Art Lesson with Andy Thomas

andythomas.com

About two months ago, my five year old daughter asked me to draw a picture of Mom, Dad and her. Instead of drawing easy traditional stick figures I decided to challenge myself. I grabbed one of our family photos off the wall and got to drawing, trying to mimic what I saw in the picture. I like to occasionally "attempt" to draw, although I'm not very good at it. When Andy and Dina came to Connecticut to visit a few weeks later, they noticed my drawings hanging on the refrigerator. Andy decided to offer up some pointers to me.

My drawings consisted of hard lines, no shading or shadowing, and just what I thought my eye was seeing. Andy told me the first thing to do when making a portrait was to place the eyes about half way down, since many people mistakenly place the eyes too far up. In the sketch below, the top, left-hand face is setup correctly; whereas, the one next to it, on the right, is not. My question was how do you make the eyes symmetrical? I always end up with lopsided eyes with one either too big or too small, as you can see in the above photo. Andy's response was to create lines and use them as a ruler. Don't forget about the ears, the tops should be lined up with the center of the eyes.

On the second set of facial sketches above, we went over shading and shadowing. Andy told me rather than making the nose a shape with lines to shade around the area to build a nose. You can see in the bottom left-hand corner how Andy used shading to create a nose. Instead of shading in my portraits I made lines for under eye circles, laugh lines and the nose. Then we have shadows, when the sun reflects down on us it makes shadows on one side of our face. If you look at yourself in the mirror, your face isn't made of lines and I couldn't figure out how to create features without using lines. Andy said if I were to take a picture in a somewhat shaded area, where the sun in still reflecting through, that I would be able to see the shadows I needed to create.

After breaking down my drawings and how to draw faces we had a quick drawing lesson. We sat down at the kitchen table and Andy attempted to teach me how to draw a dinosaur figurine my daughter had on the table, but I wasn't comfortable enough since it was a 3-D object. I decided I wanted to first learn with flat objects assuming it would be easier. 

I grabbed a horse magnet off my refrigerator and gave it a go, while Andy drew horse sketches along side me. I focused more on coloring, for instance where the spots were and didn't do any shading, blending or shadowing. What's worse is that the horse magnet had shadowing, but my eyes were focused on color and I disregarded the shadows. Andy told me when he's drawing, color means nothing to him. Look at my horse compared to Andy's below. He said many people have a difficult time drawing horse legs and often times they appear to look broken. Andy's horse legs are made of fine lines and definition, while mine are rounded and more like squiggly lines. He gave me a great tip for make the horses body though -- create three circles then follow through making lines. The picture below came from a great book if you're interested in learning to draw or paint horses called, Horses - Learn to paint step by step, by Cindy Larimore. (Published by Walter Foster)

Horse Magnet

My Sketch

Andy's Sketch

Horses - Learn to paint step by step

I'll continue to use Andy's tips when drawing and hopefully get more acquainted with the techniques. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to get another one-on-one with him to learn some more. I did joke with Andy that the next time he comes to Connecticut I'll be a pro like him! Practice makes perfect especially when you have some great tips.

Tips for drawing faces:

1. Place eyes about half way down
2. Use lines as a guide for facial features
3. Line ears up with eyes
4. Use shading to build nose
5. Place shadows accordingly
6. Take a picture if needed to properly place shadows

Tips for drawing horses:

1. Start with three circles for the body
2. Connect circles with lines
3. Rear end, underbelly and neck shadowing along with shadows behind legs
4. Legs may be difficult -- Don't give up!