Tuesday 23rd January

 I nearly missed the next season from my book, this is the title page and you can see the illustrator is Rececca Warren;

And here is the heading for the season  with one of her lovely little drawings;

When semi-retirement 'struck' back in March 2020, I decided to have a real go at learning to draw and paint. Two books made a huge difference to me;

Firstly, 'Drawing With Children' by Mona Brookes, which I tripped across in 2019.

I was impressed by the 'before' and 'after' pictures showing how her students improved after her lessons. 

I didn't study the whole book in detail, but what I did learn is how there are only 5 different types of line or shape in drawing, a dot, a circle, a straight line, curved line and an angle

and everything can be broken down into these components.  I've seen this principle in other drawing books as well.

The other thing I learned was How to Look at things, to really see what was there.

I enjoyed working through these copying exercises. The idea is you copy what is printed in each box into the one below.

They very quickly go from simple to complex, and make one start observing very carefully. 

And here's the second book which convinced me that it was possible for anyone to draw;

I bought this with a fair amount of scepticism on kindle, but stuck with the program,  doing about 15 mins most days.

Here are some extracts from the first lesson. It's a really well explained step-by-step approach

It doesn't take long before you find yourself drawing a house, or trees, or an eye, followinghis instructions. 

His style is quite cartoonish, but once you get the idea it is not hard to adapt it to your own preference, rounding off edges or adding details.

So there you are; the right instruction books did it for me. After that came copying other people, like Rebecca Warren drawings, and watching YouTube....

Go on! Have a go, find a softish pencil and some paper.... (do a bit of Mona Brookes copying, and then try the circle...then try an orange...then eat the orange!).

Ordinary drawing is not really a talent, any more than day-to-day doing the washing up, cooking a basic meal, or the 101 tasks we have done so many times we don't need to think about. It's about looking, and drawing what's there, not what we think is there.