Sketchbooks: The Key to Drawing Practice for Beginners
Yes, It Is That Obvious!
What is the key to drawing practice for beginners? Your sketchbook, of course! Regardless of whether you use pencil, charcoal, pen, paint, digital, or even if you use materials for sculpting, your sketchbook should be your constant companion.
No Pressure…
Quite simply, a sketchbook is meant for sketches, not masterpieces. I find it odd that many artists (including myself) feel pressured to create sketches of absolute perfection. But sketchbooks are meant for working out ideas and practicing techniques. Not everything is going to be great, or even halfway decent.
Art Students
If you’re a beginner artist and going through art school, then undoubtedly you have a sketchbook or two (if not one for each class). My own school experience involved filling sketchbooks with hundreds of anatomy sketches. I remember one particular first day of class assignment. 100 human skull sketches by the next class meeting. Yes…100. Seriously. The first several pages were less than ideal. But practice makes better and by the end of the 100th sketch, the skulls were much improved. Needless to say, that one class alone required several sketchbooks from beginning to end.
Self-Made Artists
Even if you’re not going the art school route, the sketchbook is still the key to drawing practice, especially for beginners. You cannot improve if you don’t practice. Experience is gained through practice. A sketchbook is a book full of blank pages that are begging for your work. And the beautiful thing is, if you produce a particularly crappy sketch, there’s a brand new page waiting for your next attempt. You should be unabashedly filling those pages with sketches.
No Time Like the Present
If you’ve never seriously maintained a daily sketchbook habit, now would be a fantastic time to start. Inktober, the annual daily sketch challenge started by artist, Jake Parker, begins next week on October 1st. Even if you don’t use ink for your drawings, this would still be a fantastic sketching challenge. It will challenge your creativity and your discipline to create daily. The Inktober challenge could very well be the catalyst to giving you a strong foothold in a daily sketch lifestyle.
All of that being said, your sketchbook is the key to drawing practice. Rather than feeling pressured to put down a masterpiece on every single page, consider the sketchbook as your non-judgmental friend. Remember, you don’t have to show it anybody. It can be as private as a diary, if you want.
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