Drawing For Beginners

How To Get Started Drawing For Beginners

Drawing For Beginners is a brand new course presented by the Learn To Paint Academy.

The question is … do beginners really need to know how to draw in order to learn to paint?

In our beginner courses teaching painting at the Learn To Paint Academy we show you how to start painting in oils or acrylics without the need to be able to draw. This is possible because we show you how to focus in on the big shapes and place them correctly on the canvas.

This approach using a minimal amount of drawing for beginners has clearly worked. More than 35,000 students have come through our beginner level online courses and started their journey learning to paint with this approach.

As we develop our art practice though and our painting skill start to improve then the need to be able to draw increases. With increased drawing skills you will be able to contemplate better and more interesting compositions.

For hundreds of years artists in Europe would learn to paint studying under a master artist in an Atelier Art Academy. And for the first year these eager beginner artists would only focus on drawing. Drawing in pencil, charcoal and ink. They would start with still life shapes, and plaster casts of old statues and then live models. Always he drawing exercises would be drawing from life to develop the power of observation and the ability to transfer what is observed to the working surface.

Today artists don’t have the opportunity or the time to study full time in an Atelier and spend a year just focusing on drawing skills.

The better option for today’s artist is to learn some of the basics of drawing which we will cover in a moment, and then practice your techniques through a series of well designed exercises.

Anyone can improve their drawing skills simply by getting the basic knowledge you need and then practising. As you practise more drawing your skill with using the basic tools for drawing will grow until it becomes second nature.

Additionally your ability to correctly see a subject will improve.

There is no doubt that as you improve your basic drawing skills you will see a definite benefit in your painting. Your painting will improve as you are able to more accurately place the larger objects of the scene onto your canvas. The compositions in your paintings will naturally become more appealling.

The Basic Tools You Need To Begin Drawing

To get started drawing you will need some basic tools. Fortunately these are not too expensive and a basic kit will be easy to take with you when you go.

Here is what you will need as a minimum to get started:

• A range of graphite pencils – A 6B, 4B, 2B, H, H4 would be a good starting point. As you advance though you will want to add a wider range of pencils to your kit. But start with those.
• Several Sketchbooks – You will want several sketchbooks with different sizes.
• Rubbers – You will need a few different types of rubbers or erasers. First you will want a firm or hard eraser. You will also benefit from having a neading eraser which can be manipulated into different shapes and sizes.
• Sharpener – Obviously you will need a good sharpener

As you advance you can add other tools to your kit such as an expanded range of graphite pencils, felt tip markers, mechanical pencils, charcoal, ink pens and more.

The great thing about learning to draw is there is no end of different approaches and tools you can use.

What To Focus On When Learning To Draw

It is important as you start to learn how to draw that you focus on the right things. If you try and jump into doing complex drawings without first mastering some of the basic skills then you will probably struggle as many beginners do.

As we often say in the Learn To Paint Academy … it is a matter of acquiring the basic knowledge you need to know, and then practising the basics over and over until you develop some dexterity and the basic mark making becomes an unconscious process.

Some of the key skills you will want to learn include:

• How to hold the pencil correctly. You need just the right grip to ensure you can adjust the pressure you apply from light to heavy pressure when you need to.
• Ensuring you draw with a full range of motion. You need to be able to move your whole arm when drawing not just moving at the wrist.
• The basic mark making techniques essential for all good drawing.
• How to apply tone on to the paper successfully. This requires accuracy so the right stroke is important.
• Understanding the different types of pencils in your tool kit and when to use each. Each pencil has its own purpose so when you learn this you can use them more effectively.
• Getting to know how to use VALUES is in your drawings. Values are the range of dark’s to lights in a drawing. They are a vital concept in understanding how to give your drawings a sense of form and dimension. Remember we are drawing the 3D world on a 2D surface so to do this successfully values play a key role.
• Blending then becomes a key. You will want to learn how to blend from one tone to the next in order to effectively create a gradient of tones.
• Accuracy in your lines and mark making. Over time you will want to develop your accuracy in being able to draw a straight line, or drawing a line between two points.

There is clearly a lot more to learn as a beginner starting to explore drawing. The above though is a good starting point.

Mark Making Techniques For Drawing

There are lots of different ways for applying marks to the drawing surface. The more of these you become proficient at the better your drawing techniques will become.

Some of the different mark making techniques that you will want to learn include toning, shading, hatching and cross hatching, stumbling, stippling, connect the dots and more.

These are easy to learn when you have a structured learning program to help you develop your drawing skills. In the new course “Drawing For Beginners” we give you a series of templates you can print out and use to practise these various techniques.

In no time when you do these exercises you will improve your drawings even as a beginner. In the same way that a concert pianist needs to practise scales on her piano on a consistent basis, we need to practise our basic drawing techniques regularly as well.

When we develop a consistent practise and follow a structure learning program we can easily develop our abilities with drawing. And as I said earlier in this article, improving your drawing skills will naturally improve your painting.

Enjoy your drawing