Hello my wonderful GUT peeps. I am so happy you are here.
Yesterday we wrapped up the first chapter of our DrawTogether journey, Play. Are you feeling loose? Are you feeling free? Are you feeling inspired, empowered, creative and confident? HECK YES YOU ARE!!! (Sorry, hyperactive coach WendyMac peeks out sometimes. And yes, I’m totally wearing an art smock, beanie and a retractable whistle on my key ring. TWEEEEET!)
Now that our drawing bodies are warmed up, your imagination is revving, your art eyes are open, and we’ve jettisoned that albatross of perfectionism, let’s dive into our next chapter.
DRAWING BASICS
Don’t worry! It’s not going to be the debt-inducing, theory-laden, PTSD-causing kind of art school. This is art school done my way. The GUT way.
This week, I am going to share a few concrete, super basic drawing techniques to help develop our drawing prowess. Just as understanding grammar helps us write gooder, having a little deeper understanding of the basic art elements will give us more confidence when drawing. And then, once you’ve learned this stuff, you can decide to toss it out the window! No rules in art! (Smash that glass, class!)
Sound good? Good. Let’s get started.
The elements of art
The first thing you need to know: In all visual art, there are seven basic elements: line, color, shape, form, value, space, and texture. That’s it.1
Not so overwhelming, right?
Let’s kick off GUT Art School with the most basic element of drawing: Line.
Line.
Line drawings are OLD. Like, THE OLDEST drawings.
Some 540,000 years ago, an early human carved a zigzag line into a shell. Then, 73,000 years ago, someone in South Africa used red ochre to draw hashtag-lines on a rock. Then, 43,000 years after that, deep inside a cave in Chauvet, France, someone drew a pretty darn realistic line drawing of a rhino on the wall. That rhino drawing is from 30,000 years ago, people!
Drawing is in our DNA. (And without drawing, we wouldn’t be able to imagine what DNA looks like, just saying.)
Today, line continues to be one of the most fundamental elements of drawing.2
What is line drawing, exactly?
A “line drawing” is a drawing made of a line or series of lines typically drawn on a surface, like paper. But it can be made with anything, really, and can be made anywhere. Thin white contrails streaking the sky? Line drawing. Giant heart drawn with a stick on the beach? Line drawing. The tramp-stamp tattoo I got at 16 using a fake ID? Line drawing!! (DON’T ASK.)
There are seven types of lines we use when drawing. (That's right, seven elements of visual art, seven types of lines3) These are horizontal, vertical, diagonal, straight, curved, thick and thin.
Guess what!? I’m giving you a warm up drawing assignment today. It will only take three minutes.
Seven types of lines
Before reading any further, please open your sketchbook and grab a pencil if you have one (yes we’re using pencils today! Pen is fine, too.)
No seriously, grab them.
No seriously.
Go.
Okay, great. Again, according to the drawing police, there are only those seven different types of lines we can draw: horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, straight or curved, thick or thin. For our warm up: Draw a grid of eight squares on your paper. Inside of each box draw one type of line. What about Box 8? Wild card! To hell with the drawing police. Make up your own type of line. (I will gather these and send them to the authorities and together we will demand additions.) For all these lines, you can use a straight edge like the painter Agnes Martin did or draw it free hand like the illustrator Maira Kalman. Whatever feels right to you.
After you’re done, take a look at what you just drew. Those simple 7+ lines are all the lines that exists in the world. And those are all the tools you need to draw anything you want, ever.
Three types of line drawing (and all art, really)
Line drawings can be representational (meaning they are intended to look like something), abstract (not intended to look like something) and conceptual (they represent an idea.)
Representational line drawing
Most of the time when we draw representationally — make a drawing that looks like something — we use a technique called “contour drawing.” That means drawing the edges of a subject, or where the dark and light areas meet. The blind contour drawing we did during our week of PLAY was a contour drawing. We just didn’t look at the page.
Below are a few examples of contour line drawings.
Here’s a gorgeous one by Ellsworth Kelly. All his plant drawings are jaw-dropping.
And the wonderful Joan Brown:
And Rick Barton, whose incredible line drawings you can see on the Morgan Library’s website here.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Drawing = looking. Each of these drawings are evidence of an artist looking closely at their subject. They are examining the edges with their pen, translating them to the page in a way that captures that experience of close looking. The feeling of seeing. Their strong, confident lines come from practice. If you practice looking through drawing, your lines will become strong and confident, too.
Abstract line drawing
Many artists also use lines to create abstract drawings — drawings that don’t represent a particular thing, and are more about the art elements themselves. Below are a few very different kinds of abstract line drawings.
Here’s one by Cy Twombly, who created a kind of written language through his abstract mark making. I don’t know what it says, but I know how it makes me feel.
And here is a totally different approach to abstract line drawing by Op-Art artist Bridget Riley. Very calculated, with an end result in mind. (Does it move for you, too?)
In an interesting complement, here is a painting (that is a lot like a drawing) by Omar El-Nagdi. It’s similar to Bridget Riley’s drawing, but his painting feels more meditative, like it was made with less planning and more attention to feeling. It also reminds me a lot of Arabic calligraphy. (Bridget Riley is English, Omar El-Nagdi was Egyptian — he died in 2019.)
Related to Omar El-Nagdi’s approach to pattern and meditation in a drawing, we can’t forget RUTH! Ruth Asawa, the GUT’s patron saint. Here is a patterned line drawing that must have been even more meditative to make than it is to look at. It’s a wonderful combination of loose like Cy’s, and planned, like Bridget’s.
All of these lines are as strong and confident lines as the representational drawings, but totally different in intent and outcome. Which do you feel more drawing to? Representational drawings or abstract drawings? Both?
Whew that was a lot! Now you know all there is to know about lines and art. DONE. Ready to put our big epic learning day into practice? Set your timer for ten minutes...
