Complete guide to easy drawing and illustration

Drawing can be a skill for some people as well as career or livelihood as it holds a lot of value for whoever practices doing it. In fact, drawing is such a useful knowledge for everyone so right from basic school, pupils are taught drawing in a subject known as Creative Arts. Some people from here begin to identify their talents and abilities and so education that encompasses drawing is a crucial step to opening many doors and even getting the populace ready to solve some problems in the society. As the education in drawing progresses from one stage to another, one gets to meet some categories like technical drawing, architectural drawing, still-life drawing among others.

In this guide, we will be focusing on building or expanding your knowledge in drawing towards a definite goal which is ILLUSTRATION. For proper grasp of this guide, it will be expedient for you to learn about simple tricks in drawing.

As you have gone through the simple tricks in drawing, I believe you are prepared for this guide but let us go over some essential things to note in drawing.

Preparations For Drawing

1. ) Sharpen your pencil to expose the lead up to about 1 or 1/2 inch.
2. ) Hold the middle of the pencil when you want to draw because this gives you space to freely make any marks of drawing and prevents restricted or difficulty in drawing.

With all the above foundations laid, it will be good to start the real deal as you are very curious to learn what this guide holds. We will look at the still-life kind of drawing in connection to other categories. 

How to draw objects

✅ Know that all objects are derived from basic shapes as circle, square, rectangle. For instance, a milk tin is made up of a rectangle and two circles at both ends.

✅ Composition of objects in a creative manner or view.

✅ Be attentive to every detail of the objects(s) if realism is the goal of the drawing or illustration.

✅ Observe the depiction of lighting in the drawing.

An example of an illustration from the stage of composition

Composing natural objects for drawing

In here are four(4) different objects in composition which are a sponge dish, smartphone box, tomato paste, orange but actually these were the objects to be drawn: sponge dish, tomato, smartphone box, a box with writing, a cylinder with writing, an orange, a circle.

From the image, it can be observed that the three items are organized in a way of artistry such that the box is open, the sponge dish open and even the tomato tin open. It is crucial not to be rigid in the composition of the objects but rather flexibility and an eye for cohesion is absolutely needed. The light is coming from the right hand side so the objects have cast shadow at the left hand side. Note: the transition from the highlight of the objects to where the shades begin forming. A picture of the composed objects can just be taken so that at any convenient time the drawing can still be done.

Drawing the objects in pencil

As a matter of fact, it is easier to draw the objects in the previous image when simplified into simple shapes since all the objects are from one basic shape or the other. In drawing, the positive space which is the area where the drawing is done must be properly utilized and this is what is depicted in the drawing above. The part of the objects away from the light are darker than the parts facing the light and care must be taken when shading to gradually progress from the lighter parts to the darker parts. The shading technique is MASS SHADING. It is a shading method in which the lead of the pencil about half of it touches the paper which makes it cover many parts at once.

Illustrating the drawing

Illustration is the process of vectorizing objects, drawings or images on the computer with the aid of special computer applications. This illustrative work shown below was done using Adobe Illustrator and it must be noted that I placed a picture of the pencil drawing on the canvas before the illustration process.