-file my loose magazine references.
You can sort your printouts from the computer the same way, or save even more time by cutting and pasting small images of similar themes on pieces of computer paper and filing them likewise.
Reference books are another great source of inspiration and images.
You can buy bargain books of photographs very inexpensively from bookstores.
You can also find books of references, such as the Fairburn System of References, which are already organized and indexed to provide you with easy to find references that are not copyright protected.
Be aware however, when you are working from references that are copyrighted, or you’re not sure if they are or not, use them only as inspiration to create your own original work, and never copy someone else’s work.
When you’re taking your own photographs, protect yourself from legal liability by asking people who you photograph to sign a photo release.
If you do not have permission to use their likeness, err on the side of making it unrecognizable, especially if this is a drawing that you plan on displaying publicly.
Lesson 3
Organized Studio
An organized studio helps you stay efficient by saving you time and effort in finding the tool you need when you need it.
It will also help you to create better artwork, because the atmosphere of an organized studio is more relaxing and conducive to creativity than a cluttered, disorganized space is.
Start organizing your studio by sorting your tools according to their purpose.
If you draw and paint, your painting supplies need to be kept separate from your drawing supplies.
Next, consider the tools that you can actually use when you’re working on any particular project.
The goal is to keep only the essential tools for what you’re working on close, and to keep all nonessential tools on shelves where they will be out of the way.
If you’re drawing, you should be able to put your essential tools into one easy three-drawer system or something similar that can sit right on the edge of your table and take up minimal space while allowing you to reach your tools easily.
Keep somewhat essential tools within arm’s length, but not on the table where you’re trying to draw if possible.
You want to give yourself as much space as you can, while also minimizing the time that you spend getting up to get more supplies.
So keep your often-used tools such as scissors, frisket foam, garbage can, and scratch paper close enough that you can reach it easily without having to get up.
You need shelves in your studio for holding nonessential items.
These items may include everything from sketchbooks to references, informational books, and materials that you need for other projects.
Try to always keep like with like; even on your shelves, try to keep all of your paper in one spot.
Similarly, keep your painting supplies in one spot, your references in one spot, and your instructional books in one spot.
This will make things much easier to find.
Your studio needs to have adequate lighting.
Invest in whatever you need to make it very easy for you to see what you’re doing, and for your space to be well-lit.
This may include gooseneck lamps, tabletop lamps, spotlights, or even shop lights.
In my studio, I used all of those types of lighting, and I have additional small lamps, such as my magnifying lamp that clamps on my table, that I can use for additional light when I needed.
Finally, organization doesn’t have to come at a high cost.
It is perfectly acceptable to use items that are not necessarily made for art supplies in your studio.
For instance, a mason jar or an old bowl are both good ways to store your pencils.
A cigar box can be an excellent way to sort your pencils, erasers, and sharpeners.
And if you can find a fishing tackle box to store your overflow supplies instead of buying the same thing from an art store, you will save yourself money.
Lesson 4
Having the Right Tools
Having the right tools will save you time in your studio by allowing you to do it right the first time, instead of growing more more frustrated by trying your hardest and having your tools let you down.
The most essential drawing tools are pencils, blenders, and erasers, and you can get by with nothing but the most basic of each.
But if you’re trying to draw a portrait with high contrast and you have nothing but a hard graphite pencils to do the job, you’re going to be frustrated with the results.
So it’s important to have a variety of tools in each of these categories.
Pencils range in hardness from the H scale to the B; H pencils are hard, and B pencils are soft.
Before the letter, you will see a number. The higher the number is, the harder or softer it is.
For example, a 9B pencil is softer than a 2B pencil, and a 9H pencil is harder than a 2H pencil.
You should have a hard, medium, and soft pencil in both charcoal and graphite.
I recommend at least a 3H, an HB, and 3B or 4B in graphite.
Charcoal pencils don’t run quite the same, but they do come in a range of harnesses, and I recommend getting at least three pencils in a variety of that range as well, such as B, 3B, and 5B.
For layout in charcoal drawings, use willow charcoal.
A chamois cloth, blending stomps, and tortillons are required for good blending techniques.
Get two or three chamois cloths and several dozen stomps and tortillons in a variety of sizes.
They are inexpensive, and you will need clean ones to start the blending pass on each new drawing.
Remember, you always want to blend with the largest tool possible, so make sure that you have large stomps as well as medium and small ones on hand.
Erasers come in a variety of harnesses, but the only type that is absolutely essential is a kneaded eraser.
Gum erasers, retractable erasers, and soft soap erasers all leave crumbs on your drawing.
They’re sometimes helpful to have, as is an electric eraser, but you cannot get by without a kneaded eraser.
