61–70 of 127 posts
- Do not fret over the details
- Then dive in shapes and make smaller shapes
- Try to get the details in
- Perfection should not be the aim
- Practice
Do not draw by memory, draw by seeing. A circular orb when viewed is not a circle. In our heads it is.
The exercises start simple and lead you to a good level of drawing ability, step by step.
To learn to draw, you first need to learn to see. So copy things. Try this project: Take a sheet of paper and divide the space into 2 equal halves. In one half make a collage of black and white images. No color - this is important. Try to fill the space if you can. Once done, get a pencil, eraser and ruler. Your job is to copy the collage into the other half as accurately as possible. To do this, measure where every…
This is the worst way to learn how to draw. It is a short term satisfying thing to do and produces great result. The litmus test for someone who knows truly how to draw is to ask them to redraw whatever object they drew but from a different angle or perspective. Most people to learned by measuring and training their eye won't be able to do it. In order to draw, you need to internalize the 3d shape. Start from basic s…
A good exercise to practice "unfiltered seeing" is:
Select an image you want to draw. We'll call this "the original". It's recommended that the original has clear borders, and few or no color. A black and white cartoon or portrait.
Try your best to replicate the outlines (borders) it on your own on a blank piece of paper. Don't bother with color just yet. This drawing is your "first attempt". Let's try a second one.
Draw a square grid on top of the original, each square edge about 10 cm.
Draw the same grid on a blank piece of paper.
Then (and this is critical) turn the original upside down! You are going to draw it upside down now.
Keeping the original upside down the whole time, and starting on the top-left square, replicate the outlines you see on the same square on the original. Use the square edges as guides; if a line in the original crosses the middle of the top edge of the square, you should try to draw a line so that it crosses your grid the in about the same point.
Once you are certain that the square is "finished", and only then, move on to the next square. Keep filling up squares, until you have filled all of them. Then turn the drawing upside down. This is "second attempt". Compare with first attempt.
The combination of upside-down and division in grids is often enough to not trigger the "visual abstraction subroutine". You may try this again with more complex pictures. In my case once I "learned to see" I experienced a high bump in my drawing abilities.
You will find that a lot of the "drawing lessons" out there really consist on learning to see reality without the abstraction filter on.
Finally, there's of course manual dexterity exercises to make you used to your drawing equipment. They make you draw straight lines, curves, merge colors, etc. I think those are usually very easily found online.
Good luck in your journey!
1. Some people (me, for instance) completely lose their creativity when working with a tablet. If that's your case, start with pen and paper and use the computer only for inking and cleaning up.
2. If you are interested in figure drawing, plenty of artists have learned with Andrew Loomis books, which are available in the Internet Archive [1].
3. Draw a lot. Practice makes perfect. Sometimes it doesn't matter too much what you draw as long as you do it a lot. Plenty of artists I talked to started copying art they liked, which made their lines firmer and gave them the extra impulse to try their own stuff later.
And finally, a word of warning: there are plenty of bad tutorials out there, but you'll only realise they are bad once you get lost and frustrated. You will recognize them because they expect you to go from A to C without even mentioning B. Remember: it's not you, it's them.
To be clear, I'm not doodling - I'm drawing a scene/object/etc each week. At the start, I decide what I'm going to do and then throughout the week I work on it.
Really satisfying and fun.
Echoing one of the other suggestions, I've started taking pictures of things that inspire me (a cool scene, a shape, etc), and then will take elements from those pictures to attempt in the weekly drawing.
One fun (free!) resource is DrawABox. Despite the humble name, you'll learn a lot more :) Well structured, exercise-based, it takes you all the way from the absolute fundamentals. https://drawabox.com/lessons
One fun (free!) resource is DrawABox. Despite the humble name, you'll learn a lot more :) Well structured, exercise-based, it takes you all the way from the absolute fundamentals. https://drawabox.com/lessons