• Tubes are cylinders with holes in them. You can think of the hole as being a second, negative cylinder fitting inside the first cylinder. Draw a cylinder with a circle at one end. Draw a circle inside the first circle and then add a bit of shading to help make it look hollow. We are going to have a lesson on shading later so we can really start to bring these 3D representational drawings to life! Task: Try making tubes out of the cylinder drawings you did before. Look around you through the day. See where you can find tube shapes. You may like to collect cylinders and tubes as models to help you draw. The index for this course is at http://www.shooraynerdrawing.com/everyoneindex/

  • A cylinder has circles at both ends which are joined together by parallel lines that create the solid shape. Draw two circles and connect the edges with two lines. This will give you a drawing of something that looks like a rod or dowelling. The lines can be wavy or curly if you like. This is how we might draw a candy cane. A piece of string is a long flexible cylinder which we can even draw tied up in a knot! Two circles connected by very short lines will make a disk. Task: Draw circles and connect them together in as many ways as you can imagine. Look around you through the day. See where you can find cylindrical shapes. The index for this course is at http://www.shooraynerdrawing.com/everyoneindex/

  • Drawing circles sounds easy, but drawing a perfect circle freehand is almost impossible.

    The 11th century artist, Giotto, was asked to send the Pope an example of his drawing skills before he was commissioned to paint a work of art. To show how good he was, he sent the Pope a perfect freehand drawing of a circle. Giotto got the job!

    You can draw circles by drawing round circular objects like plates or jar lids, or you can use a compass.

    The width between the point of the compass and the pencil is the radius of the circle. The line you create is the circumference, meeting up where you began, creating a circle centred around the point of the compass.

    A circle fits perfectly inside a square, only touching the midpoints of each the four lines that make up the outside of the square. We can use this fact to help us draw a circle freehand.

    Drawing circles freehand is not easy. You need to loosen up a bit. One good exercise is to draw circles round and round in a scribbly fashion, to get your hand moving freely and smoothly. Then draw pages of circles of different sizes.

    If you get tired, stop. there is no point practicing to draw bad circles! try and draw the best circles you can. With a little daily practice, your circles will improve.

    It might seem a bit silly drawing so many circles, but this was exactly how you learned to write your abc, filling pages with letters of the alphabet, and that worked!

    This creates what is called muscle memory. Just as you learn to ride a bicycle, you can learn to draw circles and the muscles in your hands will remember how to do it again and again, just as you don’t have to think about the physical act of writing while you write a note or a shopping list.

    Learn to draw circles confidently as so many drawn objects are based on this shape.

    Task: Draw circles. Start with some sweeping circles with maybe ten revolutions for each circle. Then fill the rest of the page with circles. Do this every day as a quick warm-up exercise and you will soon be drawing beautiful circles.

    The index for this course is at http://www.shooraynerdrawing.com/..