They are inexpensive, so buy six or more.
Masking tape, anywhere from half inch to two inches wide, will enable you to protect clean borders on your drawings.
Just make sure to tape it to some cloth before you stick it to the paper, or it will tear.
You can also buy very narrow tape, called Tape for Curves, which can be helpful for protecting precise curving lines in your drawing.
Stencils, templates, a flexible curve, a French curve, and a ruler will also help you to make precise lines and curves, and Frisket Film is wonderful for protecting clean shapes against a dark background.
Other tools you might want to invest in include a stylus, compass, viewfinder, magnifying glass, and a multi-tool with screwdriver, pliers, and knife blades.
Lesson 5
Transferring Drawings
Not surprisingly, one of the biggest uses of your time in the drawing studio turns out to be drawing.
And sometimes, for a variety of reasons, you don’t need to spend time drawing.
For instance, if you’ve already developed a rough drawing, or if you need to transfer your drawing to a different medium such as watercolor paper or illustration board, you can save yourself a lot of time by simply transferring the drawing rather than starting over from scratch.
The first step in transferring images is usually enlarging.
Enlarging is often a necessity in your studio, either because your initial reference photo is too small to work from efficiently, or because you are working very large and want to be able to trace the image directly.
If you want your finished drawing to be no bigger than a normal piece of computer paper, the most efficient way of enlarging a photograph is to scan it, use photo manipulation software on your computer to make it the size you want, and print it.
If you need an abnormally large picture, you can even export it to a copy store where they can print it out for you even larger.
Once the image is enlarged, you’ll need to transfer it to different paper.
There are three ways of easily tracing the image.
If the paper is thin enough to see through, you can use a window or lightbox to trace the picture.
If you don’t want to buy a light box, you can make one or have one made inexpensively; it’s nothing more than a box fitted with light bulbs, a dimmer switch, and a glass top.
Just lay your reference and the paper on the top of the lightbox and trace away.
An alternative method is to flip the printout over an scribble over the back with very soft graphite.
A large graphite stick will be very useful for this step.
Then flip it back over, and use a sharp, hard pencil to trace only the essential lines onto your drawing paper.
If you want to save even more time, you can use the same method but with transfer paper.
The downside of transfer papers is that the lines are darker and harder to erase, but the upside is that you will save even more time and possibly not ruin your reference material.
An enlarger can save you the steps of scanning, resizing, and printing. Simply put the reference material into the enlarger, project it on the wall or table at the size you want it to be, and trace away.
The downside of projectors is that they don’t always enlarge very well, the studio has to be completely dark for them to be effective, and they can be extremely expensive.
If you can, try one out before you buy it.
Sometimes libraries, schools, or universities have them available to rent.
Finally, an invaluable tool for taking your own references and instantly making them digital files is a digital camera.
Many phones these days are equipped with cameras, and the image quality is getting better all the time.
Having your files in digital format to begin with also means that you will save time in scanning, and can go straight to resizing and printing.
Lesson 6
Changing Your Handhold
Sloppy drawing technique can be one of the worst enemies of time.
When you don’t put down a line correctly the first time, you’ll find yourself having to rework it over and over, erasing, re-drawing, and erasing again.
Considering that, it’s no surprise that you can save yourself a lot of time simply by modifying your technique.
The next four classes will all be focused on different aspects of drawing technique.
This class will be focused specifically on changing your handhold.
Your line quality all hinges on how you hold your pencil.
When you choke up on the pencil and hold it very close to the tip, you shorten your range of control to lines about half an inch long.
By simply moving down the length of the pencil and holding it in the middle, you increase that line control to about an inch, and for the longest, smoothest line, you need to hold the pencil clear down at the end.
Try this exercise to understand the different pencil holds better.
Make a series of pencil strokes on a piece of scratch paper holding the pencil at the tip, middle, and end.
You should feel a change in control right away.
Next try drawing a long line with your hand choked up at the pencil tip, then draw it a second time, this time holding the pencil at the end.
You should notice that in the first attempt, you had to continually pick up the pencil and put it down again, making lines that look sketchy and jagged.
The second time, that line should be continuous.
As you put down your lines, make sure that the back of your hand and little finger are braced against the table.
You should think of your hand as a simple machine and the pencil as an extension of that machine.
With that in mind, you are always going to maintain the best control when your machine is grounded against something solid.
You should never draw with your hand up in the air unless you’re working vertically.
You will also save yourself time and frustration by learning to use multiple pencils in your drawing.
Though it’s possible to do a whole drawing with one pencil, it’s inefficient and has poor results, just like using a wrench to pound a nail.
