| I'm guessing if you want
to learn how to draw good and improve your drawing / art skills that you
already have an interest and some natural born abilities in the realm of
art. Not too many people I know what to pursue something that is really
hard for them or is something they have no interest in. Usually by
the first few years of grade school most kids can tell if they have the
art gift or not. I remember being in the 2nd or 3rd grade and being
able to tell who had drawing talents and who didn't. The kids who had a
knack at drawing would be caught doodling all the time. To the other kids,
drawing was just a waste of time. So if you're interested in drawing and
art, hopefully you were one of those kids who had some natural gift. The
one thing I learned over time however, no matter what your art or drawing
talent may be, you can improve and improve greatly. Without a doubt
thought, the folks with some natural gift, this will come much
easier.
Looking back over the years and trying to think of the one thing that improved my talents in drawing, it would definitely have to be practice. That in my opinion over everything else is what makes you better. With practice you will find for yourself more easy ways of drawing. I always love to draw and pretty much anything that pertained to the arts. All through grade school and middle school I excelled above most in my classes. However when I got to high school I had a pretty full schedule with many other classes and couldn't fit an art class in. finally my senior year I got to take my first art class in high school. So there was probably a good three years between 9th and 11th grade where I didn't do to much in the arts. Consequently my art skills did not develop either over those three years. My senior year was in 1991 and that year I got a subscription to Sports Illustrated magazine. Since I was finally taking an art class that year my interest in drawing began again. With my new magazines I would find some of my favorite pictures and try to draw them. I remember doing a couple of drawings of the Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly. Some how I had saved these drawings over the years. Not too long ago I found some of my old Sport Illustrated magazines and was browsing through them. I came across the old picture of Kelly that I had drawn years ago. So I had to get out the old drawing and compare it to the picture in the magazine and see how accurate my drawing was back then. I was astonished to see how poorly I drew back then and the even sadder part was, I thought I was half way decent then. I thought how perfect of an illustration this would be to show how one can improve over time and practice. So I decided to draw this again and see for myself how much I've improved.
This was the original SI picture.
Drawn 1991 at the age of 18 Drawn 2004 at the age of 31
Hopefully you can see a big difference. I'm guessing that I put more time in on the recent version but when I was 18 and drew the first, that was as good of a drawing that I could produce. I look back on the one from 1991 and think....What in the world was I seeing!! That brings me to the next big tip in drawing. You have to draw what you see and not what you think you see. I've never been big on reading, but one good book that I got on drawing was "Drawing on the right side of the brain". this really explained well of how to draw what you really are seeing and how to get focused on the right side of your brain since this is the side that makes sense of how we perceive visually. When I was younger I thought drawing had a lot to do with how well you can control a pencil with your hand. It actually has almost absolutely nothing at all to do with that. It's all about how you perceive with your eyes. People who can draw well and have good artist talents are those that can perceive shapes, tones, colors very well and have the ability to translate that too a two dimension surface. The more you practice the more these abilities will come to you. When you start drawing here are some things to keep in mind. 1. When starting out, draw very lightly. This really helps when you have to erase. Don't feel bad to have to erase. It's something every great artist does. If you have the ability to see something is not right and can erase it and change or adjust it to make it look better, that in itself is a great skill that many people don't have. I probably spend as much time erasing as I do putting down pencil marks. 2. Most drawing classes will tell you to start out very general and gradually work into the details. Look and see your basic shapes that make up the subject and composition of the picture. Once you have the basic shapes in then you can start drawing inward and finally get the small details. Back during my younger years I drew the exact opposite of this and would have trouble getting the drawing to "fit together". For example before I knew better, if I was drawing a face I would start with the center part of the face like the nose and then draw outward from that point. When doing this, the problem would arise where I would focus on getting one dimension in proportion but another would be greatly out of proportion and I would eventually have a head that had a inaccurate shape as a whole. I eventually found that if I would get the whole shape of the head first and then start to work in the features from the outward in, this made it much easier to keep everything in proportion. It took me awhile to get comfortable doing this but now I can't imagine drawing any other way. 3. Look for axis lines in the picture, whether they be vertical, horizontal or on an angle. These can really be incredibly helpful to keeping shapes and space in proportion to that line. I find the easiest thing to draw is a straight line. So if I have a straight line running somewhere in the picture, It can keep all the shapes around it in proportion to that line. If you don't see a line you can make up a light grid with several horizontal and vertical lines intersecting over your picture. Words can't begin to describe how easy this makes drawing the most complicated shapes when you have a grid showing you the proportions within their borders. 4. Draw things that interest you and things that you may have a close emotional tie with. This makes drawing so much more fun and enjoyable. If I've been drawing someone's portrait for hours and hours, and have studied every square inch of their face until it's almost permanently etched into my head, I can't help but to be drawn closer to that subject on an more passionate level. So if you draw things that are very meaningful to you, you will most likely get out a strong connection to your drawing which will make it very rewarding and fun. 5. As you see yourself improving, begin to look for pictures that are more and more challenging to draw. I find when we challenge ourselves, that's when we really improve. Eventually the things that seemed hard at first will begin to seem very easy. If you just stick with easy stuff to draw then more than likely you're improvement rate won't be real great. 6. There's always an easy way to draw the most complicated subjects. Look for simple shapes that might make up a complex subject. Draw down the simple shapes you see first and then gradually go in a refine them. For example a pear is basically a circle with a triangle sitting on top.
7. To me there's two stages of a drawing. First the line drawing stage, where you simply outline the drawing to get the shapes, proportions and space just right. Then the shading stage, where you shade in what you've drawn. The shading stage for me is the most time consuming but not necessarily harder. When I'm at the shading stage I feel as if I'm just coloring in a coloring book but using just one tone. You just have to look at the lights and darks. 8. Draw as large as you can. The bigger you can draw, the easier it is to draw the small details. This will make them look clearer and sharper. I find that when I draw on a smaller scale, it's easier and faster to get the proportions right because your eye is able to see the whole drawing better, but drawing small makes it very hard to get those tiny details in. It takes longer to draw on a bigger scale because it's harder for your eye to see the whole picture as well and just the fact that there's more square inches to cover but believe me your work will look better in the end. 9. Use your pencil as a measuring device. You can very accurate use the pencil to measure space and compare them with different distances by aligning one point with the point of the pencil and by moving your finger down the pencil to mark the second point. For example when drawing a portrait, if you wanted to see if the space between the bridge of the nose and the outer edge of the ear is the same space between the chin and the tip of the nose. 10. Step back from your drawing once in awhile. Many times if you've been drawing a long time you can get too focused on a small area. Stepping back lets you see the picture better as a whole. I find too if you turn your drawing on the backside and hold it up to the light and see the reverse image, this helps seeing things that may be out of proportion. 11. Go and find a drawing class to take at a near by community college or school. This is probably when I found that I improved the greatest. Having an instructor giving you one on one time where they can see your problem areas along with the strengths and weaknesses that you possess so they can point out how to do things easier and better is greatly valuable. Nothing beats having a good and talented teacher that will lead you in the right direction. Finally when you are drawing from a picture, keep in mind, everything you need to know of how to draw that picture is simply right in front of your eyes. Spend just as much time looking at that picture you're drawing as the drawing itself. Just draw what you really see.
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