How to use Sketch Hour

Getting started

Open Sketch Hour with the button at the top of any page. The app has six tabs:

• Practice: set up and run timed sessions.
• Learn: a curriculum of exercises with references made for them, and your progress.
• Library: your boards of references.
• Timer: a standalone timer for longer pieces.
• Sources: bring in references from Pinterest, FilmGrab, MapCrunch and your own video files.
• Studio: find a composition in a reference, draw it, then check your drawing against it.

Until you add your own references, the Poses, Film scenes and Places boards show generated sample images, so you can try a session straight away.

Learn: the curriculum

The Learn tab is a course you practice rather than read. It has eight tracks (Figure, Heads, Perspective, Light & value, Color & light, Composition, Animals and Environments) with thirty units between them. See the whole plan on the Curriculum page.

Suggested path or tracks

Suggested path puts the units in ten terms of three, mixing tracks so you don’t spend months on one subject. Tracks lists each skill on its own, so you can work on just one. The card at the top always shows the next unit you haven’t finished.

A unit

Each unit has a goal, a short list of things to look for, two or three exercises and the references they use. Start runs the exercise:

• Timed poses start a session with the unit’s references, like a session from the Practice tab.
• Studies open one reference in the viewer with the study timer running.
• Studio exercises open a reference in the Studio with the drawing time set, and sometimes the Values panel. Find the composition, fix it, press Start drawing, and check your drawing in Compare afterwards.
• Timer exercises are drawn from memory or imagination, with no reference.
• Some exercises use your own Places or Film scenes board, so fill those from Sources first.

Progress

• An exercise is ticked off when its session finishes and you drew for at least half of it, or when its timer runs out. You can tick or untick any exercise by hand.
• A unit is done when all its exercises are ticked.
• Time spent in curriculum exercises counts toward that track’s minutes, and toward your practice log like any session.
• Progress is saved in this browser, like the rest of your data.

The references

The mannequins, head forms, simple forms, still lifes, perspective scenes and colored forms are 3D renders made for Sketch Hour. The master drawings, portraits, paintings and animals are public-domain works from the Art Institute of Chicago, loaded from the museum’s image server. Open any of them in the viewer to see the title, artist and a link to the museum’s page.

Practice sessions

Choose what to draw from

Under Draw from, pick one or more boards. Each one shows how many references it holds.

Fixed time or class

Fixed time uses one time for every pose: 30 seconds to 10 minutes, or type your own. Then choose how many poses, or All to use every reference once.

Class follows a plan that starts with short gestures and ends on long studies:

• Warm-up, 15 minutes: 10 × 30 s, 5 × 1 min, 1 × 5 min
• Short class, 30 minutes: 10 × 30 s, 5 × 1 min, 2 × 2 min, 1 × 5 min, a 1-minute break, 1 × 10 min
• Full class, 60 minutes: 10 × 30 s, 5 × 1 min, 5 × 2 min, 2 × 5 min, a 5-minute break, 1 × 10 min, 1 × 15 min

The Schedule strip shows the plan with its total poses and time. If a session needs more poses than your boards hold, references repeat.

Display options

• Shuffle draws references in random order.
• Grayscale removes color so you can focus on values.
• Random mirror flips about half of the poses.
• Thirds grid lays a 3 × 3 grid over each pose.
• Sound cues tick in the last three seconds of poses 20 seconds or longer, and chime when the pose changes.

During a session

The controls along the bottom go back a pose, pause and skip ahead. Next to them are grayscale, mirror, grid, sound and full screen. The controls fade when you stop moving the mouse; move it or tap the pose to bring them back.

In the last 10 seconds of poses 30 seconds or longer, the clock changes color. End finishes the session and shows what you drew. Poses you spent at least 5 seconds on count.

Library and boards

Poses, Film scenes and Places are always there. New board adds your own, which you can rename or delete.

Adding references

• Press Add files, or drag files from your computer onto the Library.
• Copy an image and press Ctrl+V (⌘+V on a Mac) on any tab. It goes into the board you last opened in the Library.
• JPG, PNG, WebP and GIF images work, and MP4 or WebM clips up to 20 MB. Large photos are scaled down to 2,400 pixels on the long side to save space.

Browsers don’t let one site save images dragged from another. On other websites, right-click the image, choose Copy image, and paste it into Sketch Hour.

Editing references

Open a reference and use the pencil to change its note, source link or board, or the bin to delete it.

Pinterest

Pinterest boards

The Pinterest boards listed under Sources refresh once a day. They also appear in the Library and under Draw from; press View to open one. Their pins come straight from Pinterest, so you can’t edit or delete them, and a pin removed on Pinterest disappears at the next refresh.

Adding single pins

Open a pin on Pinterest, right-click the image and choose Copy image (on a phone, long-press it). Then click the box under Add single pins and paste. Choose the board it goes into, and add the pin’s link if you want to find it again later.

• Pasted images always go into your own boards. If a Pinterest board is open in the Library, they go to Poses.
• The Search Pinterest links open common pose searches on Pinterest.

Reference viewer

Click any reference to open it.

• Zoom with the scroll wheel, a pinch, a double-click or the zoom buttons. Drag to move around. The zoom label returns to a fitted view.
• Mirror, grayscale and the thirds grid work as in sessions.
• Values cycles through Notan (two values, with a slider that moves the split), three values, five values, and back to the image. It works on still images.
• Frames: for GIFs and clips, step one frame back or forward, pause, and slow playback to ½× or ¼×. Stepping through GIFs needs Chrome or Edge; clips work in every browser.
• Study timer: pick 2 to 15 minutes at the top and press the timer button. It runs the main Timer.
• The side buttons and arrow keys move between references on the board.

