Hello Everyone, here Are Some Drawing Tips for people who just started drawing. And those who have been doing it for a while
Picking up your pencil, and keeping at drawing can make you better at drawing after some time. But not having a good plan or following a certain procedure can limit the results you will get from that(it will make your progress slower, and that depends on how much you know). And there are always the “I wish I knew that when I started drawing” drawing tips that are better to be known earlier than later. I have used these drawing tips below to help myself get better at drawing over the years, to be honest with you, I probably should do more of some of them than now, and the same may apply to you..
Many of these drawing tips can apply on those who have been drawing for a while. As well as beginners. I personally find the “Focus on one thing, And become very good at it. Then move to the next one” tip pretty much useful and often neglected :)
- Draw everyday:- I mean you should never stop even for a single day. I am probably the last person who can give you this advice. Seeing how I stopped drawing multiple of days(I am more disciplined now by the way). But it is because I did that mistake I am asking you not to repeat it. As it can delay improvements, specially if you are going to stop drawing for man days at times.
- Observe the world around you, and learn from that:- Observation skills is super important for drawing. And it is important that you make a habit of observing things. It is what makes you project what is in your mind on paper(in a way). How many times have you watched an Anime or a movie, or have been outside and never bothered to look at the scene around you? Where you could have seen many things you don’t know how to draw. And you could have gotten an idea on how to draw them. It is like “learning on the go”. Think of it as the same as trying to learn vocabulary from a foreign movie you are learning the language spoken in it, the amount of the things you learn depends on how much you try :D
- Use a reference to draw:- When it comes to figure drawing. This specially goes if you are trying to draw a pose for the first time. Or if you don’t have that much experience drawing variety of poses. You are simply trying to draw something without any experience. The internet is full of photos, and if the pose you are trying to draw is so common, which is most likely the case. You will be able to easily find the pose you are trying to draw using Google Images or any similar sites. The same thing can be said about any other objects too.
If you are interested, you can check out my Tumblr account if you want to get some very good Anime pictures~
- Always, always try drawing new things:- You won’t gain experience if you kept at drawing only one thing all the time. When it comes to drawing, there are many parts you need to experiment in various of ways, which I will illustrate below:-
- Try drawing different poses:- This goes very well with my previous tip, being able to draw many many poses can gain you a great amount of experience. After some time, you will be able to draw poses by imagining them. Something I don’t think you should do that at all at first.
- Try drawing different perspectives:- It helps you to learn about perspective, and how thinks looks different from different angles. (For more about perspective read my post All About Drawing In Perspective)
- Focus on one thing, And become very good at it, then move to the next one:- I probably seem like I am contradicting myself here. As I just told you to try new things, but focusing on only one thing for some time can allow you to become fairly good at it. Many artists fall into the trap at trying to draw tons and tons of pictures, and moving from one to the other. Without grasping what they encountered in the previous one. This can pretty much slow down the amount of improvement in your drawing. Specially if you want to learn how to draw many things at once. This technique can work on parts of a drawing. You can master drawing the head first, then the body, then the background, it is up to you how to divide the learning process.
- Don’t grip the pencil so hard:- This can not only worsen the outcome of your drawing, and lessens your ability to control your lines. But the thick lines you draw that way are harder to erase.
Griping the pencil so tight can also harm your hand. It puts a lot of pressure into it, And if you were not careful, you may end up with a stressed hands and possibly an injury, so please be careful~
- Be easy with yourself:- Specially if you are new to drawing, or if you are trying something new. As I like to think, drawing something new or hard can put “strain” on your drawing skills, which is a key to improve. You will need to try a new pose/sketch a few times before drawing it become natural to you.
- Use guidelines:- Don’t draw any drawing freehand, I can’t emphasise enough on the importance of guidelines, they can help you make drawings with the current proportions, good amount of details, and even the correct perspective. Guidelines are usually drawing using thing lines so you can erase easily later.
- Zoom-in then zoom-out:- This is my way to say:- “Draw the big picture, then add the details, then the details of the details”. Simply draw the outlines/guidelines of the head. Then place the guidelines for the facial features, then add the details for these facial features. I may plan to explain in more details how to do that in future posts.
- Read about drawing. And art on general:- from reading books to online sites and communities, it is okay to start without that, but you won’t be able to become really great without reading about many important topics like anatomy and perspective, I have fell into this trap before, and I working toward fixing this problem.
- Draw what you like:- This is so obvious, unless you are going for a career or something, I see no reason to draw something you don’t like. I draw shoujo for one. You can still try to draw the things you don’t particularly like. Which is by drawing them along with the ones you really like. Like drawing a cure girl riding a car, which is a good way to learn how to draw cars :)
- Focus on your weak points:- any drawing you make is as good as the the worse part of it, if you are bad with the hands(like me), simply don’t draw anything but them, or draw only pictures whose hands are hard for you draw.
- Put as much time to it as possible:- Specially when you become more advanced. The limits is the sky here. The more time you put into it, the better. Particularly if you plan to make it your future career. I know you have a life, but try to push yourself a little bit with this one.
There are many other drawing tips I could have given like how to choose drawing supplies or whatever. But I thought it would be really good to dedicate this post to the things that can help you become a better artist at core.
I hope you find these drawing tips useful. I will try to update them and add much more useful details with it the more I find out about them. Thank you for reading! :)
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