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Drawing Templates Can Save Your Sanity
(And Using Them Is Not Cheating)
by Carol Rosinski
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Have you ever had a hard time drawing matching curves that face each other, like two sides of a vase? A French curve could have saved you a ton of work. Just draw one side, find that curve on the French curve, flip it over and use it to draw the other side or to help you see where you're going wrong. Have a hard time drawing parallel lines? Straight edges to the rescue! I have a thin metal erasing shield that has small cutouts that include long lines that I call on to help me draw, or erase, perfect parallel lines all the time. I also keep a simple index card in my toolbox. It's lightweight, easy to hold down and draw around, and has straight edges and four lovely corners.
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Get them here at Dick Blick.
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Get it at Dick Blick
Get it at Dick Blick
Get it at Dick Blick
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You can find collections of plastic stencils with great shapes like arrows, Celtic knots, hearts, flowers, ribbons, and etc, in the stationary department of most stores. You probably won't find a use for a stenciled shooting star, but you could very well find a use for part of that shape sometime, so these inexpensive stencils make great additions to your drawing supply collection.
More professionally made templates are a little harder to find, but not impossible. The drafting departments of most office supply stores usually have selections of ovals, circles, parallelograms, French curves, and the erasing shields I mentioned. And, if I've convinced you that you need a French curve, try to find a set that has cutout shapes in their interior, too, and you'll get more template action for your money!
If you have an extremely convoluted curve that you need to reproduce, you might consider a Flex Curve. It's lead filled rubber that bends to nearly any shape and stays put, plus it's a drafting tool and has a flat edge for drawing around. It's very accurate, too. The best description I can think of for it is a "bend-able" ruler.
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For The Guilt Ridden
Using a template is not cheating, so please don't go there. Templates are tools, just as your pencil and eraser are tools. There are some things that the human hand simply cannot draw very well, and a perfect geometric shape is one of them! We can draw any organic shape, but machines have us beat when it comes to perfection. It's silly to force yourself to draw shapes freehand that your hand is simply not meant to draw. You'll end up wasting hours and hours of time, and your results are not likely to be stunning.
If you're overwhelmed with guilt even thinking about using a drawing "aid" in anyway, I'd advise you to take a good long look at your ideas about what art is, consider where those ideas came from, and revise them. Your art does not reside in your tools! It lives in your head and your heart and it simply does not matter how you bring it into the world. So, if you're a template-phobe, please lighten up on yourself a little bit, buy the template you need, and finish that drawing that's been sitting there waiting for that perfect curve to be drawn properly. You're art will thank you if you do
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These images were provided by Dick Blick Art Materials
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