Disegno, 3 errori da non fare - e come rimediare

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my studio in Cagliari. Today I would like to tell you about 3 most common mistakes that anyone who starts drawing makes. These are mistakes that I also made when I started self-taught, to study drawing, to draw. I'm sure that it happened to you too, to start a drawing and then once it's finished you realize that there's something wrong. You don't understand what it is, but it seems a little crooked, a little crushed. Maybe it doesn't convince you how you drew it, even if you are very committed. Today we will see what all these mistakes depend on. Let's start right away with our wrong exercise. First of all, here's the subject. As you can see, it is a very simple cup of tea, a cup of tea that you can all find at home. I propose this subject because it is the classic exercise of those who start, especially if you work from home. Today we will see with this simple subject what are the 3 mistakes. I will do the work twice. The first time I will make the 3 typical mistakes that I also made when I started drawing. In the second exercise, instead, I will show you how to do it correctly. So we'll see the problems and how to solve them. At the end of the video I will explain how to download this image in good quality, so you can have it available, you can print it to practice with me during this tutorial. First of all, let's think about the material we need to do the exercise. Of course, a drawing sheet. Then we will need a pencil, the eraser and, if you have it, two precision erasers. Let's start immediately with the first mistake, which consists of starting the drawing without taking any measurements, so starting immediately with the details and contours we see. And let's say that we can consider the external shape finished with this step. Once we have the shape, we start looking for some more details, such as these points of light. So I build the image without any reference, without any parameter, without any relationship. And I just try to correct it, to adjust it. This is the first mistake. The second mistake comes immediately. When we realize that the drawing we have made is not precise, it does not fully convince us, we start correcting by tracing more. So, applying more pressure with the pencil on the sheet, we try to correct the lines. Why do we do this? And it is really automatic. Because the first line we made is already quite clear, it is already quite defined, so to make the correct part more evident, we tend to trace more, so that it is more visible. And it is really something that I also did at the beginning of my artistic career, when I still did not know any good working method. So we continue to correct in the wrong way. Here I realize that instead of being curved, it must be straight, so ... So I try to define more and more, tracing more and more. And this is a very, very common mistake, very widespread. I have been teaching drawing and painting for 10-11 years, more or less, and I have had hundreds of students of all ages and all experiences. So someone who had never drawn, someone who had done the artistic and so on. But practically 90% of the people who participated in the initial lessons of my courses, I speak of courses in presence, but even in streaming the error is always this, they always tended to trace more to define more. All in all, the work is almost proportionate. But I traced too much. Here, the work takes into account all the elements, except one, the last, where we will see the third mistake. We have the shaded shadow, that is, the projected shadow of the solid, which is that darker element that is on the right of our subject. Before doing it, I try to identify the edge of the table that is seen through, and I trace the shadow. There is something wrong. This shadow does not work. I do not understand why. Not having experience, I do not understand why. There is some error, but I can not understand it. So what happens? I keep deleting, I keep correcting, I keep modifying the shadow, maybe widening it a little more, maybe narrowing it a little more on this side. In short, I try different solutions. There comes a point when I really do not know how to go beyond and I stop. Here, this looks like the work I did at the beginning of my artistic career, when I was still clearly not a professional, I was studying to try to become one, and I was doing it as a self-taught, without tools. Then, a little with experience, a little looking at real masters of painting, I understood how it works. But this, theoretically, could be a drawing of the beginning of my career. I can not show you the drawings of the beginning of my career, because I threw them all away. I made them all disappear. Do not take the measurements, do not proportion the subject, and start immediately from the contours, trying to draw the subject in all its details, in all its volumes, without taking measurements. Second mistake, tracing with the pencil to correct the errors that were created in the first phase of the work. Third mistake, the projection of the shadow. Without measurements, without parameters, it is very difficult to make all the elements work. Here, now, let's change the sheet, let's take the first work with the three mistakes, and let's see how to execute this drawing correctly. Before starting, very first advice. As you have seen, I worked with this pencil before. A classic pencil, tempered with a pencil tempera, so with a tip, we could say, normal, one of the most common. In reality, this tip, in my opinion, is not very comfortable, because it tends to cover part of the drawing. Generally, I recommend working with tempered pencils with spearhead tip. That is, the wood is removed with a cutter, then it is passed on abrasive paper in order to obtain a tip of this type. I recommend it for two reasons. The first is that when I draw, the line is much thinner than the entire body of the pencil, so I see better what I'm doing. The second reason is to help you trace a little less. With a line of this type, if you trace too much, it breaks. As a result, you are forced to be careful. The other advice I give you is to use a pencil extension and hold the pencil not so close to the tip, but directly in a more retracted position. Let's see how to perform our exercise correctly. Let's go back to our subject and start from the assumption that when we draw, the solids, the subjects we want to build, must be enclosed within simpler shapes. If we look at the top of the cup, then the edge of the cup, and compare it with the height of the cup itself, we realize that the two measures are identical. This means that if the two sides are equal, the cup, the body of the cup excluding the handle, can be enclosed within a square. This makes it a lot easier for me. So the first thing I do is build a square. It can be a small square, it can be a large square, the proportions are always the same. Once I have the container that encloses our cup, I go back to the subject, and I realize that the subject can be divided into exactly two parts. So I do it. I divide the volume I just created into two parts. This part is called construction drawing. Construction drawing is by definition all wrong at the beginning. That's why there