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FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

One of the hidden benefits of

sketching is that it takes our
stress away; so once we are
ready to start doing the actual
drawing, our brain and our body
are fully relaxed and completely
open for creation.

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FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

One simple technique, thousands

of possibilities…

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

Doodling daily, apart from helping your hands, wrists and forearms to
warm-up, allows you to gain confidence whenever you got a new sheet
of that scary blank page in front of you.

If you’re not used to sketch very often, you’d probably need to exercise
those drawing muscles. Let’s start by creating ellipses (and I mean filling
up pages) doing circular movements, using your elbow as a pivot point
without lifting up the pencil. Alternate clockwise and anti-clockwise
directions. These type of circles need to be tackled-down with some
speed, otherwise they will look all shaky and non-natural.

The thing here isn’t about creating perfect circles (there are templates for
that dude!) but to get your muscles used to the mere act of drawing.

Take a look at the looseness of the ones I drew above. I just ran over the
same line a couple times without lifting my pencil, keeping the energy of
my elbow’s movement. We aren’t going after pretty lines here, what we
want is to send this message: I’m not afraid of you, piece of SHEET!

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

Drawing ovals or ellipses isn’t an easy task, so take your time until you
feel comfortable doing it. If you feel that moving around your forearm is
not helping too much, you can try to draw while rotating your wrist;
which is not “academically” correct, but what really matters is that you
find a way you feel comfortable to work work with.

In the picture above you can see how I go about changing the shape of
my ellipses, the idea is to have some variety and try experimenting with
different forms… you’ll find out why later.

Another thing you may notice is that I’ve traced two lines across my
ellipses, following their own curves...

Don’t buy those fancy hard-cover-look-I’m-an-artist sketchbooks...

it’s less intimidating to start sketching on some cheap paper using a
ballpoint pen or any other inexpensive tool you may find at your local
dollar store.

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

The importance of getting used to draw center lines, wether you have an
idea of what you’re going to draw or not, is to keep your mind thinking in
a tridimensional space. Even if you create flat artwork, you’ll always need
to give a hint of volume and space. In the example above, just by drawing
center lines, you can tell which direction my ellipses are pointing to.

Now, you can start working out of the simple ellipse constrains and draw
more fluid shapes. The magenta arrows above, indicates the flow of your
hands while drawing. The more you fill pages with simple ellipses, the
easier will be to pull out these relatively complex shapes later.

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

Combine ‘em all!

And this is what we’ve been training for a thousand sketches ago... now
it’s when creativity enters the game and things get really interesting and
fun. By combining two ellipses together (to get started), now we’re able
to brainstorm simple characters, without even thinking about it!

Don’t let your imagination stop a second! To keep things flowing, add a
pair of sticky arms and legs to round up our new characters a little
further. Notice how easy is to pull out many quick ideas using just ONE
basic technique. Aren’t you excited yet?

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

Add some character

Let’s flesh up these little weirdos by adding some simple human (or non-
human) characteristics. A couple ears, round eyes, a simple nose... etc.

See how easy this is? Try

drawing some caricatures of
people you know, even if they
haven’t any resemblance to
the ones you’re trying to copy,
you’ll acquire the super power
of SIGHT. Which is something
you need to practice everyday.

The more you observe

people and their
personalities, the more you’ll
be able to come up with
many and better ideas for
your sketches. Observation
will improve your drawings
by 500% even if you’re just
creating sticky figures for
now.

Coffee shops are one of my favorite spots to look at different kind of

people, they just sit there allowing you to capture the most
interesting ones in your sketchbook. Just avoid to keep staring
awkwardly at strangers… that’s weird!

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

As I mentioned before, in this eBook we’ll be learning just one out of a

thousand sketching techniques. But boy, if you master this simple
ellipses/sticks method, you’ll improve your sketching abilities in no time. I
recommend you to sketch at least 15 minutes daily. I wake up everyday
at 5 a.m. and sketch anything before I even take breakfast.

Also, as I said at the

beginning, sketching or
doodling Improves not only
your drawing skills, but also
helps to keep your brain
healthy, because you’re
always thinking about
anything while drawing. It’s
unavoidable, the moment you
start scribbling down lines,
your brain starts working and
solving problems.

As you can see, you don’t need the best tools or the most expensive art
classes to get started. You just need perseverance and have lots of fun
while doing it.

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

When you feel more confident with your drawings it’s time to scale the
difficulty level one notch. Instead of drawing sticks to depict our
character’s extremities, we’ll be replacing them using some ellipses.

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

Once you have your basic shapes defined you can play around adding
features and accessories to your character and give it more personality.
Do this gradually, in a way you feel comfortable. If you practice these
steps, one at a time during several days in a row, you’ll see how natural
the process will be.

I don’t care if you spend 6 months just drawing sticky figures, what I do
care about, is that you draw everyday and put a bunch of YOUR OWN
ideas on paper each time.

No monkeying around

By making this method your everyday habit you’ll find yourself going
beyond you imagined creating before. Animals, plants, monsters,
creatures, aliens... you name it. There are no limitations once you’ve
grasped and practiced the core fundamentals.

If you feel stuck at any point, just go back to the first exercise, trust me...
this like a Karate Kid movie, you’ll develop apparently useless techniques
first in order to achieve greater goals later. So... repeat after me: ellipse
clockwise, ellipse anti-clockwise, ellipse clockwise...

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

If there’s one thing I cannot stress enough is my previous advice on

keeping very few and cheap sketching tools. If you’re able to draw using
a crayon, you’d be able to do it using a 2K dollars Wacom Cintiq... the
pressure of drawing something pretty on some expensive material can
become a thousand times more stressful than doodling around using
some recycled print paper from your office.

If you feel that you’re drawing like shit today, then you need to take out
that shit from you, as soon as possible! How? Drawing more and more
and more... one day, all shitty drawings will be finally gone and the great
ones, will start to appear... it’s a nice (and shitty) metaphor I’ve been
following for many years now, because it creates a huge urge of keeping
drawing no matter what!

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

Examples and Inspiration

One simple technique, thousands of possibilities!

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 FRANKENTOON SKETCHING FOR BEGINNERS

Examples and Inspiration

One simple technique, thousands of possibilities!

1 2

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Hopefully this little technique will encourage you to grab a piece of paper
everyday and keep working out those sketching muscles whenever you
can and wherever you are. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike out of the
blue, because that isn’t gonna happen unless it finds you working hard…

See you next time folks!

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