₦airaland Forum

yorex2011: wow...nice thread....havent drawn anything in a long while.....anyways i no pencil around..lemme draw myself when i was younger..

PLEASE DON'T POST PICTURES OF IMAGES NOT RELATED TO WHAT WE ARE DRAWING, SO AS NOT TO DERAIL THE THREAD. The last poster, please edit your post accordingly.

You will draw any picture upside well, because your analytical part of your brain DOES NOT understand what it seeing, and therefore cannot tell you "that is a woman in buba sitting down". Because it isn't telling you what to see, the visional or sensory side of your brain takes over and you see shapes and you draw shapes. Shapes are not scary to draw, everybody drew shapes as a child and your brain remembers how easy and relaxed that time was, sees clearly and you draw. Now, if I had said "let's draw a woman", a lot of us would have sweated in fear.

If you don't do the drawing upside down, that's your own method. However, this upside-down method has far repercussions. You wanna learn how to paint well (and not what I see here, that people call paintings), do it upside-down and eventually, you'll understand the concept behind the exercises that seemingly don't make sense.

CHALLENGE 2: Ladies and gentlemen, please draw the following image the way it is posted, upside down. DO NOT ROTATE IT TO THE RIGHT ORIENTATION, just use your eye, measure a rectangle box and use that as the borders of your drawing, look at the picture, notice the chair is touching a particular point at the border of the picture, on your paper, locate that point, draw the chair. Continue to do so for all parts of the image.

If the scientists are right, (and they are), you will draw that picture I posted better than if it was upright in the nomal position. I presented this challenge to my mum, who has never drawn in her life, and she did well. You should have seen her laugh. So please, no erasings (I left my own mistakes for you all to see), take your time, take 30 minutes and carefully do it the way I described, and for your own sakes, don't rotate the picture to what you expect a picture to be, draw it upside down.

How's it going so far? Do you believe that the world is full of shapes? Not yet? Okay.

Scientists (people who have more time and better facilities on their hands than the average Naija person, sadly) have discovered that every child has a good sense of Drawing and Perspective, but around the primary school learning age, over half of them begin to lose their ability to draw well. They realised that loss in Drawing ability coincided (big word for jammed) with when children began to learn the words of things around them. They theorised that as children grew up and used the more analytical part of their brain, the visioning part of the brain slowed down.

In plain english, the more you think, the less you see. Simple. Look at driving a car and talking on the phone, your brain CAN'T do two simultaneous, opposite things at the same time. Most drivers react well to sudden difference on the road: their foot hits the brakepad without them looking. Because driving is mostly instinct. Same with drawing, same with playing musical instruments. Those are movements based on instinct. You've done it so much, your brain can do it without you looking. Shey una remember that trick we all play on NL, "if you this read correctly, you read it wrong". That's instinct, your mind has filled in the gap for you, so you don't have to read the sentence.

That's why you cannot draw a hand properly unless you've been drawing for a while or I tell you to draw shapes. Because the minute you look at your hand to draw, your brain fills your mind with an image of what it THINKS the hand looks like, you draw that, and then go "ah ah, but this is not how my hand was, I can't draw".

I'm going to prove this to you, with our next drawing challenge.

tolam4skywd: Oga boss @ op.. Shey month try??

there's no image attached, dear.

Feraz: Edited - Likewise me...didn't draw throughout secondary school except biology drawings and all those ish...while in the University, during drawing class, I decided rather than allow the paper waste, why not I try drawing randomly...this is one of 'em...

Who knows how much a sketchbook goes for and where I can get it? Thanks...

Redmosquito, I see you...

Hey, you could go to Artworld and buy a sketchpad for like N1,000. Or some shops in VI sell for N500. But you get limited sheets in that sketchpad (like 30). What I can do, is for those coming for the Drawing class, is buy you sheets of paper, A1 size, at N7/sheet. Most art students divide those sheets into half or more sizes and make their own sketchpads with hardbacks or a plywood or masonite board backing, for support. Not only can you add more sheets to that sketchpad, it's reusable and will cost you much less than a pre-made one and can take over 200 sheets. So it lasts longer.

For everyone, saturday 16th November, at Muri Okunola park, from 12pm next week. There's also formal lessons at Cafe Maison, Lekki or you could contact me on nry258@hotmail.com.

Can we all work on our control hands a bit? It's like driving a car. Get a sheet of paper and cover it with scribbles, vertical lines and horizontal lines, they way you probably used to draw as a child. All these exercises are meant to relax you so you don't start telling yourself "I can't draw, this is too hard". it's s not. You just need some practise.

A while back, I was at work, and there was a colleague of mine, and from even up close, you'd swear she was of excellent moral standing, calm and good. She was singing a christian song as we worked and then she broke halfway through her song to turn to us and ask "please do you know where they write GRE on the mainland?". Most people suggested the island, and then she replied "no, I want the mainland. I need someone that can supply me the answers for the exam beforehand. VI location, I'm not sure they would. Someone said the Ikeja one he got complete answers to the test before". Then she turned back to her computer screen and christian song.

