What key drawing exercises are best for learning to see?

What do you do currently?

Good eye/hand coordination is a must for any good sketcher. One exercise that I was taught in school was to pick a subject matter (start off with something real basic: a softball, a wine glass, a glove, a single flower). Once you place your pencil on the sketch pad, dont pick it up again. DON’T cheat and look at your sketch pad, keep your eyes steadfastly on the subject. As your eyes move over the contours of that object, try to get your pencil to move in sync. Of course the goal is to get what you draw to become as close to what you’re seeing, as possible.
Don’t be discouraged if the first (or thirtieth) time comes out really screwy! This is a process, and it takes time. HOWEVER, there will come a time when everything will ‘click’ and soon you will be drawing what you’re SEEING, rather than what you think you’re seeing. Your eye will develop camera-like precision.

Betty Edwards’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain includes an interesting exercise in copying a drawing upside down. You don’t have to read the whole book to try the exercise.

I do photography, but I have enjoyed in the past sketching. I just want to hone that skill.

I teach my students the two techniques described by TheKNYHT and Jeruba.

Also try drawing with your non-dominent hand. I always insist on drawing while standing up, with charcoal (soft pressed or vine). Use your whole arm; draw from the shoulder, not the wrist. Work quickly and do not touch the eraser.

The idea is to get the brain to shut up long enough so the eyes will talk to your hand directly (so to speak).

Also, try to draw from life as much as possible (as opposed to photos).

Exactly what what TheKNYHT said. And it will come. It will click.

Then as it does, really work on “seeing” what your drawing. Yes there is a cup but can you see the top? how much? can you see the liquid?ho much? where does the spoon go in? Halfway accross? doesn’t the liquid go up the spoon a little? What proportion of the cup, bottom to top does the open take up? Half?

@cprevite and @Bri_L, what do you do in your mind to make yourself see the color that’s really there—in highlight and shadow—instead of the color that you know is there?

It really depends on the medium for me.

I am not the best with color if it isn’t on a computer.

In the end I treat each area, highlight, shadow etc. as if it were it’s own color and try to match it.

@Jeruba: Well that’s a bit tricky as working with color isn’t as spontaeous.

I always work with a very limited pallette (of say, blues or greys) and try to capture the tonality first, independent of the “actual” color. Once I’m happy with that, I’d analyze the color more thoroughly and start to apply it in layers.

@cprevite – good advice.

I really prefer good ole pencil sketching.

I’ve just had an interesting lesson in that. I’ve been on a jigsaw puzzle kick lately, and my son and I completed this puzzle a couple of nights ago. (He is the only person I’ve ever known who does jigsaw puzzles competitively.)

This picture is explicitly about color, and each crayon and each wrapper is within itself monochromatic—in fact. But in the picture the gradients are not only extremely pronounced but misleading. When you’re holding a small piece that is unmistakably purple shading into dark brown, it takes a different kind of seeing to realize that it belongs on the boundary between an aqua and a peach-colored crayon. This puzzle was much harder than I thought it would be because I originally saw it as discrete areas of color, whereas it is anything but.

Does mentally or actually laying a grid over a picture help you learn to see it more in terms of the abstractions of line and form and shade (and proportion) and less in terms of what you know?

First, look at something around you for a minute. Then turn away and do your best to draw it from memory. Also try drawing things completely from memory. It doesn’t matter how bad you are when you start doing it, just by attempting it often enough you’ll start getting better.

Yeah, the upside down picture trick is great because it’s supposed to force you to see lines and curves and basic shapes, not a dude in a chair or a flower or other pre-set object in your mind that comes to the front of your imagination when I mention those names. In this way, also training you to draw what you see, not what you think you see.

@Jeruba beat me to my best suggestion- to draw the object upside down.
It tends to let the mind see the shapes instead of the object.

To this day when I draw a Cat I have to do it upside down or I try to hard and it ends up looking stiff and “off”

I was going to say what dog said. Anything that helps you to view it with out assumption.

Definitely blind contours and the upside down exercise. Though I would personally shy away from drawing from memory. That’s the basic impulse you’re trying to get away from.

Also, gestures may be helpful to balance out the studied scrutiny of contours. And perhaps a focus on negative space?

In my experience and from what I have been taught, you need to spend more time looking at what you are drawing that where you are drawing it. That is why you need to work so hard on the connection between your eyes and your hand.

When I have taught people to draw, I have them look at a picture to make this point. Then I take the picture away and have them draw it. They are always amazed at the things they thought they saw.

@Bri_L Good exercise. I can only imagine how well your point was ahem illustrated.

practice. (to the third power)

@Nimis- good one!

@bigbanana – and that is why your the big banana!

@Bri_L hee-hee ;)

I agree with Jeruba- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is excellent. I was an art major and teacher and I think it comes closest to how I naturally see. Also learning to see the negative space between objects as much as the positive space. Like looking to draw the cut out portions of a hubcap and then seeing the wheel come into focus.

Following shapes and lines without labelling objects in your head is also good. It taps into the spacial and creative and turns off the symbol driven logic.

@Nimis yeah the memory thing is a bad idea if he’s trying to perfect drawing skills. I just remembbered it from an exercise used to activate lots of parts of the brain. He mentioned something about using the right side of the brain.

@Jeruba doing the grid thang is cool, especially if you’re just starting out, its like training wheels for beginner bicyclists. But beware not to become dependent on grids, cuz they can actually hamper you artistically in the long run.
The only time I use grids now is when I’m vastly increasing/decreasing the scale of the subject. I once took a piece of a photo from a magazine, slightly larger than a playing card, and increased the scale so that the drawing fit on a 8’ x 16’ wall. To keep things in proportion, and in scale relationally, I can’t do w/o grids in these instances.

@TheKNYHT, @cprevite, @Nimis, thanks. I have done the upsidedown exercise and the drawings came out great, but this exercise seems limited. How many things in real life can I draw like that unless I hang myself like a bat?! LoL
I dont want to use the grid for now, nor draw from memory. As @Nimis said, drawing from memory is the impulse I am trying to get away from. In the end, the driving principle as @bigbanana said, is Practice, Practice, Practice!

Lurve to all the named one =)
Thanks to everyone!

This is meant for still lifes or drawing from a reference. You can place the item or reference photo upside down. Although playing spiderman might be fun but the blood rushes to your head and then you pass out. :)

Good luck man. Happy drawing.

Ha. Yes, hard to do that exercise drawing from life.

Though on your next coffee break, just grab a copy of the paper. Political cartoons are good to copy because they’re drawn in line. Not a very impressive finished product, but good for a quick exercise.

the best way, by far, to learn how to see and draw better is by drawing with cross contours—especially organic forms. check here: http://mirrorbooks.blogspot.com/2008/02/thinking-cross-contour-across-form.html for some great info.

for me, it was better to see what I was drawing as a collection of shapes, lines, and shadows. Starting with an overall impression- and then concentrating one-at-a-time on details. If the goal is to somehow re-create what you’re looking at in a drawing.

I however, favor re-interpretation. Working from the human form is like the cornerstone of studying art, and whether you enjoy what you see or not, its still more interesting than a boring old bowl of fruit.