A lot of people think drawing is hard.

I know it doesn’t come easy for everyone. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Not everyone is born with perfect pitch either.

Come to think of it, no one is born being able to read and write. Some pick it up quicker than others. But society doesn’t look at reading and writing as a rare gift for the chosen few.

I think it’s more accurate to say that people make drawing harder than it needs to be.

The skills to draw are simple to learn.

Some of the skills don’t even feel like drawing.

For example, measuring. You can look at anything and estimate where the middle is.

Finding the Middle

We have an instinctual sense of where the middle of something is.

Think of some of our common sayings: Is the glass half full or half empty? We’re halfway there. It’s halftime. Middle of the road. 50/50. Equal measure.

It’s not just our language. Humans have evolved to recognize patterns and this ability of sensing the middle is very strong.

If you look around you right now and choose something to look at, you won’t have any trouble guessing where the middle is.

Go ahead and try it. You might need to hold out your index finger and thumb to check, but see how close you got? Even if you had to try it a couple times it’s not hard to estimate where the middle of something is.

And you’re not even drawing, you’re just looking.

This is the main skill artists use first. Deciding what they want to draw and paying attention to where the middle is.

Now Count to Three

We also have a strong sense of thirds. Think of these common sayings: Third time’s the charm. Accidents come in three. Count to three. Rule of thirds. Even the song “Once, twice, three times a lady,” (whatever that means).

Just like seeing the middle of things it’s also easy for us to see thirds.

When you to break your subject into three equal segments, it might take a few tries. But you’ll have to admit it’s not that hard.

In fact that’s about all an artist is doing when they’re blocking in the first few lines of a drawing. They’re checking to see where something is in relation to one half or one third.

Is there a landmark close to one half? It might be a little more or less. Is there something else close to one third or two thirds? A little more? A little less?

That’s usually all you need to get started.

Look around you now and see how easy it is to estimate one third of something.

You’ll notice that sometimes there’s an interesting landmark near the middle or third marks.

Look at Trees

This method helps you get your proportions off to a good start.

Let’s say you want to draw a tree. You’ve marked where the top and bottom are on your paper.

A lot of trees start their main branches at about one third of the way up from the ground. That means all the branchy parts of the tree take up the top two thirds.

That’s the important first step, finding where the branching occurs. It might be closer to one half, or even much less than one third, depending on the species.

Now, how do you tell how wide it should be?

It’s pretty easy. Hold your finger and thumb to measure from the top to where the branchy part start splitting from the trunk. Now without changing your finger positions turn your hand sideways and see how that compares from the center of the trunk to the edge of the branches.

If that isn’t close try measuring one half or one third. In most cases this can get you get pretty close.

More Accuracy

You’ll find that your thumb and index finger are great for quick sketching and most early measuring. But there are times when you’ll want more accuracy.

You can use your pencil to measure the distances.

Sometimes you’ll find a grid is helpful. But I don’t recommend using a grid too much. It can become a crutch if you’re not careful, and your drawings can feel stilted.

You might even find using dividers helpful. You can find them in the drafting supply section of your local art store.

Here’s a table showing how you can increase your accuracy with the different methods. At the bottom is the finger and thumb method which is good enough for quick sketching. Moving up the chart you’ll see the different methods can give you more accuracy.

Talking to Yourself

In practice your internal dialog with yourself is something like, “Is this at one half? Hm, it’s just a little more. What about this? It’s close to two thirds, just a little less.”

If you want to see how this works in practice, I made a video of me drawing a pair of hands and you can hear how these kinds of measuring thoughts happen during the actual process. Even if I’m not conscious of them this is what goes through my mind with every drawing.

It’s Like Magic

But what about artists who don’t make any measuring marks on the paper? You’ve seen them just put the pencil to paper and start drawing, it just flows out, everything in proportion.

Don’t be fooled. They’re still measuring. They take a mental snapshot of the subject and superimpose it on the paper in their mind.

Once those early marks on the paper have been made, all they’re doing is making sure everything else is in proportion to what’s already been drawn.

What you’re witnessing is simply the accumulation of many hours of practice.

Challenge

This next week take some time looking at things around you and practice measuring the halfway point and one-thirds. You’ll see how little time it takes to get confident.

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