The Ghost drawing is a simple and powerful technique
that will help you make better sketches
all along your Design journey.
When you are a beginner, you feel intimidated.
He may even be a bit scary to draw. (Perfectionist syndrome)
Your lines are hesitant, clumsy, and lack of precision.
You feel fear of not making progress.
The ghost drawing is the solution to gain fast in confidence and line accuracy. You need this technique to make beautiful and professional sketches freehand.
It becomes very simple when you get the daily habit to draw with it all the time.
How does it work?
The ghost drawing is about simulating a movement before tracing it on paper (or any support). It is an INVISIBLE line your eyes can start seeing just before drawing.
For example, if you want to draw a circle,
simulate the circular movement first
– with the nib of your pen at a few mm above your paper.
When you feel ready, simply let your pen nib touch gently the surface of the paper and draw.
PRACTICE: To practice your ghost drawing skills,
a great exercise is to draw ellipses freehand.
Use the Ghost Drawing Very Often!
Without this sketching technique,
I wouldn’t be able to trace fluidly with confidence.
My lines would be hesitant.
The ghost drawing affects directly the quality of your lines and expression.
Use it before almost every single stroke, line, curve, circle, or ellipse you draw. With practice, it will become intuitive to you, and your lines will get smoother and even energetic!
Remember to do not draw with your wrist only, but with your full arm. Let your shoulder and elbow free of movement.
To practice it properly, you need the right drawing posture.
We cover this topic here:
- The right body posture to adopt when you draw at the Desk.
- The proper posture to draw with a Standing Position.
I highly recommend you guys to practice the Ghost drawing as often as needed. You will soon get more confidence in your line. When you will adopt the right movement, it will become easy.
Your overall drawings will be lightened.
This technique can’t be mastered without practice. It physically needs your body to “absorb the gesture”. We call this the memory of forms.
Your arm will remember all these movements,
so you can repeat them with precision with no effort.
If you want to train your curve practice, I invite you to start with the C-curve video tutorial.
To get started as a beginner, feel free to Sign up and get the Designer Starter Kit. It’s an easy illustrated guide that will show you step-by-step how to practice this technique and learn to draw the basic perspective.
You will soon make great straight lines and perfect circles as well without feeling afraid of doing mistakes. : )
NEXT DRAWING TIP YOU NEED:
I show you how to sketch with a dynamic style drawing a cylinder.
[…] I need to draw a complex curve, I split it in multiply small curves to draw. I often apply the ghost drawing before drawing the curves for neatness and […]
[…] Fill this shape with hatching.For the first two or three lines, use ghost drawing as necessary. […]
I did practice according to your product design sketching techniques, and guess what, I can see the improvement in my product drawing, this website help me to improve my sketching, thanks a lot, and do post article on how to start with intuos draw tablet TIA