You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (34 page)

15. Outline the wave with a dark, defined line. Darken in the shadow under the wave lip. Be sure to blend it down, lighter and lighter toward the reflection.

Complete the illustration by adding action lines. Action lines are fantastically fun to draw and enable your viewers to visually engage in your art. Look at how my action lines are flowing in the direction the wave is moving. Draw these flowing lines on your wave.

Let’s take the skills we’ve acquired from drawing a wave and apply them to another fun drawing: the whoosh cloud. Practice drawing overlapping foam, dark recess (nook and cranny) shadows, and action lines. Feel free to draw this one with me online at
www.markkistler.com
; click on “Drawing Lessons.”

Take a look at these students’ drawings of the wave lesson. Seeing other students’ work helps build your motivation to draw every day, right?

T
hese next two lessons will be great for learning how to draw flags, scrolls, curtains, clothing, furniture coverings, etc. Interior decorators, theater art directors, and fashion designers all must master the skill of drawing flowing fabric. This lesson is a good practice exercise for applying many of the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing. These laws all work together to create the illusion of depth, of visual push and pull in the rippling flag drawing.

If you are a scrapbooker, I’m sure you immediately saw the potential of this flag lesson in enhancing your scrapbook pages, yes? If you like this lesson, you are going to love the scroll lesson in the next chapter.

 

1. Begin with a tall vertical flagpole.

2. Draw three-quarters of a foreshortened circle. Keep the shape squished.

3. Picture three foreshortened cylinders next to each other like I have illustrated below. Now, draw the top of the flag by following the top edges of these cylinders.

4. Repeat this several times, extending the top edge of the flag.

5. Draw all the near thickness lines first, with vertical lines drawn down from each edge.

6. Draw each of the back thickness lines, making sure they disappear behind the flag. The small disappearing lines define the overlapping shape of the flag. These are the most important detail lines when you draw a flag. Without these lines, your drawing will visually collapse, so carefully double-check that you have not missed any of the back edges.