Plus 2 BONUS steps for learning Animation Drawing

“Over 25 Visual Analysis Tricks & Tips”

Most of the following information is excerpted from my upcoming book entitled Perceptual Layering – A Metacognitive Approach to Drawing. © 2012 Jeff Ermoian

If you have ever taken a drawing course, it is likely that you got little actual drawing instructionif your classes were like mine. Most just assigned subject, medium, and deadline, the rest you figured out on your own. I hope that the simplicity and directness of the perceptual layering technique I developed will result in many more people learning to quickly draw well and then using the process to teach others.

Many believe that talent determines success because they have never tried practice. With some simple rewiring, nearly everyone’s brain can be supercharged for drawing. No matter how steadyyour hand, you will never learn to draw until you learn to see. Until the eyes are trained thehands are irrelevant.Learning to see in a critical way resulted from my desire to draw people realistically. This kind of seeing would benefit me in ways I could never have imagined. It’s a foundational skill in mental development. Of all the skills that I learned how to train someone, none will match the usefulness of learning to see.

Important Tips: - The steps below build upon each other and not following this order canresult in many minutes of revision when drawing. Revision discourages beginning artists,so prevent it.

Many people stop immediately if the first few attempts are failures. The simple objectives of the suggested exercises encourage early success for beginners.No expensive supplies are required for the exercises offered except the few suggesting shooting a digital image. For most purposes, cellular phone shots will work fine. Paper and a drawing pencil are the primary supplies.The perceptual layering method summarized below focuses awareness on the mental processesaccompanying a complete visual analysis. When observations are recorded incrementally the result is a detailed enough observation to produce photorealism.

Step 1

Learn to see shape. (edge)

This step is accelerated by an awareness of edge where two-dimensional shape data resides. This step is addressed first because the success of the remaining steps depend on this one. There is no point in nicely shading something whose shape or locations don’t match what you see. Below are tricks you can use to accelerate shape awareness. Develop awareness of negative space by drawing negative shapes only. Shade in the negative shapes to make the subject contrast better.

Trick 1. Draw the shape of the space surrounding a lab chair or other subject with negative shapes in it. Do not draw the chair itself. The drawing should result in a chair shaped hole.

Trick 2. Draw a model wrapped in coils of tape or dressed in a black and white striped leotard. Students may draw the tape or stripes, but not the model. This trains the eyes to notice contour.

Trick 3. Pose a model immediately behind sheet of white linen or paper that is lit brightly from behind. This approach also makes it easy to introduce the principle of staging. Staging helps us select the most clear and descriptive pose.

Trick 4. I learned from the Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain that one easy trick you can use is to turn the subject upside down. This diminishes stress over what the object is supposed to be and allows one to better focus concentration on recording line direction.

Step 2

Learn to see form. (lighting)

Create an awareness of what light is doing. Lighting must be present because it contains information about three-dimensional form. It also contains data about material. Maintain an awareness of the coolness of shadow and the warmth of light .

A grid placed in front of a subject simplifies the job of drawing by breaking a big observation job into smaller, more manageable parts. Grids are recognized as a “trick”and not respected much by the paying public. You need to be sneakier than that. Here are more sneaky secrets.

Trick 5. The highlight location contains the data about the direction of the light source and is confirmed by the location of the shadows since light moves in straight lines unless diffused (scattered) or diffracted (bent).

Important Tips: - Misalignment of highlight and shadow will create viewer discomfort, even when they are not consciously noticing the bad alignment. This works against you until you become aware of it. Once you recognize this you can make it work for you.

Trick 6. Use available landmarks to do the job a drawing grid would do. Landmark features as I use the term means any feature whose comparative height or width or angle can be used as a reference like the painter holding his brush handle at arm’s length. Notice direction, angle, and intersection alignments in both positive and negative space to check highlight and shadow shapes and location. Imagine lines wrapping around a subject sometimes or a flat projection of straight lines in front of it

.Trick 7. Awareness of highlight and shadow edges contain data about smoothness or wetness (hard edged) and roughness or dryness (soft edged).

Trick 8. Use the lighting awareness by shooting a reference image of a sphere using a single light source from the front. Draw the sphere making certain that highlight and shadow are placed exactly opposite each other. A line intersecting the middle of the highlight and center of the sphere determines where to place the center of the shadow shape.

Important Tips: - Tones should blend smoothly from one to the next and express a full white to black contrast range, as limited by the drawing medium. I recommend an ebony pencil.

Now draw a second sphere in which there is less blending of highlight and shadow edges to make it appear more shiny.

Trick 9. Shoot a reference image of multiple spheres with two-point lighting and cast shadows, paying particular attention to how the contrast range on the subject and it’s shadow is affected by the interaction between the two sources. Draw that image accurately representing each of the above elements.

