7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Drawings and Drawing Process

In this video, we're going to talk about different ways to improve your drawings. And I'll specifically be sharing images and details about using pencil, but for the most part, these can be applied across the board. So grab your weapons of mass creation and we'll dive in together. The first tip is to warm up before you dive into a drawing. And you might be thinking, why do I need to warm up? I'm definitely not hoping to break a sweat while I'm drawing, but drawing does require some muscle movement. Now, they're very little muscles, but these fine motors really benefit from having a little bit of an exercise, a little bit of a warm up. We're also working on reconnecting our brain with our hand, making sure that we're sharp and we're ready to go. So having a quick warm up before you start drawing will improve your results overall. Now, if you need help with, you know, like, what does a drawing warm up even look like? Feel free to check out the description. I will have a worksheet that I send to my students listed down there. Not the whole thing, because some of that is reserved for my students. I also have a video coming soon where I'll go through my favorite drawing warm ups. I'll talk you through, you know, like, which ones are best for when I just need a quick warm up and which ones I lean on and go to when I'm either struggling with a drawing, I just need to kind of start over and shake things off, or I haven't drawn in a while and so I'm feeling really rusty and uncomfortable. So again, those resources will be linked down in the description, and I hope that you'll find them helpful. Next, we want to make sure we're using the right pencil for our personal pressure. Now, there is a whole scale for pencil, lead, graphite, and the density and how hard or soft it is. General rule of thumb is if it has a B on it, it is a softer lead, and the higher up the number, the softer it is. If it's an HB or an F, depending on what brand you're using, it's going to be right there in the middle. And then if it's an H, it's going to be harder lead. And again, as the number goes up and gets higher, the harder it is. So that's our scale for pencil lead. Now, this doesn't mean that's where you're always going to be or it's going to be the only pencil that you use, but it helps to know kind of where your happy medium is. Now that we have the right pencil and our muscles are warmed up, it's time to get a good reference image. Now, a strong reference image is the foundation of your drawing, especially if it's a subject that you're not familiar with or that you haven't drawn a lot. So I draw a lot of flowers and it would be very easy for me to fall into formula every time I'm working with flowers, where the petals all start to kind of have certain characteristics and start to look the same. If you want to avoid that and have a lot of life and interest in your flowers, in your drawings, you want to work with a good reference image. Now, a good reference image would be a photograph in the public domain or one that you took yourself or have the rights to use, not somebody else's drawing. I do want to kind of mention that that would be plagiarism. But you want to make sure you have a high quality image with some good shadows and good contrast. If you can't see it, you can't draw it. My two favorite sources for photos in the public domain at this point is artistreferencephotos.com and Unsplash. And so I'll have those linked in the description box for you. Now that we have the proper supplies and the proper tools, it's time to put pencil to paper. I like to start with mapping everything out first. So we're starting with big, bold shapes, and then we're moving into kind of those medium details, then finally into those tiny, intricate elements. And how we do that will vary from artist to artist. So some artists like to work by placing things in in very geometric shapes with a lot of hard edges. And this helps them to get more of that three-dimensional structure added in there. Especially if you struggle with getting things to appear three-dimensional, that would be a great option for you. I, on the other hand, work with very organic shapes, a lot of sweeping movement. And this is because I struggle with being very stiff and technical with my drawing. And so I need to start kind of on the other end of the spectrum and be very loose and organic, because I want to have a lot of movement, a lot of elegance in my drawings. I want my flowers to dance. And so I start with large organic shapes and big, sweeping movements. And if you already do this, I'd love to know in the comment section down below, which side of the spectrum, if you will, do you fall on? Do you love to do geometric shapes and really have that structure and that three-dimensional form already defined? Or are you like me and you like it to be a little bit more organic and a little bit more loosey-goosey? Tip five is to take a break. This is something that I struggle with a lot, but I'm getting better at, because sometimes you just need to walk away. Sometimes you need to take a break. Even if you're just getting up and going to get a drink of water, being able to come back with fresh eyes, especially if you can, like, come to your artwork from across the room, like maybe you prop it up on your desk, I'm able to see the whole piece instead of just the individual parts that I'm working on. All right. This might not make me very popular, but I'm going to say it anyway, because I do think that this tip is valid. I've seen a lot of artists dive into using blending tools very early on in the drawing process when working with shading, and I just don't think that that works very well, especially if you're just starting with shading or you're learning about shading. I highly recommend saving that to the end. Consider blending tools and that process as the polishing of your artwork rather than a main cornerstone. What should be the focus is the modeling, the capturing the three-dimensional form, getting all of the values correctly, getting a likeness if it's a portrait rather than making everything smooth. If you put that on the focus too early, it tends to make everything muddy, everything fuzzy. You lose a lot of those crisp details. So while I love a good blending tool, I highly recommend putting off adding it to your artwork until towards the end. One of my favorite ways to polish off my artwork before I say that it's done, before I put a bow on it, is to go in with a softer pencil lead. So for example, if you have found that you're generally an HB person, grab a B pencil or maybe even a 2B pencil and go into those darkest areas and give them a little bit of a pat. Whether you're doing full shading or you're working with contour lines, it helps to kind of bring that little bit of extra emphasis and depth without you having to work much harder. You can continue with your same pencil pressure that you normally use, but it will naturally give you those deeper, darker elements. I also like to go through at this point with an eraser, whether it's a kneaded eraser or a pencil eraser, and just get those highlights and those high key elements nice and crisp. And if you're like me and you tend to use only one pencil for an entire drawing process, it can really push your piece to the next level without having to do a lot of extra work. If you enjoyed this video and you found it helpful and you're looking for more drawing tips, I have my free mini course that I'll have linked down below. It's five lessons. I've had literally thousands of students go through and improve their drawings. Can you imagine improving your drawing in less than a week? I'm really excited to send it over to you, so I'll have that linked down below and just kind of more information about it. Anyway, if you enjoyed this video, I would really appreciate it if you would give it a thumbs up and subscribe on your way there. I hope that you are having a wonderful, wonderful day. And until next time, happy drawing.