The only good, non-corrupt Nigerian is a dead or an unborn Nigerian. Just forget morals, ethics or anything. I'm glad they're scrapping the exam.

For everyone, saturday 16th November, at Muri Okunola park, from 12pm next week. There's also formal lessons at Cafe Maison, Lekki or you could contact me on nry258@hotmail.com.

Now, let's get back to the drawing! For the benefit of those learning, could we NOT post any images of drawings which are NOT part of the challenges posted here? If you wanna show off your drawings, please create a separate thread. Thanks, guys.

femzi007: dis is my pencil drawing of burna boy.used 2B pencil without grid.he retweeted it on twitter

Great job! There may be a few tweaks needed here and there, but this is good. Welldone.

D damsel: Don't laugh at my ugly palm pleeeeeese.

That was an excellent try! Welldone! This is the first step to you doing fantastic drawings,on paper and pc.

Hey guys, I'll do another hand drawing and won't erase any lines.what we can do is sign up and we will have weekely challenges and Drawing lessons. For those of us in Lagos, there's a weekly class that holds in a comfy public area.

spade: Here's the "Undead" zombie version of my last drawing. LOL

Aha! I can see some issues with proportion. Can we work on that together please?

Alright, guys. Great participation so far. Let's create normal shapes, like mine below. Boxes, cylinders, trapezoids, irregular shapes. Don't stress about them, they're just shapes. The next post, we'll start connecting these shapes to what we see around us. Copy and do mine, add more, bend the shapes, play with them. Let your mind go quiet and your hand do the talking.

ceasarpoetic: do u tink itz easy learnin to draw 4rm jxt lyk dat?it takes more dan dat jor...am talking 4rm xperience.

There's a book called "Drawing with the left side of the brain", my mum read it and started understanding what I was doing. She's 64. ANYONE can learn how to draw, you drew as a child and write everyday. Which means that you already know 30% of what you need to learn. Drawing is the handwriting to creating objects

Ruq: Op my issue is understanding depth, each time i want to draw, and i have a very good imagination but putting down is the task

You need Design skills. To creat Depth, you have to learn Perspective. It's hard, but once you get the basic principle, you'll begin to see it. For now, try this exercise: draw shapes, different types, don't think, just free up your hand for me. Get your wrist used to the types of movements Drawing takes. Once you learn how to draw, you'll be able to translate what is in your mind to paper, it's like speaking English: you think of what you want to say, then you've learnt enough grammar and language to express it. Please stay with me.

Iyfe Namikaze: still on it

Have you ever tried NOT using a grid? I've never used a grid to draw and I used to do portraits. We're here to learn something different, and let me be very honest: I've met some great artists, none of them use a grid. So let's try NOT using a grid and then add the grid later. Also, you have to learn Light and Shade or your portraits will look flat (lifeless) even though resemblance is there. Don't just shade what you see, understand what's going on with the light hitting your sitter's face.

spade: Here's a quick sketch I just made. Took some odd 15 minutes.
It's style is heavily reliant on the Persian vernacular cartoon concept.

Not bad at all! I really like this. My only issue is that it doesn't look aligned, like the right side is slightly higher than the left. It may be the way you photographed it. John Gurney, the illustrator and creator of "Dinotopia" says all illustrators should learn Proportion and Perspective to give a sense of reality to their drawings. So we are going to study that too. Please stay with us on the thread. I'll also post any images on my blog if they are too big to get on there and it's

petkoffDrake: me dnt understand all those things you post ther, d 1st two pics looks like wat u drew bt d third looks like wat u print out

Lol, they're the same. Constant drawing means you learn how to draw better. All you need is a sketchpad and a 4B or 6B pencil. And you can do this soon

You guys should stop playing. Oya! So eventually we're going to end up doing things like my drawings below. Yes, we can get there, we have to start with good Drawing and Design principles.

Guys, don't be shy. Please put up your drawings, let's see them. We can only grow if we participate.

Thanks. You don't have to be an artist to draw or learn, a lot of graphic artist would benefit from it. Overseas, graphic arts learn Art skills, but in Nigeria, we just buy a mac or download PS and CorelDraw. It usually shows the lack of drawing skills and design skills afterwards.

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There's so much wrong with Nigeria: Tribalism, Nepotism, Get-rich-quick mentality, Turn-everything-into-a-business mentality, Cutting Corners and Hypocrisy.

