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Coursera

Drawing with Simple Shapes

Proko via Coursera

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Overview

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Learn the fundamental skills to deconstruct complex subjects and build a strong foundation for your drawing practice. You’ll learn to break down the world into basic shapes, focusing on two key pillars: shape accuracy to capture precise proportions, and shape design to create appealing forms. We’ll cover essential warm-up exercises to improve your motor control, and guide you through simplifying animal portraits into manageable forms using a strict maximum of ten shapes. By mastering these techniques, you'll train your eyes to see the underlying structure of any subject rather than getting bogged down in details. You will learn to push and pull organic shapes, experiment with proportions, and develop dynamic shape language that applies to both realistic and stylized art. What makes this course unique is its hands-on approach, including step-by-step demonstrations, real student critiques, and a special bonus lesson from master creature designer and animator Aaron Blaise, who reveals how he uses these exact techniques in professional animation. Whether you're a beginner wanting solid fundamentals or an experienced artist streamlining your process, this course will transform how you see and draw.

Syllabus

  • Drawing with Simple Shapes
    • In this module, you'll dive into the core of visual language by studying the fundamental concept of shapes. You'll learn how to balance shape accuracy, training your eye to see precise proportions from your references, with shape design, which lets you make aesthetic choices that improve your art. Through guided practice, you'll work on a fun project where you simplify complex animal portraits down to their essential forms using 10 basic shapes or fewer. You'll also learn how to organically deform geometric shapes by stretching, bloating, or curving them. This helps you bring more life to your subjects without getting stuck in the details. Finally, you'll add an important circle-drawing warm-up to your routine. This exercise will help you develop confident line quality, practice ghosting, and reinforce full-arm drawing mechanics before you start sketching.
  • Drawing with Simple Shapes: Demos
    • In this module, you'll put shape theory into practice with real-time demonstrations of simplifying animal portraits. Starting with Level 1, you'll learn how to analyze your reference and visually break it down into basic shapes in your mind before your pencil ever touches the paper. You'll see how to simplify complex features, like a rooster's comb, without losing the animal's recognizable characteristics. The goal is to keep your foundational drawing to around 10 simple shapes. Moving into Level 2, the focus shifts to shape exploration and design. You'll take the simple shapes you established in Level 1 and learn how to push and pull them to discover new design possibilities. You'll experiment with pushing the entire drawing toward specific geometric motifs, such as circle-based, square-based, or triangle-based designs. You'll also play with proportions by choosing dominant shapes, which can dramatically change the character and feel of the animal.
  • Simple Animal Portraits: Critiques
    • In this module, you'll learn by analyzing real student work in a comprehensive critique session covering both Level 1 and Level 2 of the Simple Animal Portraits project. By seeing how other students approached the 10-shape constraint, you'll get a better understanding of what makes a design successful and where it can go wrong. You'll look at common pitfalls, like jumping into 3D forms before mastering strong 2-dimensional shapes. This often leads to stiff, robotic drawings. You'll also see why it's important to balance geometric shapes with organic ones. Relying too heavily on rigid squares or triangles can oversimplify a living subject and strip away its natural character. By reviewing these examples, you'll refine your eye for shape language and learn how to better push and pull proportions in your own work.
  • How Animators Use Basic Shapes with Aaron Blaise
    • In this special bonus module, you'll learn from master animator and "Creature Art Teacher," Aaron Blaise. You'll see how professional animators and creature designers use simple shapes and forms to make complex animal anatomy easier to understand. Instead of getting caught up in muscles and bones right away, you'll learn to look for the rhythm and flow of the animal, the underlying gesture line that runs from the spine through the tail. Aaron will walk you through breaking an animal down into key structural zones: the head, neck, shoulders, body, and hips. He'll also explain the importance of alternating rigid and flexible body parts. By visualizing these parts as simple, connected forms, like wedges and cylinders, you'll learn how to build dynamic, lifelike poses. These forms give you a strong foundation for character design and animation.

Taught by

Stan Prokopenko

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