Drawing and Colour
Primary 3 · Creative Arts
Drawing and Colour
Lesson 3 of 3
13 min
Let's begin
Gatete decides to draw the yellow jerrycan standing by the door. He glances at it once. Then he bends over his page and draws hard for five whole minutes, his nose almost touching the paper.
He holds his drawing up next to the real jerrycan. It looks like a fat box with a stick on top.
Gatete was not drawing the jerrycan. He was drawing what he remembered about jerrycans. Today you will learn to draw what is actually in front of your eyes — and it is easier than you think.
Here is the secret real artists use, and it costs nothing.
Look, draw. Look, draw. One glance at the object, one short line on the paper. Then look again.
Your eyes should spend more time on the object than on the page. If you have not looked up for a whole minute, you have stopped drawing what you see and gone back to drawing from memory.
Follow every step on your own paper with any object you like.
Step 1 — Ask one question: taller than it is wide, or wider than it is tall?
Hold your pencil out at arm's length. Close one eye. Slide your thumb along the pencil so that the pencil measures the width of the jerrycan. Keep your thumb exactly there — that is now your measuring stick, one "thumb".
Now turn the pencil upright and count how many thumbs fit into the height. Gatete counts 2. So the jerrycan is 2 thumbs tall and 1 thumb wide. It is twice as tall as it is wide.
Step 2 — Draw a light box the same way round.
Gatete decides to draw it 6 cm wide. Twice as tall means 6 + 6, so his box must be 12 cm tall. He draws that box very lightly. It is a fence. The whole jerrycan must fit inside it and must not escape.
Step 3 — Hunt for the simple shapes inside the box.
Now stop seeing a jerrycan. Instead see shapes you already know:
Every object in the world is made of shapes you can already draw. That is why you learned them.
Step 4 — Check where each piece sits.
Does the handle sit in the middle of the body, or near the top? Look. It is near the top. Is the neck as wide as the body? Look. It is much narrower — about the width of your little finger next to the wide body.
Step 5 — Only now press hard.
Compare the drawing with the real jerrycan. Fix anything that is out. Then go over the lines you are happy with and press darker.
Proportion means how big each part is compared to the other parts. Get proportion right and even a simple drawing looks real. Get it wrong and it looks like a cartoon.
Here it is worked out with numbers. Mutesi is drawing a mug. She measures with her thumb: the mug is 4 thumbs wide and 3 thumbs tall. So it is wider than it is tall.
She wants to draw it 8 cm wide on her page. How tall should it be?
She draws it 8 cm wide and 6 cm tall, and it looks exactly like her mug. Proportion is just careful counting.
Ask a friend to sit still, and draw their face. Most children put the eyes near the top of the head. Look properly — the eyes sit about halfway down the head.
Test it on yourself right now. Put one finger on your chin and one on the very top of your head, then find the middle between them. Your finger lands on your eyes, not on your forehead.
Your eyes told you the truth. Your memory was lying. Trust your eyes.
The first lines of any drawing should be so light you can hardly see them. Light lines rub out cleanly and can be moved as many times as you need. Dark lines are a promise you cannot take back.
Draw lightly. Check. Fix. Then press dark.
Tip
Look, draw. Look, draw. Count it if you must: two seconds looking at the object for every one second drawing. When a drawing goes wrong, it is almost never because your hand is bad. It is because your eyes were lazy.
You are going to draw a football. Which basic shape do you start with?
Answer: A circle. Start with the big shape, then add the patches inside it.
A basin measures 6 thumbs wide and 3 thumbs tall. Is it taller than it is wide?
Answer: No — it is wider than it is tall. Twice as wide, in fact, because 3 + 3 = 6.
Uwase's exercise book measures 2 thumbs wide and 3 thumbs tall. She draws it 4 cm wide. How tall should she draw it?
Answer: 6 cm. 2 thumbs became 4 cm, so 1 thumb is 2 cm. The height is 3 thumbs, and 3 × 2 = 6 cm.
Ishimwe draws a person whose head is bigger than the whole body. Which art word names his mistake?
Answer: Proportion. The head is the wrong size compared to the other parts.
Why do we press so softly on the very first lines of a drawing?
Answer: Because light lines are easy to rub out and fix. You press dark only once the shape is right.
Put any object on your desk — a cup, a stone, an avocado. Measure it with your thumb, draw the light box, find the shapes inside, and finish it. Then hold it up next to the real thing and see how close you got.
What you learned today
Quick check
Put Gatete's drawing steps in order.
Tap the cards in the right order.
