Just the thing for a rainy day or a project book: a DIY masterpiece. The very talented Margaret Esaak has greated some wonderful Art History Coloring Pages for Shelley Esaak's Art History site. So far she's drawn a Mona Lisa, a Sleeping Gypsy, and American Gothic. They're very accurate but also sensitively drawn. (Please do note the copyright information. ie, they are for personal use, not re-publishing.)

Once you're confident with drawing simple boxes in one-point perspective and two-point perspective, you can have some fun with more interesting shapes. A useful technique is the 'crossed diagonals' method of finding the center of a square or rectangle. You can use it for all sorts of things - making railway tracks and fenceposts, or drawing windows. Then you can try this easy step-by-step on drawing a pyramid in perspective. It shows you both one- and two-point perspective drawings of a pyramid.

I hadn't realized that I was gradually holding my book further and further away. The first memorable sign was not being able to focus on a splinter to catch it with the tweezers. It became awkward to work at the high kitchen table - too close to the paper - and needles got harder to thread. None was a big deal by itself, but knowing that eye problems can be a symptom of some diseases, and having had years of exposure to the sun, I thought I'd better get my eyes tested. So I went along to the optometrist and was pleased to learn that my eyes are healthy, and that my difficulty with close-up focusing was a 'normal', age-related condition called presbyopia. It was so reassuring to know that I could expect to have good vision for the rest of my life - I wasn't going to go gradually blind - but would just need glasses for optimal vision.

The optometrist gave me a prescription, but as it was morning and my eyes felt rested, and the consulting room lights were very bright, I could read even the smallest print on a newspaper just fine. Maybe glasses would be a waste of money? But over the following weeks,reading late at night became increasingly frustrating. Often it was just too hard to focus on the words and I'd give up. The final straw was when I parked under a streetlight to read a road-map, but couldn't make out the tiny words in its yellow light. A cheap set of supermarket reading glasses only gave me a headache, so I went and got the prescription ones. Since my prescription is weak and I only tend to use them when reading for an extended period, I opted for simple reading glasses. Fortunately, I have health insurance, which covered a good part of the cost. Later on, I might opt for bifocals, which I think would be helpful for drawing, or one of the other multi-focal lens options.

I didn't think the glasses were that big a deal - they just seemed to make reading more comfortable - until one day I put my book down on my lap and was momentarily amazed by the fabric on my jeans. The fibers looked amazing! Such defined texture! I'd become so used to everything being ever-so-slightly out of focus, that I hadn't realized that I was actually seeing things differently to how they really were. I opened my sketchbook and did a double-take at my drawings. What I thought was a soft texture was in fact quite grainy. The pencil work was far crisper than I thought. I wonder how much impact my worsening vision has had on my recent artwork!

Taking care of your vision is important to all of us, but doubly so to an artist. You want to see your subject and your artwork crisply into a ripe old age. Many problems can be detected early with regular screening, and the right prescription glasses, if you need them, might really make a difference to your work! Check out this eye exam schedule and related articles by the About.com guide to Vision, Troy Bedinghaus, O.D., for more information on eye health through your life.

One of the biggest problems I see with beginner portrait drawings is problem hair. Usually, we try to draw each hair as a strand, with a single pencil-stroke. This looks wiry and unnatural. The trick with drawing hair is to focus on drawing the areas of light and shade, looking for the shadows on sections of hair or under the hair. Correctly drawn hair makes a huge difference to a drawing, so its worth spending some time on it.

This tutorial shows you How to Draw Short and Long Hair.

Gesture drawing, also called gestural drawing, is an expressive, intuitive drawing based on a close and thoughtful observation of the subject in space. Gesture drawing attempts to capture the essence of form and movement. Its especially used in figure drawing, where it encourages you to observe the whole figure and get a sense of the dynamism of the human form, but you can apply it to small drawings too. If you are always working hard at realism, gestural or gesture drawing can be a great way to loosen up and have some fun, and will help you allow more of your personality into your drawing. This article on Gesture Drawing has some examples and explains a little more.

Try this easy pencil shading exercise to develop your range of tone. One of the big mistakes beginner artists make is to draw too lightly, or less often, to draw very heavily, not exploiting the full range of tone. Part of the problem is observing your subject, but you also need to discover just how much variation you can get out of a simple pencil.

A classic exercise for developing the eye-hand connection, improving observation and freeing up your line, Blind Contour Drawing is often learnt as a student and then forgotten about. If you haven't done one lately, why not give it another try. You can make it more challenging by choosing an interesting and complex object. Beginners might like to try the example in this blind contour drawing tutorial to start off with, which explains how to do a blind contour drawing, and includes several different examples.

Whenever I start teaching a group of new students, the first thing I get them to do is to draw a picture of their own hands. This is to serve as a reference point, so they can see how much they improve over the term. If I had enough mirrors, I would ask them to draw a self-portrait, as portraits are challenging and a real test of drawing skills. If you are just starting out, you might like to do a self-portrait - just do your best with whatever pencils you have, and file it away for later!
The first actual drawing exercise I get students to do is the Wire Drawing Exercise that I learned from Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner. Because the wire doesn't 'look like' anything, it isn't frightening for the beginner, and is excellent for developing the hand-eye connection. Give it a go!

Giclee Printing isn't just for big-selling major artists. It can be a cost-effective way of making your artwork affordable for the general public, allows more than one person to enjoy a great image, and can also be useful for making gifts and promotions. Modern print technology means that you no longer have to do print runs of thousands to make it economical. Printing companies and the printers and materials they use vary in quality, so be sure to research the process before you dive in to get prints made. This Giclee FAQ answers some important questions about giclee printing.

University of Miami drawing lecturer, Brian Curtis, has made a valuable addition to the artist's bookshelf with his book, 'Drawing from Observation: an introduction to perceptual drawing'. The book is already being widely used in University drawing courses, as it addresses a longstanding gap in art instructional texts, by focusing on perceptual drawing and the rendering skills needed to express the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional plane.
Read my review to find out more.

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