Drawing Shortcuts Developing Quick Drawing Skills Using Today's Technology

510 Pages·2009·74.21 MB·English

by  Jim Leggitt

Contents
Half Title page
Title page
Dedication
Copyright page
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Traditional Drawing Types
Observation Drawings
Imagination Drawings
Thumbnail Drawings
Concept Drawings
Presentation Drawings
Chapter 2: Drawing Composition
Drawing Composition
Perspective Drawings
Paraline Drawings
Chapter 3: Traditional Drawing Tools
Drawing Media
Drawing with Pencils
Drawing with Pens
Hatching Techniques
Showing Detail
Creating Shadows
Correcting Mistakes
Drawing Safety
Chapter 4: Traditional Coloring Tools
How to Color with Pencils
How to Color with Markers
Mixed-Media Drawings
Chapter 5: Traditional Entourage Drawing
Drawing Sources
How to Draw People
How to Draw Cars
How to Draw Vegetation
Drawing Furniture
Drawing Building Materials
Chapter 6: Digital Drawing Tools
3-D Modeling
Digital Editing
Digital Photography
Chapter 7: Tradigital Drawing
Traditional + Digital
Tradigital Variations
Overlay and Trace
Simple Composite Method
Advanced Composite Method
Digital Hybrids
Chapter 8: Drawing Gallery
Kirk Fromm
Jennifer Mahoney
Paul Stevenson Oles, FAIA
Terry J. Leonard, AIA
Michael P. O’Beirne
Seth Harry, AIA
Stanley Doctor
Conclusion
Contributors
Project Credits
Index
Jim Leggitt, FAIA
Drawing Shortcuts

To Jon Gnagy, my first drawing teacher, who in 1955
excited my five-year-old imagination and taught me how to draw
through the wondrous new technology of television.
Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Leggitt, Jim.
Drawing shortcuts: developing quick drawing skills using today’s technology / Jim Leggitt. – 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Drawing shortcuts. 2002.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-43548-9 (pbk.)
1. Drawing–Technique. 2. Digital art—Technique. I. Leggitt, Jim. Drawing shortcuts. II. Title.
NC730.L44 2010
741.2–dc22
2009041802
Preface
‘Every child is an artist.
The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
—Pablo Picasso
I took my first drawing lessons when I was five years old, courtesy of TV. There was a television
program in the 1950s called Learn to Draw, hosted by Jon Gnagy. Every Saturday, I faithfully set up
my Learn to Draw kit in front of the black-and-white screen—and then fought with my twin brother
over who got to trace the televised drawings with pencils. This cutting-edge combination of
technology and hand drawing was a great idea. We also watched another televised program called
Winky Dink and You, which involved drawing on a clear vinyl sheet placed directly onto the
television’s glass screen. I believe it was America’s first interactive television show! That program
was most likely cancelled at the behest of angry parents because too many children drew directly on
their television, forgetting to first apply the vinyl to the screen.
Fifty years later, I’m still working with machines and new technology to create drawings—and I’m
still having just as much fun. Sometimes I draw for pure pleasure, the way I did when I was five,
although most of my drawings these days are done as part of my professional architecture and urban
design practice.
I first began thinking about authoring a how-to-draw book more than thirty years ago, when I was in
architectural design school—because I sure could have used something like it then! In an intensive
design school environment, nobody escapes the need for time management, meeting multiple project
deadlines, and producing great work in minimal time with little or no money. It’s the same today in
any professional design practice, and getting more so all the time. The drawing shortcuts and design
visualization tips in this book are the ones I use, and I’ve put them in this book for the benefit of art
students, design professionals, and anyone else who needs to be able to communicate creative ideas
through effective drawings and graphics in a fast-paced global environment.
Why a Revision to Drawing Shortcuts?
When Drawing Shortcuts was first published in 2002, considerable changes to digital imaging and 3-
D computer modeling were in their early development stages. Digital cameras were just being
introduced to the market. (Their low image resolution contrasts markedly with today’s high-resolution
cameras.) The user-friendly 3-D modeling software SketchUp, developed for architects and designers
by Boulder, Colorado–based @Last Software, was just being discovered by a limited audience.
These two technical advances have completely revolutionized the business of design and the drawing
process itself. At the same time these and other digital tools were being embraced by the design
profession, many old imaging products, such as the Polaroid camera and 35mm film photography,
were disappearing. This second edition of Drawing Shortcuts eliminates book content that is no
longer relevant to the design profession and introduces new drawing tools and processes that will
allow students and design professionals to continue improving their hand-drawing skills while
embracing new developments in digital imaging.
The overall how-to-draw concepts, methods, and visualization choices offered within the original
208 pages of Drawing Shortcuts are as valid today as they were eight years ago. What has changed
significantly is “today’s technology” (as identified on this book’s cover). Google, Apple, Adobe,
Sony, Nikon, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other global corporations have created user-friendly