Summary of the described methods

Always mentioned in the descriptions before, none of the methods is used isolated (normally, §1 !)

Most of the artists are mixing these techniques permanently. Very often without being aware of them. Being trained you will use with every single view a combination of them. Which of them concrete, depends on the motive and on your personality. To give an idea to you, a short description, how I would draw the motive.

• First an oblong trapezoid (inside form),
• then a bow over left arm, shoulder, right arm (power line),
• a skewness along left elbow passing the left foot (cut off area or power line, depends on how you want to see it) ,
• an oval as head (simple geometric inside form),
• a line being tangent to the left side of the head, but then running through the left shinbone (tangent or power line),
• a line over the top edge of the thighs,
• line along the right leg,
• line over the top of the shoes (all power lines)
• the areas between the legs and arms (negative forms)
• then on the left cutting off the (tri)angle arm- back of the chair,
• cutting off the triangle chair – left edge of the left leg,
• becoming more and more detailed…

Making a difference between „strategies“ is only a trick to make clear, what is meant. There is no clear separation between the methods possible when drawing.
For example, when a “power line” is running through an “inside form” and is cutting off a part of it, this becomes an “outside form”. Or a line is at first a “cutting line” and then a “power line” and so on. It depends on you, how you want to see it.

Nevertheless it can be very useful for learning to force oneself, only to use a single “technique” when drawing an motive - and then to change this technique when drawing the motive again.

General remarks About darwing and sketching:

You shouldn’t be scared about drawing exactly the „right“ forms resp. lines you can see in the motive. Much more important is, that the drawing is interesting. If you need today a “correct” picture, you can use a camera. Good drawings always (§1 !) have a certain “freedom”, they are “incorrect”. Important is, that the drawing is working out. It was always like this, even in times when there were no cameras.

Michelangelo was criticized, that a portrait of a pope didn ’t resemble to him. His answer was: “Who do you recon will know in a thousand years, what the pope looked like?”

So - just draw without fear. A good exercise is to repeat the drawing of a picture without having a look at the motive. So you can concentrate on the drawing without being distracted by attempting to copy the motive “correct” . And you train your memory.

And now?

On the next pages is described how you can measure optically the proportions, lengths and gradients of lines during the motif with the help of a pencil or (brush) stick.

Fig. 1 and 2:
The lines of the different techniques are all copied together in one picture. It is a quite particular sketch.

Fig. 3:
Sketch of two figures. You can recognize inner and outer forms, cut off pieces, power lines. The picture was made in the same way like the up to now used sketches. The lines are enough to identify the motif.