Drawing? Rotate That Canvas!

One weird trick that your artist friends are hiding from you: you can rotate your canvas! Whaaaaaaaa-

In fact, your artist friends probably aren’t trying to hide it from you: if they’re anything like a bunch of mine, they forget that you can! One of the first things that I learned when learning to draw was that, along with drawing from the shoulder, you should always rotate your page to make those marks in the direction that feels most comfortable. For me, that’s left to right, moving slightly away from my body as I go. And while I can draw lines in other directions, they often don’t come out quite as nice.

When studying something, we often feel like our canvas or paper has to stay upright, right? So there’s a couple forces pulling in opposite directions, telling us the different things we should be doing. But this is one of those things that you can alter as you work through the art process, even on the same drawing. Perhaps while you’re studying, you keep your drawing upright to match your study reference. But if you’re just sketching, or building something with construction, or doing a clean-up pass on some lines, take advantage of the fact that you can spin your page around to make the best marks!

Now, we’re mostly talking about sketches and linework here. At a certain point, such as when you’re shading or working with thicker forms and volumes, it doesn’t matter so much what orientation your canvas is. But anytime you find yourself repeatedly struggling to draw the same line, try to remember that you can rotate the canvas! The more you realize it, the more you’ll do it naturally and you’ll see your drawings improving more quickly.

Digitally, try to get comfy with your tablet’s rotation controls. Maybe it’s just a pinch gesture, or maybe a wheel to spin, or a keyboard shortcut. Try a couple drawings where you spin that canvas every single time and always draw the lines the same direction with your arm, just to get some practice with it. Working traditionally? Sorry, no fancy controls here– (You can literally rotate the page! Tell them!) Oh right – that.

One thing you can’t do on paper, though, is scale your canvas. And actually, that’s a good thing! If you’re working digitally, consider trying to avoid zooming in to your canvas while you’re doing your sketch or initial paint lay-in. Because if you do that, you’ll naturally focus on tiny details and lose sight of the literal bigger picture. Your overall motion with your marks will end up looking different on sections that you’ve zoomed in on versus not. As best as you can, try to make use of your screen’s full available space to draw so you don’t need to pan and zoom around to work on it. But remember to take advantage of rotation! Now go give it a spin in your work today.