Drawing freehand is liberating – all you need is something to sketch on, a pencil and a sharpener.
I go to a class run by art teacher, Franceska, held at the stunning Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A).
Walking through halls of sculptures, I see loads of foldaway stools. I used to assume these were for young children or people who can’t walk far distances. It never occurred to me that people would head over here with their trusty sketchpad to sit and draw on a peaceful evening.
Franceska and a handful of students are sitting on benches at the back of Cast Courts, Room 46b, home to a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Big Dave.
What did you do in the workshop?
As I’m late, the rest of the class has made a start on drawing the grand font in front of us, using a technique called pencil drop. This involves standing your pencil straight up and judging where objects sit on either side of the line.
I glance at the other sketchpads and admire these well-proportioned, beautifully-drawn fonts. I try and emulate them, but notice I start drawing the top parts of the font too big, then over-compensate by drawing the lower parts too small.
Franceska comes over to see how I’m getting on and I tell her I’m having trouble sizing the different elements up. She assures me not to worry and that making mistakes is OK, encouraging me to use the eraser as a tool for shadowing rather than correction. She even suggests holding my pencil in an overhand backwards way that I’ve never tried before so that the lines, and the details, are looser.
We flip to a fresh page and try another technique: drawing mass. This involves taking your pen in this overhand style and almost scribbling the object’s shapes as opposed to precise lines. It’s drawing in a more intuitive way, looking up at what you’re drawing and down at your paper regularly, not giving either too much attention.
It takes me a few attempts to adjust, scribbling my way out of my detail-oriented ways. A lot of what Franceska teaches is about dislodging – breaking away from creativity-stifling rules and perfectionism. The permission to make mistakes and be imperfect is all the more freeing.
The third technique is called blind contouring, something that I’m sure I’ve seen in Cranium before. You focus on the object and draw it without looking at the paper or taking your pencil off the paper. This results in some daft squiggles but it’s a lot of fun. Next, we partner up and try a face-to-face version. It’s a real test for someone who struggles with eye contact. I sit opposite Franceska – we gurn and we laugh as we take it in turns to draw each other.
I really think I captured her true essence here:
We return to drawing mass to home in on the negative space around the subjects in the room, like seeing the air around the font or the draft moving through the crook in David’s arm.
Franceska whips out her pencils and lets us have a go with them. My humble gift shop pencil can’t be more than a 2B, great for delicate wisps. A 3B makes things easier, but a mega 8B barely needs to touch the paper to leave a coarse charcoal scrub.
While I’m scrawling Franceska tells me about a sci-fi themed drawing class that she runs in the Tate Modern, with sketches of steampunk spaceships docking in exhibition rooms. In a nod to this chat, I decide to add a little touch of the surreal to my depiction of this straight-laced room filled with historic masterpieces.
Franceska runs this workshop in the V&A museum for £10. I found it through her Meetup group.
Have a go at drawing!
Franceska outlines why you should get into drawing.
Why should people try drawing?
Well, I believe drawing is a fun way to see the world and to help non-artists get a glimpse of what drawing is all about. It's not as daunting as most people think!
How does this style differ to how we were taught to draw at school?
Unfortunately, in my experience as a teacher in both schools and privately, the style I teach is dying out. It has been my experience that most art teachers in schools are not artists themselves and are not educated to teach others how to draw.
Typically, students in schools are just given something to draw with along with no instruction and a teacher who will praise them – or not – which also leads to many students believing they can't draw.
What challenges might people encounter when they're starting out? How do they overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges I've seen is lack of confidence – students fear failure and typically have very high expectations of themselves before they've given it a try. To overcome this is to embrace mistakes, practice and have faith that with this regular practice, goals can be achieved.
What kind of costs are involved in terms of equipment?
You can buy a cheap sketchbook for around £3 with even cheaper pencils. I try to encourage my students to ignore the need for erasers so that they can learn from their mistakes, so no need to buy an eraser. Cheapo pencil sharpeners are around £2, so all in all it’s very low-cost.
We were at the V&A and it was beautiful. What kind of locations would you recommend for beginners?
The V&A is one of the best locations and a perfect spot for newbies, especially in the Cast Courts as those were set up for art students to study drawing.
But you can draw anywhere. I've drawn in coffee shops, parks, on train journeys, on aeroplanes, on buses, in bookshops, many other museums and even standing in the street.
Could you give us some examples of exercises that new artists could try to loosen themselves up, see things differently and improve technique?
For anyone wanting to learn to draw and loosen up it's so important to allow yourself to be silly and dislodge our perfectionist ways. Find a partner and draw each other using the blind contour method – it always gets a good laugh and eases things up a bit.
I think it's important for a beginner to experiment with learning to draw by holding the pencil in a different way or with the less dominant hand. Doing quick drawing exercises where you just scribble and simply make marks on the paper will loosen anyone up!
When learning to "see", a new artist needs to learn to tap into instinct, so acting quickly before getting into a more serious drawing is essential and will ultimately sharpen any drawing ability if done regularly.
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