How to Draw the New Year Baby

Series Summary

Drawing and sketching refers to two-dimensional pieces of art made by marking on a surface with a variety of mediums. Drawing tools can include graphite pencils, pen and ink, colored pencils, charcoals and chalk and pastels. It is the most foundational skill an artist possesses. The practice of drawing and sketching as an art form became widely popular in 15th-century Europe when paper became generally available. The famous journal of Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci contains hundreds of sketches, brainstorms and observations that inspire draftsmen today. Almost every form of imaginable art involves some level of drawing or sketching. In this free video series on drawing, a professional illustrator offers drawing lessons to help the viewer draw various objects, such as people, animals and cartoons. Find out how to start sketching, using light pencil marks, and how to accentuate the main lines in marker. Learn to draw various hairstyles and facial expressions, and even find out how to draw human eyes, noses and mouths. Make a drawing, from start to finish, with this free online art lesson.

Video Transcript

"Joel Hickerson, GrinDog.com. Today we're going to learn how to draw the New Year's Baby. The first thing you want to think about is do you want the baby sitting up or do you want him crawling? If you want him sitting up keep your pad vertical, crawling more horizontal. Then start with the biggest element of your baby. I'm going to draw the baby kind of going away from us. So the biggest element to me is going to be his big diaper element. So then I'll start with a circle and then I draw a torso, then I'll draw his head kind of looking back over his shoulder, feet one leg moving him forward, the other leg maybe moving him back, one arm down, the face, I'll put his little baby nose right in the middle of the face and the New Year's Baby is happy because it's going to be a good year. Eyes, maybe a hair, some ears, now I'm drawing construction lines in pencil and you'll see I've got a lot more lines than I need, there's a reason because I'm going to come back with a marker when I'm done and just pick the lines I want to keep. So that's a good construction element and I can even exaggerate the diaper more when I come back with my marker. At this point I just come back and I keep the lines that I like, maybe even add a few lines. The thing about babies is they don't have much hair so you want to keep the eyebrows really light and their elements like ears are usually smaller too. Starting with that big diaper in the back, torso coming up to the head, shoulder down to the first hand, first leg, second leg it's more of a foot, and this hand he might make him say number one or maybe it's going to be a good year, little hair, I might come back and give him a little tooth and then the last thing you want to do before your shading is come back and erase your construction lines. Remember when you sketch this baby out, make sure your construction lines, you draw very lightly so when you come back and erase, it's easy to get them out of your illustration, especially when you draw big, because when you draw big you have a tendency to really bare down. That's how you draw the New Year's Baby."