Cindy Wider   Comment Posted Oct.12th, 2009, viewed 8 times

Hi Maelle,

yes you will eventually be able to draw nice curves without turning your page around. The other thing too is that your visual memory will develop well enough so that you can quickly see what is in front of you and then remember that, so it won't matter if you take a few seconds to turn your page or canvas around. Also, when you are drawing from life, many times you don't actually keep your first attempt. You draw it many times before settling on the final product and by the time you have drawn anything several times, it becomes embedded in your memory. Drawing has a lot to do with confidence and the more confident you become, the more you will feel free to move around and draw with your entire body. Drawing doesn't just come from the wrist and that is what you are learning right now.

This little frog dog is very good, you have done well with your outlining. The construction drawing method is not an exacting method and relies on you using your eye much more freely than any of the other methods. The outlining needs to be approximated using the construction drawing as a general guide and thats why it isn't presented as an overlap-drawing.

You did well to recognise the gentle curves down the sides of the body and the shapes of the ears, legs and paws. The angle of his snout was a little different to the original but I am not looking for perfection here at all, just that you understand the general process. Artists actually take years to perfect sighting, you are not expected to create a perfect drawing from this one single four hour exercise. What you have achieved is amazing!
Please practice this method whenever you can, it is a valuable method. All you need to do is practice learning to see shapes within objects. There is no right or wrong shapes to choose and no right or wrong place to position the shapes according to the outline, there are suggestions of shapes that can work better than others for example we can draw a daisy flower with one large outer circle and a smaller circle in the centre; thats the obvious bit, but for the petals, all you would need to draw is diagonal lines radiating out from the centre of each petal. If you draw this construction is will help you to draw a beautifully balanced daisy rather than just randomly drawing it from beginning to end.

I hope you find this method of drawing useful in your art life. You appear to understand this method quite well and just need to have some more practice using it on other things as suggested at the end of your course notes this week. Beautiful work for this very early stage in your course.