Designing With Shapes

"Untitled" Ryan Fairbanks

A drawing when seen at its purest fundamentals, is a collection of shapes arranged in an appealing way. It’s easy to get distracted creating dimensional structures in space, and get caught up in the technicalities of perspective and form. But imagining loose, flat shapes as the starting point of a drawing, allows for a stronger concentration on readability.

It’s the scaffolding of a drawing and keeps the design process dynamic. If needed, form can be added later. Imagining spheres, cubes and perspective lines before getting the flat design right, can feel like putting the cart before the horse. 

Example of basic shape construction

I aim to get the shape language clear first, then try to keep that core structure in mind all the way through to the end result. Making sure it doesn’t get lost in the process of polish and refinement. The final drawing will be read flat, so maintaining a flat mindset can help an idea come through more clearly. 

When in a state of creative flow, this way of thinking becomes subconscious. But so often a mind block can occur, and this process of playing with shapes and drawing them out fully, can help get my momentum back. It gives clarity on what to focus on. This technique can also break the temptation to follow the standard formulas of proportion, and encourage design that feels free and fresh. 

Example of altering shapes and proportion

I tend to think character first, but this goes for settings and objects too. Big chunks of shape can be laid in, and further broken down until a whole world reveals itself. The final drawing is a result of what shapes are chosen and what size they are in relation to each other.

Working With Real Materials

"Untitled" Tim Burton

There are incredible digital tools out there that can speed up all sorts of processes. But I love to draw outside the computer as much as possible. 

In the computer there are endless possibilities. We can zoom, undo and break everything up into layers. But this brings with it a temptation to make everything look very clean.

When working with real materials we are playing with elements of adrenaline, risk and spontaneity. Lots of exciting things happen as an inky nib dances across the page or watercolour paint runs loose in a way we weren’t expecting. This encourages a kind of experimentation and invention that’s challenging to simulate inside the computer. 

We are mostly stuck with what we've put down. Lines might not all connect, and colour might have travelled outside the lines, but as it’s been made with real materials the process is visible. This allows the nuances to be accepted more easily. 

"Night Thoughts" Quentin Blake

There is also a rewarding, tactile quality to creating something on real paper that you can hold in your hands. It's a live performance and this adds so much the experience of creating. It taps into something primal.

I have also found that I learn more when I'm working outside the computer. Doing studies or drawing exercises on paper is somehow a more memorable and less passive experience. This helps what I'm learning stick in my brain for longer.

With all these thoughts in mind, when the time comes to put the ink and brushes away and get back to the computer, we can bring with us a looseness and a way of thinking that can help the digital work sparkle a bit more. 

Fight the urge to polish everything and "Let it be!" 

"Alice in Wonderland" Tony Ross

Drawing On The Paper, Rather Than Through It

"Mr Benn" David Mckee

No matter how hard you try, a drawing will always be flat. You can layer it with perspective, you can shower it in shading, but when you’re done it’ll be as flat as a pancake. This isn’t a bad thing, it should be celebrated. It’s a unique quality of something being drawn, and it’s why it’s worth the effort of drawing in the first place. 

Techniques of rendering and perspective can add grounding to a drawing, and can elevate impact. But it’s always important to be aware that these techniques are working for you, not you for them. The more ‘real life’ perspective and rendering you lay on a drawing, the more rules you’ll have to follow. The more you’re boxing yourself in. If something looks better with broken perspective or a broken arm bone, break it! It’s a drawing, those bones aren’t there. If rendering is wanted in a piece, for lighting or for mood, I find it can be exciting when the drawn quality is maintained. Aim to keeping it as expressive and emotive as possible.

"The Snowman" Raymond Briggs

Computers are very good at creating images that follow the reality of our world. They can calculate objects in space with correct perspective and lighting, faster and more accurately than we can. So why not go the other way. Why not do what computers appear to struggle with, which is being genuinely visually creative, poetic and expressive. Let the page have its own rules.

