Drawing Lessons for Beginners:
Drawing the Cast

Drawing from the cast has a history as long as drawing itself. It’s uses are manifold in terms of an artist’s training.

In classic ateliers cast drawing is used to train artists in sight-sizing. Traditional sight-sizing is a laborious method of drawing and is not for beginners. In my own teaching I have found “comparative” or “relative” sight-sizing to be a much more effective and versatile tool for artists of every level and I teach it right from day one in my

Drawing Lessons for Beginners - Drawing the Cast 1

Beginning to Draw Workshop and Mastering Portrait Drawing: the frontal pose.

But cast drawing has even greater uses. There is perhaps no more useful method for training the artist to see abstract tonal shape – i.e. the effects of light and dark on three dimensional form, and to train the eye and brain to recognize a broad range of tonal gradation.

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Without tonal depth your drawings will fall flat – literally. But as you develop an artist’s eye you will start to “sense” and see much sublter variations of light and dark and it is these variations in tone and the correct observation of their shape that will bring your work to life!

And this is one of the great secrets of artists – they draw and paint shape. Not complex individual features, not objects but accurately judged tonal shapes. It is shape and tone that directs the pictorial surface and upon which harmonious compositions are based.

Whereas at first you may struggle to see more than 5 tones, by focusing on seeing the shape of each piece of tone you will soon develop your eye to see and physically duplicate 10 or more shades of tone. The gradated scale exercise in the Beginning to Draw Workshop is the starting point and should be practised often.

Developing a ‘tonal eye’ is best begun using only black and white. Recognizing tonal gradations within color or hue requires knowledge of color theory and an understanding of tint and tone. This is covered in my Applied Color Theory Workshop which comprises the textbook and workbook in PDF on CDrom or as an instant download.

Abstracting Shape & Tone – A Drawing Exercise

The biggest hurdle faced by the beginning artist when drawing a portrait is the tendency to focus on the features; all too often scant attention is given to the overall shape of the head and even less attention to the abstract shapes of form. The purpose of this exercise is to correct this tendency.

Cast drawing has for centuries been the surest approach to building up the portrait artist’s tool-box of skills. There are many ways of considering the cast drawing: what usually comes to mind are the highly resolved academic drawings in which one can easily spend a hundred hours, and more, working on. The absolute beginner should be using the cast to develop their skills of observing and striking the arabesque or overall shape. Once that fundamental skill has been acquired the next step is to accurately inscribe the overall light and dark shapes within the arabesque. The lesson I want to impart here is to employ the cast to analyze abstracted shape. In the drawing above I have limited myself to three tones: a flat dark, a midtone and white.

Drawing Lessons for Beginners - Drawing the Cast 2

The thrust of the lesson is to render a ‘portrait’ without actually articulating any of the features. Instead the agenda is to ascribe an area of flat shape and to build up the head as if it were a still life drawing. The flat shapes will suggest the facial features while the viewer’s innate sense of closure will complete the drawing for you – there is not need then to elaborate and exaggerate, say, the eyes.

Working from a white plaster cast is best. You don’t need high-end replicas of classical statuary, if you have access to them, then, of course use and enjoy them for your studies.

Garden ornaments (gargoyles, dogs, cats, etc.) are excellent reference material. For many years I used a little bronze bird that I bought in a gardening shop in Seattle. She was simply designed and possessed of elegant lines; a deceptive little bird she was extremely tough to draw.

For this lesson I took a photograph of the statue of Hamlet from the Gower Memorial to Shakespeare in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the UK.

Using either charcoal, soft graphite or 2B black conte on a quarter sheet, or smaller, piece of drawing paper (my paper is 8.27” X 11.69” which is the A4 standard size) strike the overall shape and proportion of the arabesque as I’ve shown here. As always, less is more. There is no need for any kind of detail here. Our agenda is SHAPE.
Drawing Lessons for Beginners - Drawing the Cast 3

At the end of this I have included a high resolution photograph of my reference for your use for this exercise.

Once your arabesque has been struck, its’ height/width proportion checked and the overall shape corresponding accurately with the model’s pose the primary landmarks are then established.

The most important landmark in portrait drawing is the brow-ridge. This is the large, lateral skeletal structure (called the Supra Orbital Eminence) upon which the eyebrows lay. Generally you are looking for a specific point on the brow ridge that you can readily refer back to. Every portrait drawing will have a slightly different reference point depending upon the model, the pose and even the lighting.

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