Learn To Draw #01 - Sketching Basics Materials

hey folks it's Brandon schaer welcome to the drawing series videos uh this is the first one kind of an introduction and some materials but we're going to get into some drawing here shortly so what I have here in front of me um just a few things to get started with with drawing and that would be a a small Sketchbook um this one is five 5 by8 pretty much you could also get a bigger one uh you know 8 by10 or whatever um so you're definitely going to need some sketchbooks uh also the next important thing

are the pencils so you can find a little drawing Set uh pretty much anywhere so a little drawing set usually you can find some a bunch of different pencils and they come with an eraser and a pencil sharpener uh really cheap uh we'll go over what all the different different kinds of leads and and pencils mean later in a different video so pick up some of those you know or you can get a a little a larger set of them whatever your price range is uh also something the deals less with drawing but will be

helpful for painting when we get into thumbnail sketches and such as having some some Shades of gray markers um see they're all just different Shades of Gray this is really good for Value sketching and for doing uh things of that nature so if you can find these that would be cool but if not don't worry about it um but just something handy to have around next thing are the different kinds of erasers this is a Gum Eraser um I recommend these this these really work the best for when I'm doing uh drawing uh you can

also get a uh a needeed eraser uh they look like this but usually they're completely square and flat but what you can do is you know you use them and then when it gets black or dirty or something you can you can fold it over on itself so you can shape it and mold it into you know a really fine point eraser that you might need so these are good for really fine details and such like that and they tend to pick up graphite pretty well and then this is just a regular old plastic kind

of eraser uh not the best but if that's all you can get uh it'll do the job uh pencil sharpener of course that'll most likely come with the kit these will also come with a kit if you if you get a nice kit um these are called blending stumps uh what it is is a roll rolled up sheet of paper and with a really fine point and you you rub it uh they're pretty much for shading and we'll get into that later but here that's what they look like um so we'll get into what those

do later but if you have some uh that'd be great and this you may not really need but um it it's pretty much just sandpaper and it's you uh if you need like a really sharp point on your pencil you just kind of um you know sharpen the side of your pencil there to get a nice sharp tip uh when needed so it can be handy but really more for details all right folks so let's get into it here I usually start out with 2B that's usually my favorite pencil to use and just briefly I'll

go into what these different pencils mean uh I'm sure if you have a kid already um you've noticed that there's a lot of different H's and B's and F Well here's a good example an 8 B well what b stands for is black so the higher the number the the softer and and darker it's going to be so the B the be's are usually they get softer the the higher the number so right here I have an 8B and a 6B B the six the 8B is softer and most likely darker than the 6B okay

so I hope that makes sense so one being uh you know the highest like eight being the softest lead and then it gets harder and harder as you get lower in the bees now for the H's 2 H H stands for hardness so the higher the number in the hes say if you had like a 6h I don't even think they have that in here but if you did have a 6h the higher it gets the higher the number the harder it gets so 2 H isn't that hard but if you had a 4 H

the 4 H is going to be a lot harder than the two so hopefully that makes sense and now if you see an HB that's kind of in the middle um you know hard and Blackness this is kind of like a normal pencil that we write with so I usually use to draw and sketch I usually use a 2B it's a little softer and allows me to get get some darks that without switching pencils without going to like a 4B or a 6B I can get some darker tones just for sketching um you know nothing

too detailed but after drawing a while you you'll realize what pencils you like it's just like paint brushes with uh paint so we're going to start out with a 2B here and one of the first things that you know they do in drawing classes and that you learn to draw is to how it make things three-dimensional and uh I have a few tricks but I'm going to just show you how we do it in the first this first video I'm trying to make them make a short video so we start out with a simple object

and really where I should start is how to sketch most people don't know exactly how to sketch so I'm going to zoom in here just so you can really see what I'm doing so when you sketch you want to draw many different lines so if you're sketching a circle out you know try to find the shape within all these different lines you want to find the shape now that's a very messy Circle but you get the idea is that you don't want to commit see this is more of something you want to do and then

you go back and kind of darken you know the the the line you you can you know you find the shape within all those lines you can go back and darken where I've committed something you don't want to do with it when sketching the initial sketching you want it really light totally committed right at the beginning very light compared you don't want to just draw a circle like this very hard and see now I mean that looks it it just even if I finished it it doesn't look good you know compared to that one this

one is more of a circle because I you know I sketched it and this one I committed you know first time I tried to do it I just committed to it instead of sketching and refining the Ed the edges and finding the best line within those lines so now if I go back over and sketch over that and sketching it it's just different lines it's just doing lines like you know different different shapes so that's what sketching is and you can see I kind of fixed it up there so don't be committed if if you're