A few weeks ago, a friend and I were at the site of his new office space, building almost complete. An inspector from Lagos State Government showed up, to inspect. He then offered to sell the Fire Safety equipment and fireproof doors to us. An inspector or any quality control officer should NOT sell anything to you, as it creates an avenue for cutting corners: if we buy from him, he gives us LASG Min of Works approval for our building, irrespective of nonsense like shoddy building materials, poor construction or whatever being done. I've worked for LASG, I can assure you they all pull stunt, even outside Lagos, ministry workers "supplement" their income in this manner. It doesn't matter if their product is good, they turn a blind eye to whatever else is bad in what they're inspecting, so as to make a sale. And we all die for our greed and wonder whom to blame. Save your prayers for yourself, as God sees Nigerians all, for what we really are: Not a good people.

Okay, I can see your works. First things first, positioning of features, the eyes, the nose and lips are wrong. Every human face has a proportion and a placemark (a grid, if you will) of where these exact features lie on the face. Also, there's very little modelling done with Light and Shade. I'm going to introduce a concept to you called "Notan". Read it up and practise it. We will be having a Drawing class in 2 weeks' time at Lekki, where more will be discussed. That's a quick sketch I did. Notice the skull outline beside her, used to judge accurately placement of the features

sarutobie, there are no attached images. You can benefit from the same books and works I recommended to the OP. Also, classes will be offered for Drawing, and good illustrators started by learning sound Drawing and Art techniques.
I'm not comfortable adding up people i don't know, so I'll do a post on illustrators in Nigeria (and there are very good ones).

Kaffy makes decent money (she did Darey Art Alade's show and I know everyone got paid well there). However, we're in Naija and people like to underpay their workers, and strangely love Jesus/Allah. I've heard Kaffy muscles everyone out (I've seen how the camera always focuses on her). And that's why I'll give this advice: be better than her, do something she cannot offer, audition on some national talent show, perform excellently even if once, put up a well-cut video on youtube, and get a very good manager (who can hustle and fight for you). You think if someone comes doing Wade Robson routines or robot-afro-break-dancing fusion, with excellent well-thought out chereo and costumes and a professionally shot video that gains even 5,000 views on yt, Psquare won't call them? Everyone won't rush there to pay them money to learn? Stop doing mediocre stuff, package yourself well and see if you won't get jobs. Every upperclass person in society in Lagos is going for "Eko the musical", which is all about Dance and Song. Those dancers then go on to offer classes to their patrons. Certain industries are only for the strong, and anything in entertainment, only for the survivors.

Festac, Ajah, Lekki and a lot of places in Lagos have very polluted water and high groundwater table levels. That's a scientific fact (Unilag students did the project, there was a particular project even that was so good, it got an A, and I know it's on the internet). It's madness to have a city in a coastal area without centralised wasterwater treatment, water treatment and waste treatment facilities. Talk about begging for a cholera outbreak...oh wait, that already happened.

theres the Society for Performing Arts (SPAN) which do ballroom, contemporary, ballet and other professional dances. They do musicals, train abroad and teach wealthy clients. They seem comfortableHowever, they dont just let anyone in. Kaffy is one, there's space for an innovative dance group. If you dance like any group in the Step Up movie franchise, even if Kaffy doesn't call you, someone else will offer you a great deal of money. The trick is to be innovative and then market yourself well. Don't be limited to Hiphop, and for goodness' sake, perfect your craft. Dance is meant to be beautiful, whether elegant or wild. I see too much sloppiness and unsharp chereography.

This has nothing to do with NLC. And you're a coward. You should have been ready to reveal all. I've done so before (named names when corruption hit my school association). Write a letter to the MD, state all this, gather your facts (get the corrupt individuals to send messages detailing this, it's easy to gather evidence in this country, FAR TOO EASY) and submit this. But you're nigerian, so you're more worried about your neck and your stomach, so you'll ignore my advise. Wanna know why the country is so bad? It's because everyone thinks of themselves only and will only fight for their own pockets, not realising the cane they use to beat Halima is the cane they has reserved for use to beat Chinwe and Bukola.

[quote author=Da'GeeNius]Nt sure u knw I've only been learning techniques by watchin videoz and following steps of different Artists such as Kelvin Okafor, JD Hillberry, Darrel Tank etc.Dis was hw I got 2dis level which I am @ d moment.
I wz discouraged frm studyin Art by ma parent, bt I still hav ma passion 4 drawin. I knw I told ma self wen I get ma degree I wld den go 2 an art sch 2get 2 learn much beta.
Dis revealz I've practised wit no assistance frm Professional Artists!!![/quote]Dear, we all did. My parents made me study something else, and it wasn't easy. The most important thing is to know how to see and how to make decisions on what to see and how to see it. You have a good start, now let's polish what you have. Download that Bert Dodson book, there's a Drawing Club in Lagos, and we're meeting this saturday in VI (and it's free). All you need is a big sketchpad, something to sit on (wrapper/chair) and your own refreshments. There will be pro artists there and Art students. Look for The Pencil-Push Club on fb, and sign up.