100 Days of Shapes and Forms

I’ve taken part in the online “100-Days” challenge before, doing a variety of different projects. If you’re not familiar with this yearly event, here is the website to visit:

The 100-Day Project

The challenge began yesterday, but as the website says, “…any day is a good day to start.”

Given my recent love of drawing pears, you might think those fleshy fruits would be the theme for my 100-Day Project, but, nope. I wanted to start with something fresh, something new, something different, so I grabbed that set of “geometric-shaped blocks” I recently purchased, and committed myself to “100 Days of Shapes and Forms”.

What better way to improve my drawing skills than by working with two of the most basic elements of art? What better way to practice my shading and blending techniques than by carefully creating three-dimensional forms? What better way to train my artist’s brain than by drawing from life using these awesome little blocks?

The ability to look at an object or a scene and see shapes and forms is one of the most important skills for an artist to develop. To help with this, there are some good videos available:

Art Fundamentals : Shapes and Forms

Shape VS Form – Which Should We Use to Draw?

Shape and Form as Elements of Art

Elements of Art – Shape VS Form

These are only a few of the many videos available on this important art topic. Of course, we know about shapes and forms. We’ve memorized their definitions:

• Shapes are flat and two-dimensional. They have height and width.
• Forms are three-dimensional. They have height and width and depth.

But it’s only when we practice drawing shapes and turning them into forms that this knowledge becomes useful. We start with lines, we add shading, we create depth.

This is what I’ll be doing throughout my 100-Day Project, randomly choosing a geometric shape each day and drawing it from life. I’ll tilt my shapes, I’ll turn my shapes, I’ll look at them from various angles. This is a great exercise, especially for beginning artists.

It’s been said that we should be able to draw simple shapes from memory. Yes, really, we should be able to do this. We don’t need reference photos to follow when we draw basic circles, rectangles, and triangles.

But what about forms? Here is where light and shadow come into play. Adding the dimension of depth creates interesting variations, depending upon where we place our light source. We now see highlights, reflected lights, core shadows, and cast shadows.

These are the basic “building blocks” of successful art. Even abstract works make use of shapes and forms, so the more we train ourselves to see and understand these elements, the better our work will become.

Are you taking part in the 100-Day Project? Remember, it’s never too late to start!