Cezanne, The Cube, The Cylinder, The Sphere

Cezanne was famous for saying that everything in nature could be represented in terms of the cylinder, the sphere  and the cone. He also said  “One must first of all study geometric forms: the cone, the cube, the cylinder, the sphere.”

Although pencil drawing is the first art form that most of us encounter don’t let anyone tell you that learning to draw is easy. Nothing worth while ever is. There is no one way to learn pencil drawing, but there are a number of basic exercises that can help develop drawing skills. One way of developing drawing skills is to take Cezanne’s statement and focus exercises based on the quote.

Train yourself to look for these shapes in different objects every time that you have a spare moment. If  you have pencil and paper with you analyse the object for these shapes and record them. This is a great exercise for beginners that can be carried out anywhere and at almost anytime.

A development of this exercise could be to take photographs from magazines and work with your pencil on top of the photograph looking for these basic shapes. You could use a different colour for each shape.

I don’t expect that you will ever see a person as a cone with a sphere on top but try to imagine how the figure would look if it was simplified in this way.

Next using just a pencil and paper develop different ways that these basic shapes can combine and morph into each other to represent different objects. You will find that you can draw any subject from these basic geometric shapes.

You don’t need to use artist quality pencil and paper for these exercises. Use cheap materials so that you are not frightened of making mistakes. Look for things around the house and garden to analyse and after a short while you will find that your observational skills will improve hand in hand with your drawing skills.

A last word about Cezanne, because I believe that he is an inspiration for all artists. Cezanne wasn’t a naturally skilled artist. He new what he wanted to do, but had great difficulty in the technique of doing it. Look at his early pencil drawings and paintings, compare them with his later work and see how he developed, and take inspiration from that.

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