When you rely on mid- range pencils to make very dark tone, you tend to have to press harder and harder, making it very difficult to erase mistakes.
That isn’t good technique.
A much better way to go about it is to use a variety of pencil hardnesses that are best suited to the task at hand.
Hard pencils, or willow charcoal, make light lines that erase easily (as long as you don’t push too hard and gouge the tooth of the paper), which means they are best suited for initial sketches and guidelines.
Medium hardness, such as HB pencils, are good for initial blending passes and medium lines of contrast.
You shouldn’t be using your very soft pencils, such as 4B, for anything except the very darkest tones on the drawing.
By using a range of pencils, you will find it much easier to develop drawings that have high contrast and that sense of depth that results.
Lesson 7
Good Blending Technique
Sloppy blending technique robs you of both time and professionalism in your drawings, so it’s well worth your time to polish up your skills. The first step is to examine your reference material.
As you look for the shadows and highlights, consider the three dimensional form that you’re trying to convey on paper. Where are the shadows darkest? Where are the highlights lightest?
What should the pattern of dark to light look like?
When you have a good idea of where to place the shadows and highlights, you can start adding a base tone.
Hold the pencil at the very bottom of the pencil to access the side, and make smooth, sweeping lines that barely skim the surface of the paper.
A mid-range hardness such as a 2B or 3B pencil will work best for the stage.
Since you examined your references so closely, you know where those highlights are, and you know where to avoid putting down tone.
In proper blending technique, you blend from light to dark, and avoid the highlights rather than trying to pull them out smoothly with an eraser after-the-fact.
When the base tone is down, blend your first pass of skin tone with the chamois cloth wrapped around your finger.
Use smooth circle strokes to blend the lines away, but still concentrate on following the contours of the face.
Everything you do should reinforce the roundness of the shape you’re shading.
After this first blending pass, there should still be a distinction between light and dark places.
Redraw very lightly around the features and shapes that may have been washed out in the first blending pass, but try not to over-emphasize any lines, and definitely avoid digging into the tooth of the paper.
You want these lines to be light and easy to erase without disappearing completely and forcing you to redraw them later.
Then, re-add tone to the shadow shapes of the face.
You’re still avoiding the highlights in this stage, trying to make the shadows as connected as possible.
Blend the second time with a large stomp.
You’re still going to use circle strokes, focusing on blending the dark into the light, and keeping your tones as smooth as possible.
To that end, you will find it most effective to use the largest blending tool you can for the area.
For very large areas, you can go back to a chamois cloth wrapped around your finger, but to keep your shapes distinct in smaller areas, you’ll have to rely on stomps and tortillons.
Practice good blending technique on a piece of scratch paper.
Hold your pencil at the end, and focus on making those smooth, even strokes that will be easy to blend later on.
Then, practice blending using circle strokes with both a chamois cloth and a stomp or tortillon.
When you can make smooth, blended gradients on your scratch paper, you’re ready to add those skills to a finished drawing.
Lesson 8
Using a Grid
Learning how to use a grid will be a fantastic timesaver for you and a great efficiency tool for your studio.
Unlike the other methods of transferring drawings, it doesn’t require any technology, and it will enable you to enlarge reference photos of any size to finished drawings of any size.
Start by building a frame around your reference material, and tape it securely in place.
Measure each side and write down the length and width on a piece of scratch paper.
Next, draw the first side of the proportional frame on your drawing paper.
If your reference material is a square, make sure to draw a square on your drawing paper.
Measure the first length that you found for your drawing paper, and set up an equation to find the missing side.
This step is very important, as it will enable you to build a frame on your drawing paper that is exactly proportional to the frame of your reference material.
The step-by-step method of finding that missing side algebraically is included in the video.
When you have the proportional frames on your reference material and drawing paper, you can divide them into equal increments.
The easiest way to do this is to divide the lengths in half, then divide each half in half, and perhaps divide each of those quarters in half again to make eight equal increments.
If your lengths are difficult to divide, simply use a piece of paper the length of the frame, and fold that paper into half, fourths, eighths, and so on.
Label the increments of height on the reference material and drawing paper the same, such as a, B, C, D, and label the increments of heights 1, 2, 3, etc.
Having the marks clearly marked will help you find where you are on the drawing quickly.
Now you’re ready to start plotting out helpful points, so begin with the exterior marks of the largest shape.
If you’re drawing a portrait, that will include the top of the head, the bottom of the chain, and the sides of the face.
Find the marks on your graph by referring to X and Y axis; In other words, every point that you mark down will have a number and a letter that will allow you to place it accurately on the drawing paper.
When you have enough points plotted, you can start to draw the shape using those reference points as guides.
