I’ve never drawn anything in my life, then Start Here.
This is going to be a quick starting guide for those emailing me saying.” I’ve never drawn anything in my life, where do I even begin.” I touch on things, like the beginning of my art journey and all the recommendations I make to my students, regardless of what age they start drawing at.
I started to draw at a late age. i was about 18 years old when I was taught how to draw. Before that, i had doodled random stick figures, but i had never ventured into actually seriously putting effort into learning art as a way of living. My original love was 3D art programs, and I wanted to really make that my career. I felt that it was my calling. I was in Junior college and didn’t know what to do for a career. I went to ask the teacher of design some advice on 3D work. He told me that if I wanted to really get something out of 3d, that he recommended I actually learn to properly draw in a traditional manner. He said that most proportion and design mistakes in 3d can be solved with basic drawing knowledge.
The first thing you need to do is get rid of your shakey hand problem, if you have one. Some students tend to have shakey hands as they draw certain long lines. This is just a muscular issue.
When you draw you are using small muscles in your arm that you never really had to use. Some people struggle with shakey hands well into their second year. But my students get rid of the problem in a few months. The solution is to draw circles and squares as warmups before drawing.
Doing this repetitive task may seem weird, but it strengthens those tiny hand muscles to give you dexterity for drawing. Do this daily.
Draw what you enjoy.
When you are starting out any sort of drawing, at first, your main goal is going to be to start a habit.
To not get bogged down about picking up a pencil, you are going to have to get yourself drawing anything. At first you are drawing anything and everything. Some people get held up by thinking too much and end up doing nothing.
Learn the basics, especially structure.
Structure is the most important basics drawing technique to learn. It’s the most important thing to learn, because without it, the drawing looks like trash. I can’t tell you how many drawings I got from students where the features of the face were good, but the head looks lopsided or deflated.
Structure is basically thinking about the volume and space the shape takes up.
When I first started drawing eyes, my mind would go to the peanut shape that everyone first makes.
I understood drawing as a two dimensional act. I wasn’t drawing a vision into a different world, I was drawings a flat plane drawing. There is a secret though. Something that didn’t occur to me until a year into my drawing learning. And that is that you have to think in 3 dimensions for your drawings to look better than normal. And that’s what structure basically is. When I draw someone’s eye, I’m thinking about at what angle and distance the other eye is. I do any time l am drawing the human body.
People don’t stick to things they begin. In some cases, it wasn’t a high enough priority and that’s fine. In other cases, they just couldn’t make it part of their regular schedule.
This changed the course of my life forever. My soul mission was to learn how to draw, so that it could aid my 3d computer career. Now that I had a direction and goal, l would start moving toward it. But I had one large problem. Where would I go to learn to draw?
I immediately enrolled in my local Junior college drawing one class. The summary of the class on the printed schedule said it would teach me drawing basics and give me proficiency in all art. The first day of class was exciting, I felt like I was starting my journey and I had a real tangible goal. I met my new teacher and to my disappointment she seemed to lack the ability to draw herself. On top of that, she seemed remarkably arrogant considering she wasn’t very good at art herself. Me and my classmates had begged her to teach us how to shade our drawings, but she never did. Do you need to go to art school ?Looking back, its obvious she never taught us how to shade drawings, because she didn’t know how to herself.
I left that semester very disappointed and confused. It left me with the thought that maybe, learning to draw was a life time pursuit and that I would not be drawing decent anytime soon.
Exiting the classroom, I picked up a flier with amazing drawings. It was a flier for a drawing class about a 45 minute drive away. I didnt want to drive that far, but the drawings were so impressive, I felt I had to visit the school. When I went to my first class, the format was completely different than the Junior college art class. The teacher of the class would demonstrate a drawing every single class and then walk around correcting our process as we drew. This process alone lead to me improving rapidly. And in two years I had a strong enough base to work. At the time I was drawing 7 hours a day on my own time.
The school gave me clarity and understanding on what i needed to do how to imporve.
What did they show me and where can you start?
The first thing i learned was to save my drawings. This was vitally important. In the very beginning as I made any kind of stride to improve, I didn’t cherish most of the drawings I did. but it was incredibly important that I not throw them out. When I did a drawing I thought was bad, I had an uncontrollable urge to chuck the drawing in the trash and start over, but I had to resist that urge.
But why would I save any of my bad drawings? What was the purpose? The purpose was to track my progress. Without the older artworks I might not be able to see where l’ve improved. The very first thing that was taught to me was that the eye and the hand develop at different rates. As I was learning, I was becoming aware of my own mistakes and able to spot them more. This allows me to understand what I was looking at as I was training my eye.
The hand, or the ability to actually draw better, would develop more slowly. So because of this, I could see more mistakes and think I was getting worse, but in fact I was getting better than before. This gives me the illusion that i’m getting worse at drawing. This also might demotivate me and have me quit. The way to combat this, is to have your older drawings saved to look back upon.
Improve your shakey hands.
body, an animal; or car. If you are drawing a table in 3 quarters, you want to be able to understand where the back leg of the table, the leg I can’t see, will sit on the ground. The reason I do that is because where you place the back leg of the table will affect how the front leg willl look. When you add in perspective drawing, it gets a bit more complex.
The first few months are about experience.
While you are building your base of drawing knowledge and hand dexterity you are also building your experience. Your experience comes from taking what you already know and applying it over and over. And that’s going to be up to you. Really think about it, if you were practicing a violin once a week, how long do you think it would take for you to get good at it?
The same concept applies here. The amount of time you practice is important. At the start do NOT worry about burning out. For the first few months, burnout doesn’t exit. I was drawing 7-8 hours a day when I began to learn. Set a certain amount of time .
And don’t put pressure on yourself. After all, this is a really entertaining process that so many people find fulfilling.
Create a checklist of items, and create a drawing schedule.
Create a Drawing Schedule that you are comfortable with. This depends on you and knowing yourself. If you find it difficult, start with 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week. If you feel comfortable, raise it to 30 minutes. You are training your mind to snap into “drawing mode” immediately. The idea is that you are building a habit to get yourself doing for the long run. The normal way someone does something, is they do it randomly haphazardly for a few days or weeks then slowly forget about it all together. Part of learning to draw, is learning to learn in general. You are taking account of your own natural attitudes and reactions and working with them to create a habit you can do indefinitely. Literally every beginner artist I started with doesn’t draw on a regular basis anymore. Go here for some Free Art Resources to Help you become an art champion.
