The Five Essential Drawing Questions
To draw something, we must translate our subject into the language of drawing—that is, into lines and shapes. For example, what shape most closely represents the body of this bird? If you strip away all of the details, textures, and subtleties of the bird’s body, you’re left with an ovoid. The top of this ovoid appears to be tilting toward the right. This basic ovoid doesn’t capture the nuances of the bird’s body, but it doesn’t need to at this phase of the drawing process. What shape most closely represents the bird’s tail? Most people would say a rectangle, or a quadrilateral. The beak is a triangle, and so on.
This is not just a rhetorical game. If you look at this subject and see bird you are seeing it ...
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