No Skipped Steps

A drawing course in a book, for an adult who believes they can't draw.

If your drawings still look the way they did when you were nine, nothing is wrong with your hand. Drawing from life is a handful of separate skills that nobody showed you: making the marks you mean to make, seeing shapes as they really are instead of the symbol your memory keeps for them, measuring sizes and angles with your pencil, and seeing what light does to an object. This book teaches each one in order, in twenty sessions of about half an hour, and then you draw an apple, a book, a mug and a two-object still life from life, in pencil, so they look solid and sit on the table.

What makes it different

The most common complaint about learn-to-draw books is the jump: a few circles on one page, a finished drawing on the next, and nothing in between. Here every drawing is shown at every stage, and each stage adds only one thing. In the step pictures, everything you add in that step is printed in red and everything already on the paper is grey, so you always know exactly what changed. Guide lines are blue. The last picture of every project is the finished drawing in plain graphite, to compare with yours.

Every step tells you three things: Do (exactly what to draw, with which pencil), Why (the reason, so you can use it on other drawings) and Check (how to tell whether it worked before you move on). Every project ends with a Check It page, and two pictures of what the drawing looks like if you stop too soon.

What is inside

• Before you start: what the book teaches and who it is for, how the pictures work, the kit (three pencils, two erasers, plain paper, a lamp), how to set up your table and light, and a "before" drawing to keep.
• Part 1, Marks: two ways to hold the pencil; straight lines in one go (ghosting); circles and ellipses, with the four common ellipse faults; pressure, tone and texture, pencil grades and a five-step value scale.
• Part 2, Seeing: why drawings go wrong (symbols); blind and modified contour drawing of your own hand; copying a drawing upside down; drawing the negative spaces of a kitchen chair.
• Part 3, Measuring: sighting with your pencil (how many widths tall?); measuring angles with a level pencil; blocking in, big to small.
• Part 4, Light: the five things light does to a ball (highlight, light side, core shadow, reflected light, cast shadow) on a labelled drawing and a photograph; then a ball drawn in six steps.
• Part 5, Projects: an apple, a hardback book, a mug and a still life of an apple in front of a mug. Each has a set-up photograph, the finished drawing, six step pictures with Do, Why and Check, a Check It page and a practice sheet.
• After the book: an "after" drawing to put beside your "before"; nine common faults with their causes and fixes; a 30-day plan of one kitchen object a day, fifteen minutes each; a word list with page numbers; what to try next.

By the last page you will be able to

• Draw a straight line and a round ellipse on purpose
• Build smooth tone in layers, from light to dark, without smudging
• See and draw the real shape of an object rather than your idea of it
• Measure height, width and angles with your pencil so things come out the right size
• Shade a ball, an apple, a book and a mug so they look solid and sit on the table
• Draw a small still life from start to finish, and check your own work

What you download

• No Skipped Steps (58 pages, PDF, US Letter): the whole book, in colour, with bookmarks and a contents page. Its practice pages can be printed straight from the book.
• Practice Pad, US Letter (17 pages, PDF) and Practice Pad, A4 (17 pages, PDF): every practice sheet on its own, so you can print them as often as you like: the before and after drawings, the line, ellipse and tone sheets, the seeing and block-in sheets, the ball sheet, one sheet for each project, and four blank framed sheets for the 30-day plan.

Good to know

• You need an HB, a 2B and a 4B pencil, a kneaded eraser, a plastic eraser, plain paper, a desk lamp and a few things from your kitchen. Nothing else.
• Every drawing is made from a real object on your table. A photograph of each set-up is included, but the book teaches you to draw from life.
• The pictures show a right-handed set-up with the lamp on the left; the book says what to swap if you are left-handed.
• This is a PDF download. No physical book is shipped.