Drawing Tips: What Should You Know About Drawing ?

I dont remember where I read this line, but it sure stayed in my mind after all these years of drawing.  I think is very true.

When starting a drawing, you can go and say thats easy - or thats soooo hard!!  Either way that reveals a lack of proper observation of the subject.  To me drawing an apple can be as challenging as drawing a man fishing on a lake.  The challenges on both are different, and I feel I can learn from both as much.  It is the path of learning,a nd the first lesson, and the one that you should always carry with you, is learning to see.

Seeing is truly loking at  subject without any prejudice.  Even when you are drawing out of your mind you are looking at the subject.  Your mission is to translate whats in your brain to the paper, wood, wall, or whatever your prefer.

I find useful first to not draw at all, just sit there, watch, or close your eyes, and search what you want.  If you havent tried this enver before, you will start to find some things you never saw before, new forms, relations, and with every drawing you make you will learn a lot more.

Drawing Tips

Here are some of the drawing tips I gathered from my experience as well as other artists:

1.  Go easy on the paper. Try not to press too hard on the paper with your media whether its a pencil or an eraser, especially during the early stages, as it can become very difficult when you want to make corrections or erase later on. Pressing too hard can also create unwanted glares. Sometimes you would feel the need to press harder to achieve the darkest darks. Instead of pressing very hard with the 2b pencil, try using softer/darker pencil, perhaps a 6b pencil, or a charcoal stick, which can achieve the very darks much easier.
2. Use the acid free papers if you want your drawing to last for a long time. Acid free papers wont discolor over time, whereas many other papers discolor orangish pretty fast.
3. The eraser can be a drawing tool as well, especially when you want to go from dark to light.
4. Sharpen your pencils. Keep them sharp.
5. Save your failed drawings Analyze and figure out what went wrong.
6. Study the master drawings Do copies.
7. Think simple, like rendering a sphere when rendering the human head. Simplify the forms.
8. When drawing from observation, it's more important to copy the value relationship rather than the actual value you see in front of you. For example: it is ok to make the very dark area of an object in front of you only a middle value on your drawing, as long as you make the other areas of your drawing lighter as well to match the value relationship.

10 Things You Can Do To Overcome Your Fear To Drawing

If you have always had the desire of learning how to draw, the only thing from stopping you is yourself and your fears. Fear of failure is a powerful barrier to overcome before we can achieve our goals. If you want to learn to draw, but are afraid to do so, you must learn to overcome your fear, and you do that by confronting it.

But dont get me wrong here. You shouldnt just go to the towns art supply shop and buy all your equipment and try to develop a masterpiece from the word go. That would be like confronting the school bully with no mental or physical preparation.

There are 10 things I can recommend to overcome your fear to draw. You can do one, or as many as you want:

1. As Nikes slogan goes: Just Do It! Make a decision to start learning how to draw, and start your research to get familiar with terms, tools, materials and techniques.
2. Get some basic drawing equipment. It sounds expensive, but it does not have to be. To begin with, you can start by getting a pencil, a drawing pad, an eraser and maybe a ruler. If you have access to discarded photocopy paper, you could recycle it by drawing on the blank side of the paper.
3. Re-wire your brain in relation to drawing. This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to overcome your fear of drawing (or any other fear, for that matter!). Drawing is just a skill, and there is nothing preventing you from learning anything whatsoever. Anyone can bake a cake! Just follow instructions and easy to follow steps, and the result will show. Once you convince yourself of this, learning to draw will be easier than you think.
4. Go slowly but steady: Unless youre some sort of genius, if youre a normal mortal like the rest of us, you should start from the most basic exercises and techniques, and build upon the following steps, until you are sufficiently skilled to draw something you can be proud of.
5. Dont be too critical of your drawings. Remember, you are learning something here. You are not expected to produce a facsimile copy of whatever object at your early stages of your drawing apprentiship. You are expected to do your exercises well. Thats all.
6. Understand that most of the basic skills youll learn are so basic that a child could learn them, and so will you. You start by learning to draw simple shapes, how to hold your pencil, different pencil strokes, and gradually moving onto drawing stick figures, learning about shading, proportions, perspective, and that kind of thing. It may sound overwhelming but it doesnt have to be.
7. How do you eat an elephant? A/ One bite at the time! Thats how you learn to draw too! Develop a learning routine. Depending on your time commitments, you could set aside an hour or so a week to learn new concepts and practice new skills. This is also important because doing so will ensure that you keep your interest alive. An enjoyable commitment to ongoing learning will build up your skills rapidly.
8. As Yoda says: Practice you need. A few weeks ago I watched a TV interview of famous Australian Guitar Player Tony Emanuell. This guy has been playing the guitar since he was 4! When the journalist asked him how did he get that good, Tonys answer was: I played the guitar more than I eat, sleep, talk, and go to the toilet. When you do something over and over you got to get good at it [or words to that effect]. You get back what you put in. If you just want to learn to draw, you should practice regularly. If you want to become a master you know what to do.
9. 9. Do a drawing course if you can. Sure, you can learn to draw from books. But to take your skills to the next level, you should do a course at your local community school, summer school, or even online.
10. Keep a record of your progress. I do my exercises on lose paper, and my practice drawing on a pad. That way, I keep a record of my progress.

You will be amazed at how good you get at drawing if you keep records of your early work and compare it to the latest drawing. This translates into a confidence boost which will help you keep going.

I hope you find these tips useful, and I wish you all the best in your artistic learning journey.

References:
Pencil Drawing Made Easy | Learn pencil drawing the easy way
https://plus.google.com/106559856545616580397/posts/BFSxiQDchef

Spray Paint Art Secrets
https://plus.google.com/106559856545616580397/posts/RARwDudniEU

My Drawing Tutorials - Art Made Simple!
https://plus.google.com/106559856545616580397/posts/aazECYrQB59

How To Draw Caricatures - Expert Video Lessons from 30 year veteran caricaturist Artist Graeme Biddle
https://plus.google.com/106559856545616580397/posts/UBYQj1vrCtb

How To Draw Animals – Cartoon Style – Step by Step
https://plus.google.com/106559856545616580397/posts/dp6wrDCbMHd

The Colored Pencil Course
https://plus.google.com/106559856545616580397/posts/dFKayur1Kxw