How to Draw

Drawing is one of humanity’s oldest forms of expression, with existing examples dating back an astonishing 80,000 years or more. Older than written language by tens of thousands of years, drawing developed across millennia, forming the base of many of the world’s artistic traditions.

Like reading and writing, drawing is a fundamental life skill. Once an integral part of a traditional education, knowledge of drawing deepens your understanding of the visual world that surrounds you and enhances your ability to interact meaningfully with it. In addition to the many pleasures of drawing, the ability to see as an artist sees brings a new dimension to self-expression and elevates your skill in countless other activities, from photography and design to the deeper appreciation of nature and art.

Professional artists in the West have traditionally studied drawing first, as a primary and foundational skill. And, as you’ll discover in How to Draw, the art of drawing is eminently learnable.

Contrary to what many people think, the ability to draw both accurately and expressively does not depend on innate talent or a unique gift. Think of it like this: Anyone can learn to play a musical instrument, though not everyone can be Mozart. Similarly, though not everyone can be Michelangelo or van Gogh, anyone can learn the skills of drawing and develop the ability to draw what they see from observation and invent whole worlds from their imagination.

In fact, you may be amazed at how well you can learn to draw, even if you believe you have no artistic talent. As this course demonstrates through clear examples, you can learn to apply the same fundamental principles that professional artists routinely use in their drawings. If you follow the professor’s guidance, by the end of the course you’ll understand how to faithfully represent what you see in front of you and in your mind’s eye.

The 36 video lessons of How to Draw offer you dynamic and comprehensive training in the art of drawing. Your teacher, David Brody, Professor of Painting and Drawing at of the University of Washington, brings more than forty years of study, studio work, and dedicated teaching to this course, demonstrating an inspiring teaching style and limitless insight into the learning process.

This brilliantly designed course takes you step by step through all of the key elements that, taken together, form the art of drawing. Through Professor Brody’s presentation and your own studio practice, you’ll study the core principles of drawing, such as line, proportion, composition, value, light and shadow, texture, color, and figure drawing. You’ll also study many of the groundbreaking Renaissance methods used for realistically depicting illusionistic space on a two dimensional surface, including empirical and linear perspective.

In the later lectures, you’ll explore the ways in which Renaissance spatial constructs evolved to include a broader understanding of pictorial space. You will study the essential connection between figuration and abstraction, and the ways in which this opened new possibilities for art that melded abstraction and representation.

Throughout the course, you’ll take lessons and inspiration from dozens of master drawings from history’s greatest draftsmen— artists like Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Thomas Eakins, and contemporary masters such as Richard Diebenkorn and Norman Lundin. The result is a richly enjoyable and effective system for learning this remarkable art.

You can use the course material in many ways. How to Draw is a rich and deep resource, offering a wide spectrum of lessons that make the skills of drawing directly accessible.

Learn the Language of Drawing

Start by tracing the fascinating history of drawing, and begin to experiment with the artist’s materials you’ll use throughout the course. From there, you’ll study the underlying “grammar” of drawing, and make drawings that explore elements such as:

Line: Learn to use contour and construction line to draw objects and cross-contour line to create volume.
Shape: Draw individual objects by constructing them from basic geometric shapes, and discover the elements of positive, negative, and aggregate shape.
Composition: Study how to organize the parts of a drawing to create a unified whole within a specific rectangle, using techniques of compositional balance, spatial organization, and the use of focal areas and focal points.
Proportion: Use the velo of Alberti, a gridded Renaissance device that allows you to understand how three-dimensional form can be accurately depicted on a flat surface, and learn to control proportion by using a standard unit of measure, level and plumb lines, and quantify difficult angles using the clock hand approach.
Illusionistic Space: Study in detail how to create flatness, volume, and space, using such tools as receding diagonals and foreshortened shapes, the relative scale of objects, and atmospheric perspective.

With each new step in the process, you’ll apply your knowledge in drawing projects, which encompass individual objects, still lifes, interiors, and self-portraits.

Lectures:

1. An Introduction to Drawing 32 min
2. Drawing Materials for Line 32 min
3. Drawing Fundamentals and First Exercises 30 min
4. Line and Shape: Line and Aggregate Shape 31 min
5. Line and Shape: Volume and Figure-Ground 33 min
6. Line and Shape: Positive and Negative Shape 28 min
7. Composition: The Format and Its Armature 30 min
8. Composition: How Artists Compose 28 min
9. Line and Shape: Line Attributes and Gesture 29 min
10. Composition: Shape and Advanced Strategies 29 min
11. Proportion: Alberti’s Velo 29 min
12. Proportion: Accurate Proportion and Measure 28 min
13. Creating Volume and Illusionistic Space 29 min
14. Six Complex Drawing Projects 30 min
15. Linear Perspective: Introduction 32 min
16. Linear Perspective: The Quad 27 min
17. Linear Perspective: The Gridded Room 28 min
18. Linear Perspective: Ellipses and Pattern 30 min
19. Linear Perspective: Advanced Topics 29 min
20. Value: How Artists Use Value 28 min
21. Value: Drawing Materials for Value 29 min
22. Value: Black and White and a Value Scale 29 min
23. Value: Eight Complex Drawing Projects 29 min
24. Value: Side Light and Cast Shadow 29 min
25. Value: Oblique Light and Cast Shadow 29 min
26. Texture: Mark Making and Optical Value 31 min
27. Texture: How Artists Use Texture 29 min
28. Color: Color Theory and Color and Light 30 min
29. Color: How Artists Use Color 30 min
30. Color: Color Drawing Projects 30 min
31. The Figure: A Canon of Proportions 29 min
32. The Figure: The Head, Hands, and Feet 30 min
33. The Figure: Artistic Anatomy 29 min
34. The Figure: Drawing Projects 33 min
35. Advanced Concepts: Pictorial Space 29 min
36. Advanced Drawing Projects 32 min