Five Tips to Improve Your Drawing Skills

Get Your Sketchbooks Ready…

So, you want to improve your drawing skills. Of course you do! Who doesn’t? There are a number of ways to do this. Aside from taking art classes, which is a great way to learn, I’m going to give you five tips that you can apply whether you’re currently taking classes or not. Some of you are self-taught. Undoubtedly, you want to improve your drawing skills too. So listen up!

Some of these might seem obvious, but I’ve found that the more obvious it is, the more apt people are to brush them off and ignore them completely. So here we go…

1. Draw every day… This one is the most obvious and the most ignored. But seriously…how can you expect to improve your drawing skills if you don’t practice? And I don’t mean only when you feel like it, or on occasion. Do you think pro athletes or famous musicians only do their thing on occasion? Hardly. Most pro anyone trains for hours a day, every day. I can hear you now, and trust me, I get it. The job, the kids, school, etc., etc.. Yes, we all have busy lives. But even sketching for 15-30 minutes every day is better than zero minutes.

Look at it this way…if you let days go by in between, that’s time enough for you to get rusty. And every time you sit down to try drawing again, you have to get past that rustiness and uncertainty before you get any kind of flow going again. Just like an athlete who skips training for any amount of time. When he or she goes back to it, they’re not as coordinated and agile, not as quick, they lose strength, and they get sore all over again. It’s the same with drawing. So avoid that and draw every day, even if it’s just a few minutes at a time.

Immerse yourself in whatever interests you. (Photo credit: 123RF.com Image ID: 7647372 Copyright: denisnata)

2. Educate yourself… Want to draw people? Study anatomy and clothing. Interested in designing cars? You’d better study cars then. Animation? You have to study character design and human and animal locomotion. Whatever it is you want to be good at, you have to immerse yourself in that world. If you want to excel at it, then even more so. Even creature designers, who create aliens and monsters and strange otherworldly animals, study life on this planet intently. They know skeletal systems and musculature of humans and animals. That knowledge becomes the foundation for any other creature they design. That’s what makes their creations believable. 

    

   

   Observe intently. See how an artist sees. (Photo credit: 123RF.com Image ID: 20057128 Copyright: zmijak)

    

3. Observe intently… Even if you don’t have a sketchbook in hand (and why wouldn’t you?), observe intently as if you were going to draw whatever you’re looking at. Good artists are master observers. Not much escapes their notice. Look at the world around you with artist’s eyes. Are you seeing things How Artists See? Are you analyzing things and breaking them down into simpler, basic shapes, or are you getting caught up in the superficial details? Is there something about the object that you might find a challenge to draw? A perspective issue maybe, or a particular body part? Observe and go over the steps in your mind as to how you might overcome that challenge.
   

   Search YouTube for how-to videos.

4. Watch how-to videos and practice along with the video… YouTube is saturated with how to draw videos. Whatever you’re looking for, you can find…drawing with charcoal, color pencil, ink, how to ink comics, how to draw digitally, how to draw the human anatomy, animal anatomy, animation, landscapes, sci-fi environments, etc., etc., etc.. You name it, it’s out there. Another great source (although they’re not cheap) are the how-to DVDs by Gnomon Workshop, to name one of my favorites. The great thing about this tip is that you can hit pause while you work it out for yourself.

   Get Uncomfortable

5. Draw in a method or style you’re not used to… If you’re used to choking the heck out of your pencil, try holding onto the back end of it with only the very tips of your fingers. If you’re used to pencil, try charcoal. If you’re used to drawing small, draw big. If you’re the type that draws in a very controlled manner, draw with a very loose or gestural style. Try taking out a big sketch pad and some charcoal. Fill the pages with large circles or figure eights. Loosen up and then, after you’re all warmed up and loosened up, go back to drawing normally.

The point here is not only to loosen up, but to also detach yourself from perfect outcomes. By changing the grip on your pencil or by using such a loose, soft medium like charcoal, it’s nearly impossible to attain perfect lines or minute detail. In turn, you become almost forced to focus only on the basics, like form, gesture, and perhaps even value (shading). Do this regularly and you’ll find yourself taking that new focus to your normal drawings, adding that to your skills.

6. BONUS TIP! You can also try drawing things you’re not used to. For example, my thing is animals. I’m pretty good at it. What I’m not good at (in my opinion) is people, vehicles, and environments (landscapes, cityscapes, or building interiors). The idea is, that by switching gears and doing the things you struggle with, you’re exercising not only your drawing skills, but also your brain. Your brain is forced to consider something new and I’d like to think that in doing so, new pathways are being formed in your noggin. These new pathways become new skills to add to your repertoire, which builds upon what you already had. And we’d all like to broaden our skill set, right? Wasn’t that the whole point?

There you have it. Not five, but six tips to help you improve your drawing skills! Don’t say I never gave ya nothin’. So, dust off those sketchbooks, people and get to sketching!