DRAWING IS HARD…
Since I was a kid – I always gravitated more towards painting than drawing. The colors on the page were so much more memorizing and easier to understanding than the simple lines that made up a drawing. But as I got older – I quickly realized that I needed to beef up my drawing skills if my watercolor paintings were gonna look half was decent (not to mention try and pass my first college drawing class).
So I dug my heels in and began to apply these wonderful tips that my drawing professor gave to us on the first day of class. So here are…
FIVE TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR DRAWING SKILLS
TIP # 1: DRAW LIKE A KID AGAIN
Don’t let ANYTHING intimidate you. Try anything! The more you try the better you will get. Stay out of that safe comfort zone and test your limits. And let’s be real – if it looks bad – who cares no one has to see it. Next, try and stay away from those static drawings and show movement as well as emotion in everything you draw. Art is meant to communicate something from the artist to the viewer. So go out can capture on paper what is in your heart.
TIP # 2: DRAW LIGHTLY
Before you commit to a line on your paper – first test the waters with a light sketch. This will help you gage proportion as well as concept and make it soooo much easier to erase if something goes wrong.
TIP # 3: THINK LINES & SHAPES
Next, reconstruct your brain to see things as shapes and lines. This is what your first drawings should look like. They should basically look like loose chicken scratch or cave drawings. During this stage or what I like to refer to as the “draft” stage – you want your drawings to be messy – but with purpose. You’ve probably seen these beautiful paintings with loose sketch marks all around the object. Those lines are typically the “first draft” stage of a drawing – but the artist chose to leave the draft lines instead of erasing them. Personally – I love the look of rough sketch marks under a finished painting. It adds a bit of rawness to the painting and gives it a feeling of motion. So make sure not to skip this step when approaching a new drawing.
TIP # 4: STUDY ANATOMY
You’ve mostly heard this over and over again – but it’s so important it needs to be mentioned again. Anatomy is the bases for like…everything. The reason is that if your foundational structure is just a tad off – your finished product will look off as well – no matter whole beautiful you paint it later.
TIP # 5: PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE
And lastly, drawing is like exercise, you need to keep at it if you want to get better at it. Realize, it won’t happen over night – but that is OKAY! As long as you are having fun and pushing forward that’s all that really matters.
So yeah – those are five tips that helped improve my drawing skills of the years. If you are curious as to the supplies I use for drawing make sure to check out the list below. :)
MY DRAWING SUPPLIES LIST
General Pencil Kimberly Drawing Pencil 4H, 6H & 9H
6H pencils are only listed below on Amazon. Check out Blick Art supplies online for 4H & 9H Pencils.
Tombow MONO Black Eraser
Strathmore Mixed Media Pad, 11″x14in”
Sakura Pigma Micron Ink Pen Set, Black
Silver Brush Silk Painting Watercolor Set
Herbin Ink, Black
This ink is suppose to be very similar to the one I purchased on JetPens. If you are interested in the ink I used…
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE INK I PURCHASED AT JETPENS ONLINE STORE
MY ANATOMY/ART BOOKS
The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action Analysis, Caricature
This book is my favorite book for animal anatomy. I used it in the video for this post.
Draw 50 Animals: The Step-by-Step
This book is one of the first basic animal drawing books I owned as a kid. It really helps you understanding the line and shape relationship when drawing animals.
Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 1:
The Sketchbook of Loish: Art in Progress
Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis
(Be warned this book does have naked models. But it is a really great resource for understanding the human body in multiple perspectives)
CHECK OUT THE LAST POST
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