New Edition of Drawing Made Easy

My favorite beginning drawing book is available again after being out of print for a long time. I posted about it a year ago.

First published in 1921, Drawing Made Easy taught millions of people to draw, and it’s the one that taught me. Now Darren Rousar, a prominent instructor of academic sight-size drawing has brought it back into print.

Drawing Made Easy uses a sensible approach. Each drawing begins with simple, easy-to- comprehend shapes and proceeds to details last, essentially the same method used in the 19th century academies.


Each drawing is presented in a series of straightforward and memorable stages. The subjects are people, animals, flowers, and charmingly antique trains and cars.


The beginning student—either child or adult—progresses to fairly challenging subjects by the end. That clover would be difficult to get right without the analytical method that Lutz presents. This new edition also includes a few key chapters from Lutz’s intermediate book, Practical Drawing, which covers the proportions of the figure and the management of light and shade to produce form.

When Mr. Rousar asked me to contribute the foreword to this edition, I was thrilled. Here’s what I wrote (click to enlarge).

If this post sounds like an ad, it is! I would love to share this book with people who want to learn to draw, whether they are adults or children. You can order a copy directly from me by sending a check payable to "The Dinotopia Store" for $14.95 plus $3.50 shipping ($18.45 total).

Mail to The Dinotopia Store, PO Box 693, Rhinebeck, NY 12572. (USA residents only, NYS residents, please add sales tax). Here’s an order form you can print out and send.

Skimmer Chassis

Yesterday Eric Colquhoun of Toronto asked to see the sketch I was doing in the previous post.

I should explain that I’m writing and illustrating an article on concept art for Imagine FX magazine, and I thought I'd give you a sneak peak. You'll definitely want to pick up a copy when it comes out in a few months. I’ll be sharing 25 tips showing how to design a “lived-in” future—a science fiction universe with a believable past.


One of the tips deals with vehicle design. We’ve all seen plenty of renderings of sleek, new vehicles, such as this ground effect skimmer. But how often do you see the rusty hulk of a futuristic vehicle?

I thought it would be a cool exercise to take this skimmer about forty years forward in time and rip off the outer body, leaving only the chassis and the fore and aft stabilizers.

As I sat on the sidewalk sipping my BJ Joe, I stared at the real Blazer chassis and imagined discovering this hulk in the desert, with the antigravity generator still working. Even though it’s rusted out and dented and stripped down, it’s still hovering a foot or so off the ground.

Jeanette didn’t want to draw an old chassis, so she used the 90 degree rule and faced across the street. She drew the scene in ballpoint and watercolor, incorporating a construction worker that she had drawn earlier in the day.
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Thanks to Kevin, the mechanic at Bob's Automotive for your helpful advice on chassis design, and thanks,Eric!

Keeping it Fun

An art student recently wrote to me with the following problem:

So the thought occurred to me yesterday. I was doing my quick sketch and portrait drawing yesterday and I realized my brain was turning to mush. It's not that it wasn't helpful; both classes are, but I just realized that I wasn't having fun anymore. It really dawned on me right before I went to bed when I told myself consciously to just have fun drawing. I felt like I wasn't even able to do that, because I just started looking at my proportions and line work and other technical things.

How do you keep this whole art making thing from becoming a chore, and remember to have fun, especially as a professional artist? —Missing The Fun.

Dear Missing:
It's a good question. We can get so wrapped up in the technical stuff that we lose sight of the fun of art, the things that got us hooked on drawing in the first place.

What I used to do to get away from the occasional dulling effect of art study was to go sketching at the zoo or to bring my sketchbook to the boxing match or the bus station. One thing that makes art fun is using it to connect you with unusual experiences and encounters.

For example, the day before yesterday I was sketching an old truck chassis in a rough neighborhood and three girls came up and one of them said, “You should be an artist!” Another said, “I can’t draw, but I can sing!” And then a mechanic came out and told me the history of the truck. I had a blast, because I had never drawn a chassis before.

If you can use some of those quick sketch and portrait skills to draw an interesting character that you meet, your brain will come instantly into focus.

I think it also helps if you can always be working on personal paintings driven by your deepest emotions, whatever those emotions are. For those pictures, put your attention on the feeling you want the painting to convey. You don’t have to show them to anybody. Listen to your favorite music as you work on them, and let intuition take over. Rationalism and analysis can help you develop your craft, but you have to stoke the fire of your inner artist too.

Women, Water, and Death

In his essay for the new book on John William Waterhouse, art historian Peter Trippi observes that during the Victorian period there were a lot of paintings that associated women, water, and death. (Below: John Everett Millais “Ophelia”)

Some of these images showed women as tragic figures or martyrs; others took the form of the seductive femme fatale, who emerged from the water to lure men to their deaths. (Below: Herbert Draper “Ulysses and the Sirens”)…


…or sorceresses who poison rivals. (Waterhouse “Circe Invidiosa”)

This topic is explored in some detail by Barbara Gates, Professor of English at the University of Delaware. (Below: Delaroche “Young Christian Martyr.”



In this web article, Dr. Gates explores the subject of female drownings in the larger context of Victorian women and suicide. "Women were fictionalized and mythologized much as were monsters in Victorian England," she writes. "They too were made into "others" -- weaker vessels or demons, angels in the house or fallen angels."

Hudson River Fellowship

Yesterday the group of landscape painters known as the Hudson River Fellowship officially finished their month long residency in the Catskill Mountains of New York State.

On Friday, the weary but triumphant band of artists gathered in Hunter, New York for the traditional potluck supper and the showing of the harvest of pencil drawings and oil studies. Above: Emilee Lee.

Among the chief inspirations for their approach are the pre-Impressionist location studies by Asher Durand, Frederic Church, William Trost Richards, and the Russian sylvan wizard Ivan Shishkin. Below: a work by HRF fellow Erik Koeppel.

