You Can Draw in 30 Days

SPHERES

The first groups of lessons deal with drawing a 3D sphere.  The instructions are clear and easy to follow.  They don't focus on being exact or perfect.  Each lesson can be done in about 20 minutes.  

Here are my drawings for this first part of the lesson.

This is the challenge for this section.  In the bottom drawing, you can see the influence of the author's cartooning style.

CUBES
This is the next part of the book.  It focuses on a foreshortened cube.

HOLLOW CUBES

This lesson takes the idea of a foreshortened cube to adding lids to them.

STACKED TABLES

This lesson continues to build on the foreshortened cube.  

ADVANCED CUBES

This lesson adds onto the foreshortened cube.  They are used to create buildings.  Ramps are also added.  These are all freehand sketches, so they are not very square.

KOALAS

I'm not sure why this lesson is put in.  I guess it is to teach a bit of texture to drawing.  You are to draw some circles and texture them and then draw a cartoon koala.  It did say to look up pictures of koalas and then to draw them.  I didn't do that since I'm not really interested in drawing animals. 

THE ROSE

This lesson begins with a number of warm-up activities of drawing bowls and flags.  This gets you used to drawing a foreshortened circle with shading.  After trying those, you then move into drawing a rose....sort of.  It's not a realistic rose, but it does give the idea of the swirl of a rose with some shading.

   

THE CYLINDER AND ADVANCED LEVEL CYLINDERS

These lessons focus on using foreshortening, size, overlapping, shadow, shading, and placement to work with cylinders.  It's a fairly simple lesson, but it does have some basic information.  The advanced level gives lots of practise in drawing them.

CONSTRUCTING WITH CUBES AND ADVANCED LEVEL HOUSES

In this lesson, it begins to use a bit of two-point vanishing point.  It doesn't call it that.  Instead it uses the foreshortened square with the sides as guidelines.  To me, it would have been easier to explain it using a horizon with the vanishing points.  With the advanced level, it asks to trace the provided housing group three times.  The author explains that it gives an opportunity to see how lines fit together.  There have been times when I've traced, but those were for very complicated structures.  I found this exercise more beneficial for me when I drew it on my own numerous times.

THE LILY

This is the first of a group of lessons that deal with curves.  This is the S-curve.  Again, it is fairly straight forward.

CONTOUR TUBES

This is the second lesson using curves.  Again, it's a basic set of instructions.  These were fun to do, especially the little guys on the second page.

THE WAVE

This is the third lesson using curves.  It was a good lesson, but I still need to figure out the correct flowline of the wave.  Mine don't seem to be placed correctly.  The waves seem to be flowing down too much.  Next time, I would have the wave at a sharper angle which would bring the flowline closer to the same as the horizon.  Maybe that would fit better.

  

RIPPLING FLAGS AND THE SCROLL

This is another curve lesson.  It ties in foreshortening, overlapping, size, shading, and placement to create them.  I can see how the flag lesson could be applied to drawing clothing and all the folds that they have.  

THE PYRAMID

This is another basic lesson.  Most of these are drawn with too sharp a slant.  I think I would try to shorten the initial square even more to bring the eye down to the pyramid.  I'm not sure why I added in the sceptre into my sketches for this lesson.  It just seemed to fit. 

VOLCANOES, CRATERS, AND A CUP OF COFFEE

This seemed like a weak lesson.  I wish that it would have gone into drawing different angles of cups and different angles of handles.  The bottom one is my own design.  The handle isn't correct. I didn't see it until I took the picture and saw it on my computer.

TREES

Again, I thought that this was a weak lesson.  It demonstrated that in order to draw the roots, one should use a foreshortened crosshairs.  It showed one type of tree and that one wasn't drawn very realistically.  The bunches of leaves were to be drawn as circles with some texture.  The second part of the lesson was to take a clear clipboard with clear acetate and to go outside and trace trees.  This might be something to see the shape of trees, but right now, it is really cold.  I'm not prepared to do that.  Maybe later on.

DRAWING A ROOM USING ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE

This lesson uses one-point perspective to draw a basic room.  As a basic lesson, it was clear and concise.  It would have been helpful to demonstrate how to draw furniture such as tables, chairs, and sofas.  

DRAWING A CITY VIEW USING ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE

Again, this lesson explains clearly how to draw basic buildings using one-point perspective.  I feel that it would have been helpful to also explain how to change the size and shape of buildings as well as add in street lights, alleyways, and different doorways.  To me, these all fit with a basic perspective lesson.  The lesson had all the buildings the same height and width.  In my drawing, I put in buildings that were different.  I only finished one side of my drawing.

DRAWING A TOWER IN 2 POINT PERSPECTIVE

In this lesson, it goes back to the stacked tables lesson from before.  It now shows how to do it using 2 point perspective.  I used this to create a terraced building.  I purposely angles the top tiers to make them more interesting.

A CASTLE IN 2 POINT PERSPECTIVE

Again, this lesson pulls from the advanced cubes lesson.  

DRAWING A CITY IN 2 POINT PERSPECTIVE

This was a very quick lesson.  It was more to show how to add in other buildings at a lower level.  It didn't focus on adding in details, which I didn't.

LETTERING IN 2 POINT PERSPECTIVE

This lesson had more of a connection to cartooning than basic drawing skills as lettering seldom is part of a picture or painting.  I still think that the shadows aren't quite correct, but that's just me.  I did mine as instructed in the book.

I added a little man to hold up the letter I since it looked like it was falling down.  I didn't draw that letter properly, but I didn't want to erase it and start again. 

THE HUMAN FACE

This lesson started with instructions to trace from the book itself.  I'm not sure why this was to be done.  The author states that sometimes it takes away the frustration of trying to draw if a person can trace.  I know that I have sometimes traced parts of a photograph that I have taken rather than redraw it in order to paint it.  I would have preferred more direction in drawing a face from different angles rather than trace DaVinci's artwork.

 This is my own drawing.  It isn't of anyone I know....just an idea.  I usually end up drawing female faces, so this time I decided to try a male's face.

THE HUMAN EYE OF INSPIRATION

This lesson gave instructions on drawing an eye.  I was supposed to use a mirror to draw my own eye, but I used the author's sample.  I would also have liked some instruction on how eyes differ from a child's to a female's/male's, to a senior's.

YOUR HAND OF CREATIVITY

This lesson used all of the basics from the book.  The use of a foreshortened square for the palm as a starting point was a help.  I did this one more as a sketch rather than a clean drawing.