“I can’t draw”

I hear people say all the time, “I can’t draw” or more specifically “I could never draw as well as you”. Everyone can draw, and with practice and some learning (whether that be via youtube, and art class or a helpful friend), anyone can draw. It takes time, practice and patience. I didn’t wake up one day and just knew how to draw the way I do now. As children we are always drawing and painting and creating. As we grow up we typically stop practicing art it in favour of more academic activities – we forget about drawing and so we forget how to draw.

Drawing is partly about skill, but it is also about looking. You need to be able to look and see everything you can to be able to draw it accurately. I am for the most part a self taught artist. I say ‘for the most part’ because in college I attended a life drawing class (where a naked person stands in front of you and you have to draw them). This course was only a day or two long, but I feel like it dramatically helped me understand how to draw. I learnt how to really ‘look’ at what I am drawing rather than the paper I am drawing on. The rest has come from practice, experimenting, messing up and trying again and again and again… I always said that I couldn’t draw life like pictures, I couldn’t get the hand of perspective or ratios etc. But just from that one course and the hours of practice I have massively developed. I am by no means perfect and there is always room for improvement, but the point is, anyone can draw, it just takes the right environment and drive.

I don’t draw the human form for my commercial artwork, but life drawing is so so helpful to learn how to actually draw. I found a few good tutorials on youtube –

This tutorial is fairly long, but very informative if you are interested in giving life drawing a go!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VhjvEXBdyo

… and this one is all about measuring / looking at the object you are drawing – this is a technique I found very helpful!! (this whole youtube channel is actually very good for beginners, worth a look around!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzDGO0LssEM

 

So don’t tell me you could never draw well – you just haven’t had the right practice!! If you try any of the techniques in the videos I’ve shared, comment and let me know how it went, it would be interesting to know how/if the videos helped!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *