How to Draw With Help From MCLS

How to Draw With Help From MCLS

By Julia @ the Lawrence Headquarters Branch

Every year as the “Drawing Party” program continues to develop, participants work on pushing themselves to try new techniques. As a library, we are lucky to have numerous resources for learning how to draw, including books and DVDs. I helped the Drawing Party group utilize some of those resources this past year, and I wanted to share them with the Mercer County Library System community for anyone looking to further hone their artistic skills.

My primary style is realistic art, so normally in class we work on landscapes, flowers, animals or things that can be photographed. In addition to challenging the patrons with new drawing styles, I wanted to challenge myself by trying out one type of cartoon style known as anime, or Japanese animation. This popular style of art is also featured in many Japanese graphic novels known as manga. To try out this style, I utilized the book Cute Creature Art Class: Enchanting Anime Beasties: Learn to Draw Over 50 Magical Monsters by Naomi Lord. Before class, I tested out a few different designs including a phoenix and a river dragon. I liked the easy to follow instructions with step-by-step pictures. Ultimately, I chose to teach how to draw “Pegasus” or the Greek mythological winged horse. As the creature is not real, participants had fun trying out different colors, and they all came out great!

Another way both the Drawing Party participants and I challenged ourselves was by practicing perspective. We drew a bridge, which involved a lot of lines and angles. A good library resource to learn about perspective is a DVD called Perspective for Sketchers by Stephanie Bower. This DVD is published by Craftsy, a company which makes instructional videos on different craft and art techniques. Perspective is difficult because it forces the artist to stop thinking about the actual dimensions of an object and focus instead on how an object is being perceived. For example, even though a fence post may be the same size in the foreground as in the background, it will look smaller in the background due to the distance from the viewer. The bridge was a good challenge to practice perspective’s impact on lines and shapes, and everyone did a good job.

One of my favorite resources I found this year was The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Drawing by Walter Foster. We drew two pictures from this book – one of the fuchsia flower and one of a panda. I loved the step-by-step illustrations from start to finish of each piece. The book is well written and covers a wide range of topics from nature and animals to humans (one of the most difficult subjects to draw, if not the most difficult). I highly recommend this book as we all made some beautiful drawings from it!

We also used a book called Drawing Pets by the Idiot’s guides. Before class, I tried drawing a gecko and a hamster as they were animals we had not drawn before in Drawing Party. While I appreciated the step-by-step nature of the book, the drawings tend to edge closer to traditional American cartoon styles. Overall the book is a great first resource to learn about the shapes, patterns and techniques needed to draw animals, and was certainly very useful for drawing pets in a limited amount of time. Some of the illustrations that have taken me the longest amount of time to draw have been dogs and horses, which can be viewed on the Drawing Party playlist here.

I always like to end the Drawing Party year with some holiday hand lettering techniques. We have lots of helpful books in the library, but some of my favorites include Hand Lettering for Beginners: Simple Techniques, Endless Possibilities by Sarah Ensign, Holiday Hand Lettering: 30 Festive Projects to Celebrate Christmas by Union Square & Co. (which has several general holiday projects, not just for Christmas), The Kids Book of Hand Lettering: 20 Lessons and Projects to Decorate Your World by Nicole Miyuki Santo, and A Beginner’s Guide to Modern Calligraphy and Brush Pen Lettering: Learn to Create Beautiful Hand Lettering for Invitations, Cards, Journals and More! by Maki Shimano.  I taught two hand lettering Drawing Parties this year – the first to create gratitude rocks for the Lawrence Headquarters Branch butterfly garden and the second to write holiday cards. I am glad that drawing can be used to spread holiday cheer and good wishes throughout the year. I hope that patrons will enjoy seeing the words of encouragement in our garden year-round and that they will use the techniques from these resources to share moments of kindness and joy in their lives.

If you would like to see the Drawing Party 2024 Gallery, please visit this link.

For the Drawing Party playlist, please visit this link.

For even more drawing resources, try Creativebug!
“Creativebug.com has thousands of award-winning art & craft video classes taught by recognized design experts and artists.”

Thank you, and I hope to see you again in the spring!

Sincerely,

Julia