are so many lines, but they must always be extremely light lines. This is because then I have to be able to erase them very easily, maybe with the bread eraser instead of the harder rubber. Why did I divide it into two? Because the two parts of the cup are mirrored, which means that a measure that I find on the left will also be identical on the right. Now we have to make the conical part, the narrowest part of the cup at the base, basically. We could say a little less than half of this distance, or about half. At this point we have to create the handle. The best thing is, first, as we did for the body of the cup, first to build the hump, the box that encloses the handle. And once we have that, then we build the handle inside the envelope. So, first thing you notice, the handle starts more or less from a third of the height of the cup, on this diagonal. If you look at the photograph and divide it into three, you will notice that the handle starts more or less from a third. I also evaluate more or less how far it is from the upper edge. And so I build the hump of the handle, which I am now going to define. But defining a detail like this is much easier once we have the outline. Imagining the rectangle, it is also easy to guess what is the distance, or better, the curve that forms the handle of the cup. Inside this hump I am going to dig the shape. So, with this solution, with this approach, which, be careful, is not to be done only for simple subjects, it is also done in the portrait, with this solution we have solved the first error, that is, to work without proportions. Each subject, each element of the subject must be proportioned. Why this? Because otherwise we risk making a lower handle, a wider handle, a larger cup, or a larger nose if we are making a portrait. With this we have solved the first error. Then we saw the second error. The second error was related to the fact that, to correct, we are usually led to trace more. In fact, all the lines I have made now on the sheet disturb me, they bother me. How do I define? How do I get to the definition drawing, to the definitive drawing? It is very simple. Since I used an extremely light sign because the handle was portrait, so I did not trace on the sheet, all the graphite dust is on the surface, so it is easier to remove. I can do it with the breadboard, when the marks are light. So, I model the breadboard, I give it a shape of mattress, I delete practically all the sheet. In reality, the breadboard does not completely delete, but it lightens our work. This allows us to have the trace of the construction that we did below, and then get to the definitive drawing. Instead, I use the precision eraser when I have to eliminate the lines of construction more evident. With the precision eraser, I can delete only the construction and not even what I need, so all the other lines. We can now make our definition drawing. So, following the transparency of the drawing that I created before, I make the clean outlines of our subject, but I do it with an extremely thin sign, decided, but thin, without ever tracing. Here, once the subject is finished, with all the details, all the outlines, we move on to the shadow, to the portrayed shadow, then to the shadow projected on the plane. We have seen before that in the previous work, one of the biggest problems was given by the shape of the shadow. Indeed, it is a strange shape, it is the classic mistake. It happened to me very often at the beginning, it happens very often to all the students that I have followed, that I follow, and that start from the basics. It is precisely the difficulty of understanding the projection of the shadow on the plane. So, based on the direction of the light, evaluate which is the diagonal on the plane. Once we get used to reading the image as a series of elements enclosed within simpler solids, it becomes easier to manage the projection of the shadows. For example, if we still look at the photograph, we notice that the shadow is actually enclosed above the line that starts from the base of the cup. Even if, usually, it is projected downwards. I don't know why. Therefore, by thinking about the measures, about the proportions, we can evaluate that, if this is the edge of the cup, the shadow is necessarily above. And not only that, we can also evaluate how wide the shadow is compared to the cup. We can do it again with the measures, we can make another container, as we did before for the handle, or simply work by eye. Working by eye does not mean not measuring. It means measuring with the eyes, actually. I trace very lightly the projection of the base of the cup to then build the shadow, which starts approximately from the center of the cup and then tends to rise. It rises slightly at the beginning and then at the end with a very evident curve that goes to die exactly on the edge of the table. Once it touches the edge of the table, so the plane that is behind, at that point the projection rises, almost with a diagonal, up to this area of ​​the cup. But at what height? The shadow rises almost to the handle. So if the handle is here, our shadow is a little lower and it is here. At this point, our defined drawing, clean, is ready. We can then work on the layout, we can then work with the watercolor. Based on the technique we will choose, we may still have some steps to do, but basically we have managed to correctly build a cup. One thing that helps you, a little tip, a little trick, especially when you copy from real, take the measurements. That is, close one eye, stretch the arm to the maximum and use the pencil to take the measurements. A side of the cup, for example, fix it on this area, on the end of the pencil, sliding with your thumb, measure the width of the cup and then bring it back directly to the sheet. Do the same with the height, bring it back to the sheet and at that point you have measured and brought back the container of your solid and you can work by eye. Now, before saying goodbye and telling you how to download the image you will need to do this exercise, I remind you that on October 2 and 3 there will be two live lessons dedicated to drawing. So we will see in much more detail how to build a solid, how to start managing shadows with light and dark and finally how to give all the little details. We will work together. I in my studio, who wants to participate of you from home, there will be the active chat that you can use to ask me all the questions you want, if you have doubts also related to materials or other topics not necessarily related to the lesson. And if you want to participate, I'm happy to help you. You can find the link below. Finally, to download the image you just have to sign up to my newsletter on my website and you will get the image, in fact the link to access the image automatically, not only the image of this tutorial but also of all the others I have done here on YouTube. If you have already signed up to my newsletter, you have already solved because everything has already arrived to you. Having said that, I really hope I have been useful to you also this time, I am waiting for your comments, I hope to see you at the lesson of this Saturday and this Sunday live streaming and I wish you a good drawing and a good fun. See you next time, bye!