Important Tips: - Don’t shade the dark side of the sphere all the way to the edge.The result implies ambient light. Cast shadows are also drawn less dark to imply ambient light.

Trick 10. Supplement these innovative tricks with classical exercises, ones such as drawing draped cloth like white linen over black velvet. Don’t forget to keep showing what you learn to see in step 1.

Step 3

Learn to see texture. (surface)

Surface data contains tactile information and includes hardness and softness,smoothness and roughness, patterns that repeat or contrast, and even imply temperature. Remain aware of your memories of feeling a surface like the one you are drawing.

Trick 11. Serious pixel pushers create reference archives or use existing ones. Shoot reference images of both flat and 3 dimensional surfaces made of textiles, paper, wood, metal, and stone, saving them to a texture archive to be used when compositing imagesor doing animation art later.

Trick 12. Divide a sheet of drawing paper into nine equal panels and draw the 3 mostinteresting examples of each material.

Trick 13. Do several rubbings using graphite, charcoal, or pastel to quickly capture atexture on paper. Rougher textures like brick or stucco work well.

Trick 14. Exploit the brain’s natural ability to fill in missing data by only suggesting the texture of a repeating pattern like a brick wall or rows of office building windows. Don’t forget here to keep showing a keen awareness of shape and form.

Step 4

Learn to see depth (perspective)

Learn to draw 1 point, 2 point, and 3 point perspective, in that order beginning with simple geometric shapes with flat sides. Later you can try shapes with curves. Perspective drawing is a science as much as an art, and as such is taught better than nearly any other drawing subject.When depth is applied to objects or environments it’s called perspective. When appliedto characters, it’s called foreshortening. Understanding perspective drawing will helpwith learning foreshortening. The tricks for this step were learned from WaltStanchfield’s Drawn to Life book.Trick 15. Use surface to show distance. Farther away objects sit nearer the horizon andappear higher up than objects in the foreground.Trick 16. Use size to show depth. When showing two objects of equal size, the furtheraway object always appears smaller.Trick 17. Use overlap to show depth. Foreground objects always obscure objects behindthem.Trick 18. Use contours to show depth. This works especially well for foreshortening.Trick 19. Combine all the above features on a perspective background to effectivelyportray depth.Here's the bonus section for animatorsStep 5Learn to see motion (physics)Seeing physics at work results from an awareness of motion in 3 parts and how forcessuch as gravity, friction and centrifugal force act upon each step. Many of theprinciples of animation are dependent on this awareness. These principles are detailedin the book by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life.Notice that action follows a path. That line of action determines the direction a head orhead and spine follows. These paths tend to arc also.Trick 20. Draw figures in the anticipation or preparation phase of action about to run,jump, throw, fall, sneeze, or cry. Try a dialog goal.Trick 21. Draw figures in the action itself showing the apex of arcing motions virtuallyevery organic action follows. Try drawing the same action from another angle. Noticehow the silhouette trick helps you quickly determine the best angle from which to showyour action. Do a few dialog actions too such as an exclamation.Trick 22. Draw figures in the follow-through or reaction phase. Remember to show looseparts still catching up to the main action. Try punches of several types along with throws,catches, jumps, or twists. Sketch many facial reaction drawings too, trying to get not onlyemotions but moods also.Important tips: You will begin to notice at some point how much your own bodywill inform you what you draw. The next trick helps to remind you of that.Trick 23. Act out the action before attempting to draw it. If you stink at pantomimeevery character you draw will stink at acting.As in previous steps you should continue to deal with shape, shading, and texture issues.Step 6Learn to see posture. (pose)The posture of a character conveys data about the direction of movement for a movingcharacter. Next it tells a viewer about the mood of the character that is more accuratethan facial expression, as in a faked smile.The next chunk of information it contains tells us about that pose’s relationship togravity, meaning we can tell if they are standing, reclining, leaning, jumping, or falling.In all but two, the center of gravity will always be nearly centered above the point orpoints of ground contact.Trick 24. Make a line of action and place the character at different points along the path.Trick 25. Making sure to show a horizon line in each drawing, draw a leaning figure, astanding figure, a jumping figure, and finally a falling one.Trick 26. Draw many characters, each of whom are clearly experiencing a specific moodor emotion. Don’t show the face. Taking the face away makes this simple goal morechallenging and reinforces the idea that feelings are not localized to the face.Once the eyes are trained, it’s time to work on the hands. There are lots of ways to focusattention on the manual skills that aid drawing but I will save those for another time.If you have found my tips and tricks useful or just liked the orderly way they are organized,please thank me by recommending me on my LinkedIn profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffermoian and helping me promote the simplicity and effectiveness of Perceptual Layering.