CONTENTS
Chapter One - Use AI
Chapter Two - Never Use AI
Chapter Three - Notice What Else Exists
Chapter Four - Copying is Good
Chapter Five - Draw from a Photograph
Chapter Six - Never Draw from a Photograph
Chapter Seven - Develop Your Intuition
Chapter Eight - You are Nature
Chapter Nine - Hybrids
Chapter Ten - Empty Out
Chapter Eleven - Meditate
Chapter Twelve - Heal
Chapter Thirteen - Connect
Chapter One
USE AI
Imagine a drawing and describe it to an AI.
After it generates an image, refine your description until you get closer and closer to what you want to see.
Chapter Two
NEVER USE AI
Find some wet sand or mud or snow and walk around leaving footprints, planning your path or not.
For added interest, take a stick and drag it along the ground as you go.
Don’t overdo it. Step away to enjoy your primitive drawing. It is evidence that you, human, exist.
Chapter Three
NOTICE WHAT ELSE EXISTS
Find your drawing.
Do RUBBINGS.
Take thin paper (like printer paper) around with you in the world. When you see a texture that is raised about 1/8” or less, lay your paper over it and rub a tool like a soft pencil, charcoal, crayon or conte over it. This could be a leaf, tree bark, concrete, or a coin (which could be quite rare soon).
Chapter Four
COPYING IS GOOD
Go to a museum. Look very carefully at how an existing drawing was made. What tools and materials were used? In what order did they do things? Did they work quickly or slowly? What are the paths of the marks and the shapes of the spaces between them? Become that artist as you copy.
Go to YouTube. Search for drawing tutorials that interest you – perhaps anime or watercolor landscapes, product design or tips for using ProCreate. Follow along.
Create your drawing on a litho stone, etching plate, linoleum, wood block or silkscreen. Now you can print many copies of it.
Chapter Five
DRAW FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
Tech is a helpful shortcut. Take a photograph of something you want to draw. Look at the photo and copy it.
Some ways to copy the photo:
1) Eyeballing.
2) Grid transfer technique.
3) Graphite transfer technique.
4) Print out a light copy of the photo and draw directly on top of it.
5) Pull the photo into digital drawing software. Lighten the image and draw in a new layer directly on top of the photo, using or ignoring whatever aspects of the image that you want.
Chapter Six
NEVER DRAW FROM A PHOTOGRAPH
DIRECT OBSERVATIONAL DRAWING is the only way to train your brain to flatten space the way humans see it. NOTICE.
Study a 3D object. Work hard to create the illusion on paper that this object is truly volumetric. To help:
1) Close one eye.
2) Use a viewfinder.
3) Learn sighting & measuring techniques.
4) Learn about eye level and linear perspective.
5) Learn how to apply tone to create the illusion of light and shadow.
Chapter Seven
DEVELOP YOUR INTUITION
Too much precision can suck the life out of a drawing.
GESTURE is the natural way to draw the world around us. Loose and fast. Don’t slow down to let yourself “think”. Focus on the thing you are drawing and only occasionally look at your paper. Sync up your eye and your hand. Dance the forms to life with your drawing tool. Trust your gut fully. Drawing is movement.
Chapter Eight
YOU ARE NATURE
EXPRESS YOURSELF.
It’s the marks that carry the message.
Develop your identity in the character and qualities of your marks. Like your own distinct handwriting, what is your hand-drawing? Choppy, angular, elegant, calligraphic, small, shaky, light, bold, chicken-scratch, spidery, fierce, bubbly, scribbly, fuzzy? What are your colors? What are your mediums? Draw things or draw non-things, but draw often. Keep making marks until to find yourself. Until you know, this mark is me. Then use it to speak your heart.
Chapter Nine
HYBRIDS
Expressionism is not new. Find THE NEW in new combinations.
Print out a photo. Cover some of it with blank paper and draw onto this with a brush marker and ballpoint pen. Glue some thread into the exposed photo. Give it to an auto mechanic or florist (or both), to alter. When you get it back, spill your coffee onto it and turn the spill into an animal using your stir stick. When dry, digitally scan the image and put a distortion filter on it in Photoshop. There is a tiny chance this drawing might be the first one like it to exist.
Chapter Ten
EMPTY OUT
Let go of the need for novelty.
Less is more.
THINK ABOUT SPACE.
Edit your drawing rigorously.
Get the cropping Just Right.
Remove everything unnecessary.
Can it be just one line?
One mark?
Chapter Eleven
MEDITATE
Space is empty. REPETITION BUILDS MEANING.
Explore patterns, simple or complex. Try Zentangles or other repeated movements and marks that appeal to you. Make stroke after stroke. Maybe your drawing is made with a needle and thread. Don’t change your speed. Repeat in the same or just slightly different ways. Set rules for yourself. Maybe you break them after testing them long enough. Find peace and flow in the rhythm of the hand-dance. Stay in the present.
Chapter Twelve
HEAL
But you just want to scream.
If you already keep a journal, add drawings to it. If you don’t, start one. Draw your feelings. Draw your nightmares. Draw in the dark wearing a sleep mask when you can’t sleep. Draw your pain. Draw your gratitudes. Draw the place you want to get to. Draw the person you want to become. Draw the solution to the problem.
Mix it up with words if that’s easier. Words say things and drawings say other things. Two languages are better than one.
Chapter Thirteen
CONNECT
Ask a friend to go for a walk with you – in some muddy place recommended by AI. Take some paper and pencils. Do some rubbings. Take some photos. Sketch what you see. Draw an anime character into the scene. Laugh. Trade papers. Crumple them a little. Erase some bits. Add more bits with a muddy stick. Dance around. Copy each other. Don’t copy each other. Be playful.
Now you both have a record of some time you spent with a friend in the world.
Now you know how to draw.
