ART: value

October 06, 2012

How to Draw Ribbons

Drawing a Ribbon – Technique 1

Drawing a ribbon is a bit of a parlor trick, actually. You squiggle a few lines and, like magic, you have this elegant swirling thing on your paper. Like most magic, it isn’t difficult once you discover the trick.

	Step 1 While drawing your ribbons be sure to think ‘S’, not ‘Z’ or ‘O’. You want nice rounded curves, not corners or circles.
	Step 2 Draw a second ‘S’ line, following the original curves as closely as possible. You’ll determine the thickness of your ribbon by the distance between the two lines. Try to keep the distance even for the entire length of the ribbon, but you don’t have to be exact. You can skip this step if you use two pens or pencils together (see Margaret Bremner’s write-up) to draw your ribbon outline. If you did use two pens or pencils to draw your outline, use only one for the rest of this how-to.
	Step 3 Connect your ends. Giving them a little curve adds elegance. Ribbons are flimsy so a little ‘m’ shape at the top of your curves is okay, but if they are too noticeable, you might want to connect them.
	Step 4 And finally, add some shading on the inside of each curve.

“Drawing a Ribbon – Technique 2″

Drawing a Ribbon – Technique 2

The second technique I’m showing here isn’t very different from the first, and it can look clunky on a very loosely curled ribbon. But it’s great if you want a ribbon that doubles back on itself.

I don’t recommend using two pens or pencils for this method.

	Step 1 Start out as before, with ‘S’ like curves. Make your curves pointier where the ribbon will loop behind.
	Step 2 Draw the ends and sides of each curve.
	Step 3 Then draw the bottom line of the ribbon.
	Step 4 And, finally, add shading. For this to work successfully, you should have shading in two values, to help the eye distinguish how the ribbon curls.