How to Draw - 8 Tips to Fast-Track Your Improvement

Fast track your drawing skills development with these 8 tips to focus your efforts and maximise your improvement. Ideal for beginners, but equally relevant for any level of skill; these are the techniques Stephen has come to value for his own drawing improvement.

[yolo-yo]

I love your videos so much literally one of my favourite art ed channels !!!😭😭

[immortalgraveyard]

I think it's okay to copy from time to time and here's why:

1)You can remember stylistic choises of other artist much better.
2)By copying the whole artwork or a solid part of it you can really understand how all elements in particular art piece work together and how they form the artwork.
3)It's just a fun thing for relaxing and making creative detox. If you draw a lot, you can drain your creativity at some point, so it's very helpful and healthy to make absolutely uncreative drawings, when you just make a straight copying without thinking.

But really don't copy too much - it could become a bad habbit and you will slow down your progress as a creative unit.

[Spoonwranglerz]

i am getting so much better at drawing because of you. I truly owe you one

[robot]

Personally I find using a view finder (just two L shaped pieces of cardboard) helps me focus and relax at the same time. For larger and more complicated compositions a line grid (Albrecht Durer) can be a huge help as well.

[penloveraspirant]

Love form India brother.
I am learning very much by watching your vedios

[penloveraspirant]

I am a beginner at sketching. I always loved nature and wants to draw landscapes and cityscapes. Can I start practicing with pencil and then shift to pen once I feel confident in my stokes?

[gnarthdarkanen]

Yeah, I've got a pretty good add-in...

REVISIT your old work... AND I MEAN that you should get out the old one, find the reference if at all possible, and DO IT AGAIN...

Surely, most of us (if not ALL of us) as artists, save at least some of our work, for better or worse. We keep it in the sketchbooks that stack up, folders and three-ring binders, or (as I do, most often) laying it into large "tupperware" casseroles... At least, that's what happens to the vast majority that I don't sell or use in gifts...

This does TWO specific things. First, we find the progress from that last attempt at the given subject... Be it a month ago, a year ago, or a decade ago, if we've been remotely diligent in our efforts to practice, then we've improved. BUT in the day to day work, we just don't really SEE the progress. We might notice from time to time how we've shaved a few minutes off drawing... say... a tree. By and large, however, the slow plodding progress of more confident strokes, a better consistency in direction and precision in our hatching or cross-hatching, the steady improvements in our attention to the details of whatever we're looking at. We notice "ah ha moments" like the dubious "dawning realization" that the majority of leaves on a tree are dedicated to outer branches, largely because they're little solar cells and it makes very little sense to produce hoards and hoards of them next to the trunk where all the shade already depletes the return... Sure. We improved greatly when we stopped trying to "stuff" the tree instead of shading and allowing ourselves in the moment to visualize it more with the anatomy of an umbrella with branch reinforcements and less like a "total clusterf*ck of leafy greenery"... SO going back in our memoirs or tupperwares or notebooks, and finding that tree in the park we did so long ago... and going back to the park, repeating the work entirely... and then comparing the two... We can SEE the tangible revelation... "Hey, I might actually BE getting better at this whole drawing business!"

Second... Like anything else done in repetitions, we just give ourselves the slack to come back "fresh" and build on our experience EXACTLY doing that same exercise again. It might seem like just going through motions, but it's more than that. If you've already drawn a thing, and then critiqued your work... You've got an idea of what worked and what was kinda weak, and where you just didn't like the result... SO taking the opportunity to try again, you give yourself a chance at building upon it and SEEING the tangible results... This is also why I suggest (strongly) that you find that old drawing first. Take a solid look at it... even critique it again, at least beyond the "I can't believe I drew this piece of crap! What the f***?!"

Obviously, some of us improve faster or slower than others. AND similarly obviously, you wouldn't necessarily go back to your grade school art folder to find something to draw again if you're in your 40's or 50's... SURELY, an aspiring artist has some built up portfolio to pick through... BUT coming back to stuff that's around a year or even a decade old, is worth the while... even if ONLY to see how much more efficiently you can get that subject down, and maybe experiment a bit on exactly how you answer the "stylistic" questions of doing it.

A LOT of art in practice is just "farting around" to see what works. Almost nobody can really pour all the creativity into your head that you can get by picking up tools and putting image to paper or canvas... or leather... or stone... metal... etc... At the same time, mindless experimenting without direction or structure is similarly more chaos and disorganized wasting time than actually building on anything. It CAN contribute to the journey, but as stated in the video, to get better at anything you have to DO what you want to get better at. Going back to earlier work helps reinforce the lessons from earlier, usually builds upon those foundations, AND lets us see where we've actually accomplished real and tangible growth since the last time we did it.

ANYWAYS... hope this helps, or at least inspires someone to take another crack. You might be surprised what you learn about yourself, and your journey. I've never regretted doing an old piece "from scratch" again. While I'm 90% my own worst nightmare as a self critic, it consistently teaches me to relax, breathe, and keep on keeping on. I can't (and generally won't) JUST suck forever. ;o)