Art Lesson: A Wooden Man, Proportions, and the Park.

Hello, friends.

Today's lesson is just a few tips and a sketch challenge.

Sometimes when I think up something I want to draw, I don't have a specific picture to draw from.

I tend to have problems unless I can get the basic structure drawn of my subject.

When it is a person I want to draw, this wooden man comes in handy.

(I think mine was found at a yard sale, but they can be picked up at craft stores as well.)

I do wish that they sold him in child form as well.

Children's proportions are much different than adults.

As babies, the head is roughly 1/4 of the body size.

As the child grows, the scale of the head to body diminishes until,

as an adult, the head is about 1/8 of the body size.

(Here is a rough sketch to illustrate what I am speaking of.)

Regardless, it is nice to have my wooden model man because his arms, legs, back, head all move pretty well the way a normal body would,

so the gesture or position one desires can be seen by moving him around.

 I had an idea for the sketch I wanted on this coloring page, but my man was not looking correct to me,

so I brought out the wooden model.

He helped me get my proportions better in line as well as the positioning of his body and a better length of his legs.

I could then be creative with the rest of his features.

If you find you would like to do more people sketches, you might want to pick up a wooden model for yourself.  

Since the lesson today was a simple one,

I will leave you today with a sketch I put into my sketch book since we last met.

I took my children to the park and figured it would be a nice time to sketch.

I decided I was going to try to draw something I felt was hard to challenge myself.

(I drew the picture from real life, but took a photo to show you.)

It is always a bit daunting to me to draw from real life, as well as attempting to draw something that doesn't exactly appeal to my desire to draw.

If you would like a challenge this week, take your sketch book outside and draw something that looks hard to you.  Give yourself a time limit (I had about an hour for this one, with a few interruptions for a tire swing push and to help somebody across the monkey bars). 

I was pleasantly surprised at how the playground equipment was not as difficult as I expected,

even though I can see obvious errors in my sketch.

However, that is what I view my sketching is good for:

practicing and challenging myself to attempt things that may later come into use to help me with something else,

and then it won't seem so overwhelming because what I thought was impossible has been done before.

Thanks for stopping in.

If you get a chance, pick up your sketch book this week and see what you can do.

You'll be glad you did!

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