Did You Trace That? Freehand Drawing and You! doc

Often when you have really impressed someone, whether a friend or parent, you will be asked, "Did you draw that freehand?" This may give you a great feeling of accomplishment and pride

Did You Trace That? Freehand

Drawing and You!

Often when you have really impressed someone, whether a friend or parent, you

will be asked, "Did you draw that freehand?" This may give you a great feeling

of accomplishment and pride in your work, but what exactly does freehand

drawing mean?

When most people think of freehand drawing, they think of drawing with just the pencil and paper with no aids or stencils This is correct; however, drawing

freehand can mean many things It is great to be able to draw things just by

looking at them and transferring them with your eye and hand to the paper There are also many different ways to "draw freehand."

My definition of freehand drawing is drawing anything without directly copying the entire image from start to finish using aids

There are different levels of drawing freehand I'm not referring to using a compass or ruler, as these are tools that you

still have to use independently I am referring to an aid that directly projects images or that you use for tracing

The most common aid would of course be a projector and sometimes a lightbox For example — for larger pieces where I have already created a composition and printed it out for reference, I will transfer it to the paper using a projector I will not finish the entire project with the projector I will just use it to rule out error on proportions when transferring the design to a bigger mount

To me this is freehand drawing

I will only outline and capture the main details of the piece, then finish the project with the reference picture in front or right next to me for further reference

Tip: If you don't pay attention, relying on the projected image too much can also result in a skewed image, as most projectors tend to bend the image at the edges (the more affordable ones anyway, which are still in the 50 to 150 dollar range)

If you tell some people that you used a projector and sketched the outline of the picture, they will say that you have somehow "cheated." This could not be further from the truth

It is one thing to completely trace and copy an image from start to finish with a projector and call it your own It is another thing to get the main concepts down and finish the piece on your own without tracing everything from the projected image

Learning to use the drawing aids that are available to you effectively and relying

on them are the two main differences in drawing freehand and copying or

"cheating." With that being said, if you start to rely on the aid for everything, you will be hampering your growth and ability to "see" what you are drawing The more you draw things without aids, the better you will get at drawing things freehand

The point here is to learn how and when to use the aids that you have

available to you effectively and to not rely on them extensively

When transferring work to a bigger canvas or mount, a projector is a great tool It lets you focus on the actual elements of the piece without having to make sure the

proportions aren't off or if that line doesn't quite look right So use your aids

wisely!

For more tips on drawing things freehand or getting the proportions correct, check out my other article on Drawing Scale It has lots of other tips on drawing things freehand and making sure things turn out the way you want