Whatever kind of drawing you like to draw, measuring is quite important. It helps us to decide how:
- High things are
- Tall things are
- Wide things are
- Deep things are
- Long things are
Some people seem to be able to do this naturally with their eyes, but almost anyone can learn it with practice.
If you are not an instant genius at deciding how high, tall, wide, deep and long things are then don’t worry about it. There are some things we can do to help.
For older readers
One of the things we can do to help is map the space we are trying to draw on our peice of paper. We can do this with grid lines. Guidelines are like a very simple grid.
You must draw your guidelines lightly in pencil, as at some point we are going to rub them out.
For younger readers
The guidelines we will be drawing on our cartoon are going to look like a big cross.
You must draw your guildlines lightly in pencil as at some point we are going to rub them out.
Doodle it!
Find a big ruler and place it accross the widest point of your cartoon face shape. We measured arcoss this a couple of days ago on your real face. Do you remember what to do?
Start you measurement at the widest point of your left cheek and end at the widest point of your right cheek. Make sure you keep your ruler straight.
Now write this number down.
Well done!
You have found your cartoon man’s cheekbones!
Next…
Next we need to find the halfway point of that measurement. This means dividing the number by two.
If my cartoon man’s face measures 14 cm across then I need to make a mark on my page at 7 cm, which will be the middle point. You can use Centimeters (cm) and milimeters (mm) to measure if you want to be extra accurate.
Drawing the up and down (vertical) guideline
Now you need to place your ruler on the mark so that it is going up and down like a skyscraper (vertically). This will be the tall bit of your cross. Draw along the line lightly in pencil and try to keep your ruler straight.
Well done!
The line you have drawn is the same line we measured a few days ago when we measured the length of your face. It should run right from the top of your cartoon man’s skull down over the bridge of his nose, right to the bottom of his chin.
Drawing the horizontal guideline (across)
Measure the length of the up and down line you have just drawn. Write the measurement down on a bit of paper.
Now you need to divide this measurement in two to find the middle.
For example, if my vertical (up and down) line is 21 cm long, then I will need to make a mark at 10.5 cm.
This means there will be 10 cm and 5 mm each side of my mark, so my mark is in the middle.
If you ever need to check that the line you have drawn is really in the middle then you can just count the number of centimeters and milimeters each side of the line. If there are the same number of centimeters and milimeters areach side of the line then your mark is definately in the middle!
Doodle it!
Now, place your ruler along side the mark you have made on your page. Make sure that your ruler is straight.
The line you draw with your ruler should cut straight through the mark you have made in the middle of your vertical (up and down) line. Make sure you draw lightly and in pencil as at some point we are going to rub these guidelines out.
The point where both your lines cross is the imaginary centre of your drawing. If we are drawing somebody ’straight on’ then our imaginary centre should be more or less exactly in the middle of our cartoon shape.
Well done!
You have drawn your first set of guidelines. This will help you plan where to put all your features (eyes, nose, lips, mouth, ears etc. ) on your cartoon face so that it looks fairly lifelike, and like a real person should look.
Talk about it!
Ask someone else to check your work and offer to check theirs. Check that both their lines are in the middle by counting the centimeters and milimeters either side of the line. Check that the ‘imaginary centre’ of their drawing, where both lines cross, is in the mor or less in the middle of their cartoon face.
More information for older readers…
As you get better at drawing cartoons, you can:
- change the imaginary centre of your drawing
- if you make it higher, your cartoon man will look like his face is pointing up
- if you make it lower he will look like his face is pointing down
- If you move it to the right he will look like he is pointing right
- if you move it left he will look like he is pointing left.
You can check how this would work by drawing a cross on a tennis ball and moving it about.
We are not going to do this during this blog because drawing someone’s face at an angle is much more difficult. It changes the shape of their face. It changes the shape of their features and where the features go. But if you decide you like drawing cartoons after we have finished then you can maybe give it a try in the future.
Once you have finished your pencil guidelines we can start to think about drawing our cut-out eyes.
Extra well done
Today’s doodle was really hard!!!!!!