Some Pinterest pins don’t allow value studies or GIF frame stepping, because Pinterest controls how its images can be used. Copy the pin into one of your own boards to use those tools.

Film stills and street views

FilmGrab

In Sources, open a random film, browse the A–Z list, or search a title. Type the film title for the note, copy a still on FilmGrab, and paste it into the box. It goes into Film scenes.

Frames from your own video files

Under Grab frames from your own video file, open a video, scrub or step frame by frame at the frame rate you choose, and press Grab frame. The frame goes into Film scenes, with the film title and timecode as its note. The video never leaves your device.

MapCrunch street views

Random Street View opens MapCrunch. Turn on Urban for streets and buildings, and Stealth to hide the map and address. Take a screenshot (Win+Shift+S on Windows, ⌘+⇧+4 on a Mac) and paste it into the box to keep it in Places. The perspective study buttons start the Timer for 5 to 30 minutes.

Studio

The Studio has two tools that work together. Compose helps you find a composition in a reference. Compare lays a photo of your drawing over the reference so you can see where it’s off.

Choosing a reference

Upload an image, paste one with Ctrl+V (⌘+V), or drop it onto the canvas. From the Library, open any reference and press the crop button to compose it or the layers button to compare against it. Try a sample loads one of the built-in references.

Compose

• The frame: drag it to move it and drag its corners to resize it. Scrolling or pinching resizes it from the center, and the arrow keys nudge it.
• Frame shape: Free, the reference’s own shape, or a fixed ratio such as 1:1, 4:5, 2:3, A4 or cinema widescreen. Make it landscape turns the frame on its side, and Largest frame fills the reference.
• Outside the frame: Black hides everything you’re cropping away. Dimmed keeps it faintly visible.
• Guides: thirds, golden grid, golden spiral, diagonals, golden triangles, dynamic symmetry, center lines, and a grid from 2 × 2 to 12 × 12 for transferring proportions. The flip buttons turn the spiral and triangles; Light, Dark and Accent change the line color so the guides stay visible.
• Fix composition (or Enter) locks the crop.

Draw it

Once the composition is fixed, the Studio shows only the crop. The guides stay adjustable, so you can keep the ones you want to place things by. Pick a study length from 5 to 30 minutes and press Start drawing; the time counts toward your practice log. Save to Library keeps the crop as a reference, and the download buttons save it with or without guides. Change composition goes back to the frame.

Compare

Photograph your drawing straight on in even light, or scan it, then upload, paste or drop it. It is laid over your fixed composition, or over the whole reference if you haven’t fixed one.

Lining it up

• Straighten: drag the four dots onto the corners of your drawing area and press Apply. The photo is flattened to the reference’s proportions, which removes the tilt of a hand-held photo. This works best when you drew inside a frame with the same proportions as your composition. Use original photo undoes it.
• Two points: click two points on the reference, such as the top of the head and a heel, then the same two points on your sketch. The Studio scales, turns and moves your sketch to match.
• By hand: drag to move, scroll or pinch to resize, and use Shift + scroll or the Rotate slider to turn. Fit starts over.

Showing the difference

• Lines lifts your pencil lines off the paper and shows them in red, blue, green or black on top of the reference. Pick up sets how faint a mark still counts.
• Pencil lets your marks darken the reference, like drawing on a print.
• Photo shows the photo itself; use the Sketch slider to see through it.
• Reference fades the reference toward white so your lines stand out.
• Hold to hide sketch (or hold Space) blinks between your drawing and the reference. Flicker does it on its own; anything that jumps is off.
• Download saves the comparison as an image.

Lines and Pencil only show the part of your sketch inside the reference. The Studio doesn’t keep the photo of your sketch; it’s gone when you reload the page.

Seeing the values

The buttons in the bottom corner of the canvas work while you compose, draw and compare.

• Grayscale (G) takes the color out of the reference so you see only light and dark.
• Mirror (F) flips the canvas left to right. Fresh eyes on a flipped image catch proportion mistakes. Dragging still moves the frame and the sketch the way your hand goes.
• Values opens a panel for simplifying the reference:
  • All shows every tone. 5, 3 and 2 group the reference into that many flat tones, from a full value study down to a light-and-shadow map. V steps through them.
  • Shadow moves the line between the groups: to the right puts more of the image in shadow, to the left less.
  • Brightness and Contrast push the reference lighter or darker, and pull its tones apart or closer together.
  • Squint blurs the reference the way squinting does, so the big shapes of light and dark show before the detail.
  • Reset puts the panel back to the original values.

These only change how the reference looks in the Studio; your references stay as they are. Download with guides and the comparison Download include the values you’ve set but not the mirror. Download image only and Save to Library keep the original image. Pinterest doesn’t allow changing the values of some pins; Mirror still works on them, and copying the pin into one of your boards unlocks the rest.

Timer

Pick a preset from 1 minute to an hour, or type minutes and seconds. Set up to 10 rounds with a rest of 15 seconds to 5 minutes between them. +1 min adds a minute while it runs. Turn on Chime to hear when each round ends.

Practice log

The Practice tab shows the minutes you drew over the last seven days, your streak of days in a row, and your poses this week.

• A session is logged once you’ve drawn for at least 30 seconds.
• A timer is logged when it finishes, or when you reset it after at least a minute.

Your data

Sketch Hour has no accounts. Your boards, references, settings and practice log are saved in this browser, on this device.

• Another device or browser starts with only the site’s Pinterest boards. Files you added yourself stay where you added them.
• Clearing your browser’s site data for Sketch Hour deletes everything.
• Private or incognito windows may not keep anything after you close them.

Keyboard shortcuts

During a session

In the reference viewer

In the Studio

On the Timer tab

Anywhere else in the app