Fundamentals of Sketching – Part 1

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As a kid I was a great sketcher. Once I knew how to draw the outline, I could fill it in with any objects and details I wanted, even if I’d never seen them before. It still astounds me how quickly and easily my brain can sketch out anything. But over the years, for some reason, I’ve lost that ability.

Now that I’m working on game art full time, I’ve decided to try to get it back. And so far it’s been easier than expected! Once you know the fundamentals of sketching, you’re well on your way; from there, it’s just practice. This is a blog documenting what I’ve learned so far.

After a few days of sketching you’ll start to feel frustrated with your work. You’ll begin to notice the mistakes: the poor proportions, the awkward poses, the lifeless expressions, and so on. And you’ll be tempted to conclude that this isn’t for you.

That’s what I was thinking when I got my first sketchbook and went out into the streets. I clearly remember thinking that drawing people from real life wasn’t for me; I should stick to what I do best, which is drawing from imagination.

I don’t say this to scare you off. Drawing from imagination is great fun; it’s easy to get enthusiastic about. But if you don’t also draw from life you may miss out on some essential fundamentals that will improve your drawing skills immensely.

You might have heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” That’s not entirely true, but it’s close enough for our purposes: a good sketch can convey more in less time than any amount of writing or verbal description could hope to achieve. If your ideas are visual (and most are) then a sketch can communicate them much more quickly and easily than just talking about them.

A good sketch is also worth a lot of money – in fact, it’s priceless!

There are three primary ways in which I consider that sketching is a useful tool:

1. A sketch can be a way of recording information quickly and clearly, allowing you to pass that information on to others with ease.

2. Drawing can be a way of visually representing a problem in order to help find a solution.

3. Sketching can be a means of communicating ideas more clearly, leading to improved understanding and greater enthusiasm for the subject matter.

I hope this blog will give you a variety of ideas about how sketching can be used in each of these ways. There are many different types of sketching, but for me the purpose is always about trying to capture information or ideas clearly and simply so that they can be communicated easily to others.

Sketching is the foundation of all visual arts. It is what comes before you start adding color and shadows. It is the basic building block of any drawing or painting, whether it be a portrait or a landscape.

I know what you’re thinking: “I can’t draw.”

Don’t let that discourage you. I believe anyone can learn to sketch. It takes some practice, and it definitely takes time; but even if your first sketches seem crude, they will improve over time with practice. If you’ve ever spent time doodling in school or on the phone, then you’ve already got a head start on sketching because you’re familiar with putting marks down on paper in a way that creates form.

So grab a pencil and get ready to try something new!

Just like anything else in life, sketching takes practice. I’m going to give you exercises to help build up your skills so you’ll have some fun at the same time! I’m hoping that by the end of this article, your drawings will look like mine do at the end of this article:

Traditionally, sketching was done in pen and ink, but it was still a labor-intensive process. The advent of the computer and vector art has made it much easier to create nice clean line work, but there’s still a lot to be said for the old way.

The first thing to know about sketching is that it’s all about proportion. The overall size of your drawing (the large rectangle in the center) is usually determined by the size of your sketchbook, or the surface you’re working on. Decide what features will be most important in your drawing, and size those appropriately. For example, if you’re drawing from life, face proportions are critical; you’ll need to make those elements larger than anything else.

1. Start with a basic shape for the subject of your drawing. A rectangle is good for figures, a circle for heads or other round objects (like fruits), an oval for something oblong (like a hand).

2. Add one or two details: facial features, hands or feet, clothing lines/folds, etc…

3. Add some shading on the darker parts of your subject: hairline/face cast shadows, overlapping folds/lines that recede into shadow areas…

4. Now

Sketching is an essential part of the design process, but it can also be a bit mysterious and elusive. There are no hard and fast rules about sketching techniques, and what works for one designer may not work for another. That said, there are some principles that can help guide you through the sketching process.

Tension between drawing and writing

Most people who have been taught to draw would agree that learning to write letters properly is an important step towards being able to draw them. Writing involves very specific, stylized movements of the hand (and often other body parts as well) which are practiced until they become automatic. In order to get your handwriting to look good, you had to put a lot of time into practicing it, but once you reached a certain level of competency it then became second nature and required little extra effort.

The trouble with this approach is that it doesn’t really work in the opposite direction. You can’t take something written by hand and make it look like a sketch by adding a few extra squiggles or by changing the line weight slightly. This is why most people have little success in end up with sketches that look like they were drawn in freehand (as opposed to being copied from an existing image).

What does

I hope to go over this in more detail in the near future, but for now I will leave you with some thoughts about sketching.

Sketching is a valuable skill. It is versatile and can be applied to many situations. Sketching allows you to quickly communicate an idea or thought, making it a great tool for brainstorming, storyboarding, design, planning and more. It is also a way of learning, as you will become better at sketching the more you do it.

What makes sketching so hard? For me personally, it is not so much that I can’t draw (I can’t), but rather that it takes a lot of time and effort to learn how to effectively communicate with my drawings.

This stems from a few reasons: we’ve been conditioned to think that our sketches have to look good in order for them to be useful; we don’t know where and how to start; we don’t know what our goal should be. Let’s break these down one by one…

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