How to draw stuff

BigPurpleSkiSuit

BigPurpleSkiSuit

Active member
This is a serious thread, how did you guys who are artists get good at drawing things. Are there books I should start with, things I should practice, etc? I have ideas I would like to bring to life, but I really am a terrible artist.
 
Try and draw stuff that’s in front of you, drawing from life is the best way to get better. And don’t worry about how things look in the beginning. Keep trying and if there are artists you like, it doesn’t hurt to try and recreate their stuff (don’t claim credit though obviously).
 
It would for sure help to take a class. Get a sketchbook with a lot of pages and try to fill it. Preferably 2 sketchbooks-a big one and a small one you can take everywhere. Get a newsprint pad too for fast gesture drawings that you can dispose of.

Stretch your hands and fingers before you start each time so you don't get cramps.

A good beginner exercise is to pick an image you like that is fairly simple, get it onto about a 5x8" piece of paper, tape it upside down in front of you and copy it to scale on paper of the same size. The reason you look at it upside down is to remove your idea of what the image's content is and just focus on the lines and form.

Draw self-portraits looking in the mirror. Try one with just lines and one with just shading. Try one as a contour drawing (one line, not lifting your pen/pencil from the paper.)

Do some abstract drawings too. Get as many drawing tools as you can (oil pastels, watercolours, different hardnesses of pencils, ballpoint pens, gouache are all pretty cheap and accessible). Experiment with all of them.

Collages are fun and can be a good way to build your sense of composition.

Making a gradient with hatching, from light to dark with whatever media you're using is a great practice and you will learn how the media reacts to variations in pressure.

Those are just some places to start, it's wide open. You can literally do whatever you want. No one is actually bad at drawing, some people just don't draw.

Have fun and feel free to DM me with any questions.

**This post was edited on May 19th 2020 at 11:35:52pm
 
I drew alot as a kid...(those days before home internet and cell phones) Some people just have a natural eye/talent for this sort of thing so it comes easier to them. And you may excel at different types of art. I can draw with pencil/pen but can't paint worth crap. (in High school art class we went to a lake, picked a spot and sat there and drew what we saw. And we then had to paint which ruined that piece) I would just copy things that I could look directly at. I started doing little comics and could draw some stuff from memory. Hands and noses were the hardest parts of a human for me to get right. I would draw little doodles on my notes in school when I got bored.
 
get a sketchbook you can keep in your pocket or a backpack. try and draw in it for like an hour 3 or 4 times a week. draw from reference/real life or just draw something you imagine, that's up to you. you will improve really fast over the first 6 months or year and then continue to improve if you keep it a habit.
 
14148380:KateWilliams said:
This is what I'm doing, but it doesn't seem to work. I need a professional's help or maybe some online courses. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

hmm, feel free to hmu if you want i can take a look at your stuff and give you some advice if you want it
 
I am also very curious about how other artists started drawing because when I started to draw the internet weren't very developed and I didn't know where to find information about how to draw, so I purchased a lot of books in which it was explained how to draw and how to perfect your drawing skill. In one book I read that you must have a real figurine of a human body to have a better perspective about how the human body is created and you will understand better how to draw it. So I bought body kun drawing figures which helped me so much with this. I am curious if someone else did the same thing.

**This post was edited on Nov 4th 2020 at 5:34:44am
 
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