"Wild" Emily Hughes

I think about this as drawing on the paper, rather than through it. I have explored the idea of trying to make the paper go away as I'm drawing. This naturally encourages a certain level of dimension to a piece, as your imagining the paper to be a window. However it can be fun to think about it in the opposite way. It is incredibly thrilling to see a drawing living on the page, rather than in it. Not looking through a window, not a re-creation of a paused moment. But the creation of something that is happening on the paper live, living on it’s own terms, with it’s own logic and reality!

Birds Are Made Of Feathers

"A Bird Made of Feathers" Ryan Fairbanks

The comedian Sean Lock said, “Birds are made of feathers, everybody knows that”. He was saying it in a joke about the fanciful but believable lies we tell children, but I’ve always loved that idea. We can tell fanciful but believable lies to ourselves when we are drawing. It can help to imagine that the insides of something are not fixed anatomy, but mouldable and invented. This way of thinking can inspire a lot fun creativity and keep things playful and fresh.

Cave paintings are fantastic examples of this. The cave artists recreated what they saw with economical lines and clear shapes. These paintings are bold, confident and exciting. 

"Lascaux" Cave Painting

Drawing from memory can also be a great exercise, you won’t get everything right, but it’ll have a logic of it’s own, and it’ll probably be more interesting than if you attempted to suffocate your drawing with a mess of accurate anatomy. Let it breathe and flow!

It can be fun to think of drawing as not the regurgitation of existing information, but an opportunity to create a new way of seeing something. The more you have to get ‘right’, the more scared you’ll be to get started. All these things get in the way of expression and creating.

"Searle's Cats" Ronald Searle

Drawing isn't surgery, there isn’t a medically agreed upon way of doing it, and no one dies if you get it wrong! If it tells its story it has served its purpose and is successful. Fear of failure can freeze you up. Take as many road blocks away as you can between you and a drawing on the page.

A failed drawing is two things: 1. An empty piece of paper because you were too scared to start. Or 2. An unclear, overworked mess because you were too scared to finish. 

Drawing Feeling More Than Fact

"Interrupted Readers" Quentin Blake

Drawing is a fantasy place where anything can be totally believable, it's not the real world. I find it frustrating when I hear people talk about drawing that recreates reality as 'correct'. This is not to say that realism doesn't have its place, studying the real world and academic principles is incredibly useful, and it can reduce your limitations creatively. However when I'm looking at something that is drawn representationally, I often find it impressive, but not necessarily successful. It often communicates what the subject is and not a lot more, not expressing anything unique. Sometimes it's like looking at a mathematical equation, describing coldly what something is on the surface.

To me this is a missed opportunity, when you are working in a medium where so much can be accepted. Drawing should enhance the human quality, not disguise it. If your going to go the effort drawing everything why not push it, why not do something you can't do anywhere but in drawing. You can choose what to show and how to show it. I love work that celebrates that something is a drawing and doesn't hide it.

"Rotten Island" William Steig

I think the key to a drawing being 'accepted' has to do with it being resolved, not correct. Making it look like you did it that way on purpose with confidence. I find this kind of drawing liberating.

Once you've taken these restraints off and you're not bogged down with right and wrong, a drawing has only failed if it's not communicating what you wanted it to. This encourages you to be more inspired, to invent and create new ways of showing things. Like hand writing, there are things that can be done to make what you are creating more understandable, but it can still be utterly personal and unique to you. You can also be faster, as your working a lot with feeling, and not constantly replicating, correcting or cross referencing yourself.

The audience brings themselves to what they are looking at and fills in the gaps. Drawing can get things across faster and more effectively without being bogged down in detail and unneeded information. I find that can give more connection to the work itself, as a playful and more visually stimulating world can pull you in more than a clinical recreation.

"Untitled" Saul Steinberg

None of this is to say that a realism approach to drawing is wrong, I just see a lot of other possibilities being pushed away as a result of realism generally being seen as more sophisticated, acceptable and more encouraged. When I'm drawing, I attempt to tap into an honesty. I try to let the drawing be unashamedly a drawing. Connecting to a child like sense of forward momentum with the pencil. I find that can give my work a freeness and a spontaneity. Allowing myself to draw feeling more than fact.