Start with the large shapes, then use the same system to find guidelines that will help you to place the interior shapes such as the eyes, nose, mouth, and so on.
It will also be helpful to find any lines that bisect the grid directly, because he can be sure of getting those translated very accurately.
Using a grid isn’t just for beginners.
Even experienced artists will find it helpful, as the grid is not only a means of laying out your drawing, but also a very helpful tool for double checking your lines and the placement of your features.
Lesson 9
Looking for Shapes
This class is about the greatest time saver of all: learning how to break down everything you want to draw into shapes.
Learning to see shapes rather than lines will allow you to capture realistic likenesses quickly, and will bring you to the next level of professionalism in your artwork.
Start looking for shapes with this simple exercise.
Choose a black and white photograph of a face with clear lines.
Place a piece of tracing paper over the top and trace everything that you can see.
Now, repeat the exercise, but this time, concentrate not on the lines of the face, but on the shadows.
Fill in the shadow shape with solid tone as you work.
What you should find is that there is one, nearly continuous shadow that falls over the entire face.
When you fill it in, taking care to allow for the small, intricate light patterns that you see as well, you wind up with a pattern of pure contrast—the white paper and the black shape of shadows.
And this second face is not only more interesting than the first tracing, it’s also a stronger composition and more realistic.
The same principle applies to everything you draw or paint.
Consider that the face is a three-dimensional plane of hills and valleys.
The light hits it as a shape, and depending on how steep or shallow the hills or valleys, the light creates shadows or highlights.
There are no lines, and the individual parts aren’t lit individually, but as part of the whole.
Artistically, then, your first step before drawing anything should be to familiarize yourself with the pattern of light and dark falling on your subject matter.
You can do that by tracing a map of the shadows, just as you did in the warm-up exercise, or you can simply pay attention and look for those shapes; just know that they’ll always be there.
They may be subtle, but there has to be a shadow shape in order for the object to have dimension.
After finding the shadow shape, the next step is to put tone down smoothly and blend it such that it stays accurate with what you see in real life or on the reference material.
This can be tricky, and will take practice with pencil holds and blending techniques, but persevere.
More than anything else, learning to see the shapes of light and dark on objects will improve your drawings.
You will immediately see an increase in realism, and your portraits will take on new depth.
Lesson 10
Time Management
Learning how to manage your time well in the studio is the best way to keep from feeling overwhelmed.
Desperation has a tendency to kick in when we feel that a project is going poorly, too slowly, or that we aren’t getting any better.
As long as you keep working, you will improve, of course, but there are a few simple tricks you can do to keep yourself on top of the work and better monitor your progress.
Pie charts are a great tool.
They don’t need to be fancy by any means—a circle drawn on a piece of scratch paper will do nicely.
But you can use a pie chart in a few different ways to track your progress and give you a better idea of how much time will be required for any given drawing.
The first way you can use a pie chart is to break down the steps it takes to do a drawing.
This chart will stay consistent for every drawing, because you always follow the same steps: find references, do an initial sketch, clean up the lines for the final sketch, add tone, blend and add details.
If each step is a piece of the pie, then you can break down how much time you need to give yourself for each project.
The pie will be the same, but the time you need to find your references is going to vary, as will the other steps, depending on the subject matter, how familiar you are with drawing it, how big you’re working on, and so on.
You can also break your pie chart into pieces based on the specific drawing you’re working on.
In that case, the pieces are going to be things like: face, hat, body, background, and car engine.
Breaking the piece down that way will do two things for you.
First of all, it will help you see your progress.
If you feel like you’ve been working forever and are getting nowhere, keep in mind how big a piece of the pie you’re tackling.
Not all pieces are equally involved, and a high-detail element of the drawing might take as long as the rest of the face and body combined.
It will also help you to allow yourself enough time to do the drawing well, because instead of looking at the whole project, you can examine it in terms of the “mini-projects” that make it up and get a reasonable estimate for how long each small piece of the pie will take.
Take into account the amount of detail, how many times you’ve drawn similar things, and how big the section will be on the final drawing paper. If it’s the first time you’ve drawn, say, flowers in a field, don’t assume you’ll be able to do it well enough for your finished work the first time.
A smarter approach would be to practice drawing some flowers the way you want them to look on a piece of scratch paper first, then bring the best technique to the final drawing.
Finally, another simple trick that you can use to move forward and make progress is a clock. Before you get started, make it a goal to sit and work for fifteen minutes straight, or an hour, or three hours, or whatever you can give yourself.
That way, no matter what the drawing looks like at the end, at least you’ll know how much time you’ve put in, and you’ll know that you’re improving and progressing.
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