drawing a tree or something or sketching anything um I suggest that you start drawing everything in your house your your whole house layout start sketching everything but if you if you're sketching a tree you know if you're doing like the trunk don't commit you know to this being the trunk don't commit to that you know kind of sketch it out first get the get the general idea you can even get the the general shape you know just do really quick and then okay maybe it doesn't dip in that much so you kind of you know

draw another line there another line there and then you know once you start finalizing it you kind of Harden the The Edge where you need to and then these other these lighter lines will just disappear over time you know you won't even it's not even important that you have those lines there you can go back and erase later on when you're finishing up the sketch or the drawing but don't commit to the very first you know mo more than likely it's not going to be perfect the first time you try to draw something uh and

you saw there with that Circle that it was not good at all um compared to this one where I I took my time and sketched so keep that in mind when when sketching that's the proper way to sketch now making something 3D this is two-dimensional because there's no depth there's no Shadow really so the first thing you have to do just like in painting uh if you follow my painting lessons that you've heard this before you need to find a light source so where's the light coming from I'm just going to say it's coming from

over here you know something to that effect see make sure you even sketch in the arrow you know never know where you want it to come from so if the light is right here there's the sun um now you have to think three-dimensionally is it shining behind it hitting the back of it is it right on the side there is it more toward toward you um you know it just depends but we'll say that this is going to be really light so the shadow is going to be over here so this is what you need

to practice doing is start shading in really lightly these different areas of Shadow trying to make things threedimensional now in later videos I'll get into some I'll get in I'll go into depth on how to shade different techniques you can do all these things but you know at the beginning I just kind of want to give give an overall thing that you need to start thinking about and and making things look realistic and determining light sources and things and this is very important foundation before you even begin a painting before you begin drawing always ask

where's the light source how many light sources maybe there's another light source over here so then the Shadows just down here so I mean it there's so many different factors that you need to be aware of and you know and then it'll have a shadow like this you know and then you have to think what is it sitting on is it sitting on something flat is it you know there's the background something like that a little off but you get my point is it sitting on something like that is the shadow does the shadow dip

way down like this give more of a 3D look um there's many different things uh you have to think about so I want you to just practice things like this start sketching everything in your house get used to the the sketching lines get used to the really messy lines and have fun with it and um just try different techniques start doing some cross-hatching we'll get into that a lot later but hopefully this helped you just understand how to sketch and and knowing that it may not be perfect the first time you try it but that's

what erasers are there for that's why you have this big canvas of paper you know if this one didn't turn out well okay start over on this one try it again try it from a different angle try the light up here and then just you know okay where's the shadow going to be actually well maybe there's another light source here okay so now what do I do you know just Shadow it up here a little bit you know depending on the shape of the ball and maybe if you don't know the answer you know get

a get a round object and put two lights on each side in real life and see where how does the shadow react you know there's probably a shadow over here like this there they're going to be Crossing Shadows um um in real life so like how how does this work you know this is going to be a really dark shadow where they cross but there'll probably still be a light Shadow over here and a light Shadow on this side so it just depends I mean you have to really uh think about this stuff and and

try it out and see see how realistic you can make things just simple sketches like this this and start trying trying it with uh with cubes you know rectangular objects make them 3D and get used to just doing these quick sketches it doesn't have to be perfect get rid of the perfectionist mentality um and get into the training mode you know lights coming over here you know that's going to be light little Shadow there Shadow but this is going to be the darkest you know just things like this just play around and and have fun

with it and see what you can come up with and you know once you can do cubes and all these different objects that's all nature is you know this is this is just a big cylinder you know and then how is the light hitting it there's a light here so there's going to be a big Shadow coming this way or whatever the case is so play around get used to the sketching lines that's all I ask for you this week and and get the materials and play around with everything and have fun start sketching things

in your house just get as far as you can just sketch things and and if it looks terrible in the end don't worry about it don't stress over it do your best and uh next week we're going to get into you know all this stuff um you know maybe it'll be shading or how to make things uh look more 3D using wire frames and you know drawing it on there and visualizing it um but we'll get into that when the time comes uh but for now just play around with the sketching lines and uh see

what you can come up with have fun but anyway I hope this video was helpful in any way and uh stay tuned for next week next Saturday I'd appreciate it uh if you like this video please give it a thumbs up I'd appreciate it like And subscribe if you wish to see more and um take care of yourself peace