The HRF students come from all over the world. They receive a free scholarship, though the association is not an atelier or academy as such. To preserve the feeling of collegiality, the name was changed from “Hudson River School for Landscape” to “Hudson River Fellowship.” The instructor is Nature herself. Below: Noah Layne

This summer Mother Nature dealt them an unusual amount of rain, wind, bears, and mosquitoes, along with the the usual challenges of changing light and fluctuating stream levels.

“It is through extensive and real engagement that the artist learns to capture the spirit of the landscape,” the website says. “The many hundreds of hours spent out in the sun and the wind, scrupulously studying nature, transform the artist.”

Charles Williams told me that they woke up before the sun rose each morning and often stayed on site until sunset to capture the fleeting colors of dusk.

Many of the students hail from an academic background, where their precise observation skills help them sort out and organize the vast complexity that confronts the eye in a forest streamscape or a tree study. As Sadie Valeri puts it, they learn to “Slooooow waaaaay doooooown,” and really observe before they put down each stroke.

The disciplined observation of the HVF, if it is combined with feeling and imagination, is sure to “boldly originate a high and independent style,” as Asher Durand wrote in 1855.
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Grand Central Academy blog showing behind the scenes.
Official HVF website.
Sadie Valeri’s blog, with videos of painting in a downpour.
Here are Sadie's detailed reviews of various plein air art materials.
Another very detailed post on "Lines and Colors" about pochade boxes.
Previous GJ post on the Hudson River School for Landscape.

Self-Similarity in Fractals

Fractals is a branch of mathematics that artists intuitively grasp because it appeals strongly to the pattern recognition part of the right brain. One of the principles of fractals is the concept of self-similarity. Many forms in nature repeat a certain structure or geometry at various levels of scale.

For example, this ginger root has bulbous branches that leave the main stem, and they tend to do the same thing as the branches get smaller, until the pattern degenerates at the smallest scale.

Romanesco broccoli demonstrates the principle of self-similarity even better. Each spiraling cone is composed of smaller spiraling cones. (Click to enlarge).

In many ferns, the shape of the leaflet resembles the frond. Since this comes down to math, computers can easily invent self-similarity, and this component has given realism to CGI renderings of rocks, plants, clouds, and water, where the phenomenon appears everywhere. Check out the digital fern below, which "grows" as you scroll down.


Fractal fern, link.
Wikipedia on fractals, link.
Fern glossary and more photos at: link.

Woodstock 5: Putting It All Together

For the final day of the creature design workshop, we took our studies, sketches, maquettes and photos and put them together into the final paintings, which we started and discussed. It was fun working together in the beautiful north-lit studio spaces of the Woodstock School of Art.

Having all seen real goats and goat skulls up close, we all have an affection for satyrs. Heinrich Kley (above) was one of many artists we looked at through the course of the week.

At the end, we didn't quite have a full-on bacchanale, but we had a nice pizza party before everyone had to drive home. Thanks to Billy (foreground), Maureen Rogers, Mike Marrocco, Christina Neno, Lester Yocum, Shawn Fields, David Troncoso, Eric Millen, and Jeanette and thanks to the WSA for letting us make the studios our home for the week. And for those who missed this one, maybe I'll see you at another workshop in the future.

Woodstock 4: Maquettes

The creature design class at Woodstock School of Art continued with Day 4 today. Eric Millen bulked up the muscles of his SuperPan.

Eric and Mike loaned the oven in the on-campus barn lodging to cure the Sculpey maquettes.

Lester Yocum decapitated "Fluffy," a stuffed animal he bought last night to use its fake fur. He's actually a really nice guy.

That beige fur was perfect for Lester's lady, a female Pan character with a red glitter dress and plenty of attitude.

Mike Marrocco decided to do a self portrait with Flynn's horns.

Maureen Rogers laid in watercolor washes on her Pan.

All of these maquettes will guide the final painting, which we'll at least start tomorrow.

Woodstock 3: Goat Day

This morning, Billy the goat from Southlands Foundation Farm climbed into Trusty Rusty and rode with us to the Woodstock School of Art where he served as the star model for the goat half of our Pan characters.

Clockwise from lower left: Billy enjoys the attention from David and Eric, Billy checked out Shawn Field's computer, Eric Millen built up his Sculpey Pan figure maquette, and Shawn and Michael Marrocco worked out their character concepts.

Christina Neno showed the relaxed style of maquette building, while David Troncoso sculpted away with Flynn nearby for reference.

Left to right: Lester Yocum came up with an awesome matronly female Pan character, which he sketched on a board and sculpted in 3-D; As David worked, Jeanette (in background) watched Billy, who stayed on his tarp indoors because it was pouring rain outside; Michael gets the Hero's Badge for doing the end-of-day cleanup.
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Thanks, Lenny, for letting us borrow Billy!

Woodstock 2: Characterization

If you think yesterday was scary, today was even worse! Those are taxidermy goat eyes, and horns made by Lester.

Yesterday we looked at the comparative anatomy of sheep, goats, deer and humans.

Today we brought in the model, who was directed in a half hour pose by each of the students based on their thumbnail sketches.

We set up Flynn on the C-stand in the exact angle of the model's head, so that you could see the the correct angle and lighting on the horns.

That allowed us to explore how to morph the human and sheep/goat together into a satyr.

It was fun, but challenging for all of us, because it's a different way of seeing than you usually do in art school. We were trying to observe closely, but always be guided by the imaginative ideas we started with in the beginning.

Thanks, Eric!...and forgive me for showing only my own work! Jeanette and I just didn't get photos of the student work. We'll try to remedy that next time. Tomorrow: Goat Day.