Tuesday, May 14, 2013

How to Draw Still Life

By Marcus—grade 5

Have you ever wanted to draw something that looks real? With the technique called still life it’s easy to draw things that look real. It’s not hard to do this if you follow these steps.

The first thing to do is to find what you are drawing. This can be an object or a person. The person should be standing or sitting still. If it’s your first time try something simple like a crayon. Crayons are great to draw when you want to make a still life.

You should always be close to your object because you want to get a lot of detail.

Also always use pencil. It makes nice lines that are thin. Put the pencil on the side to make shading a breeze. You can use markers and crayons too. They don’t work as well but you can use them if you have the skill.

Next you want to draw basic shapes without detail and shading. (Breaking down the shapes helps) For an example if you are drawing a crayon you would draw the long part that you hold first. To make this simple you would draw a rectangle. Then you would draw a triangle on the small side of the rectangle for the tip of the crayon. You can do this with other objects; just break the object down into simple shapes.

So now you want to add detail on the shapes by curving your lines and connecting your lines. On the crayon you would curve the short sides of the rectangle and if you haven’t yet connected the triangle to the rectangle you should do that.

Now you add on some details. These can be prints or markings on your model. On a crayon you would draw where the paper/label starts and ends (if there is paper/label) and you would draw the lines (if there is any) and write any words on the crayon. You might find more details on different objects. Just draw every detail you see.

It’s time for the hardest step, shading. You look where the light is hitting the object. Some parts will be bright and some darker. One tip is to always shade with pencil. Depending on the way you hold the pencil and press the pencil on the paper you will get different shades of gray that are perfect for shading. Just shade where you see lighter and darker tones.

You have drawn a still life. See, drawing something that looks real is not that hard. Now if you want to add more to the drawing you can add: color, background or even more still life objects. The possibilities are endless.

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