Drawing Tips
If you have always wanted to draw but are afraid you don’t have enough talent, some drawing tips can help improve your self-confidence. Anyone can draw--all it takes is the right instruction--drawing tips help--and lots and lots of practice. Sure, some people have a natural gift for drawing and art, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use whatever ability you have to create something uniquely your own and have a lot of fun in the process.
Every list of drawing tips should begin with this one: Learn how to see. You may think, well, I can see just fine, but the truth is that learning to see as an artist means you have to start looking at objects very differently. To start out, choose an item you would like to draw--it could be a glass, an apple or orange, a flower, anything simple. Then get paper and a pencil. At first any kind of pencil and paper will do--you don’t need special drawing paper or colored pencils or charcoal or paint or anything out of the ordinary. Just a piece of paper, preferably without lines, a regular no. 2 pencil, and a very large eraser.
When you start learning to see as an artist, you start to look for lines and angles in the object you are viewing. One way is to see the shape of the object and to decide if it resembles a circle, an oval, a square, a triangle, or a rectangle. Once you have one of those shapes in mind, take a look at the object again and study it for shadows and different shades of light.
Now, keeping these visual drawing tips in mind, take what you see and start to draw it on the paper with your pencil. Just draw simple lines. Do not worry about getting anything right or wrong. Just put on paper what you see. Don’t bother to erase lines, just leave errant lines and smudges. As you get better as an artist, going back to look at these first attempts might reveal patterns you still need to work on, but at the same time they will show you how much you have improved over time.
Another one of the most important drawing tips beginners should keep in mind in where to start drawing on the piece of paper. Try to visualize the entire object as completely done in one of the shapes we talked about, and imagine that shape filling your page in its entirety. One of the mistakes beginners make when drawing is to start at a spot on the paper that will not leave enough room to complete the entire drawing. You can never misjudge size and then squeeze in the extra lines to make it fit. If you don’t start in the right place, your drawing will not end in the right place. The same obviously applies to painting--envision what you are painting as completed on the canvas in front of you. If you overrun the space, no amount of finagling is going to change the situation, you will have to start over.
Drawing tips also abound in art books, so head to your local library or even search online for some beginner drawing books that show you how to see, how to draw a face, how to draw different expressions, how to draw a tree or a dog or a cat. Just start with very simple subjects and study the angles, shadows, degrees of darkness and light. If you should practice your drawing as little as thirty minutes a day you will make amazing strides each week and each month.
Finally, a number of drawing tips of super importance: Do not try to be perfect. Do not criticize yourself for failing to make enough progress because there is no such thing. Every individual draws differently. If a dozen people were asked to draw a glass, every single drawing would be different. The other thing to remember is--you are making a lot more progress than you will probably be able to see for yourself. Don’t be afraid to show your friends or family what you are doing. Chances are they will say, wow--I never knew you were so talented!