Become a Better Artist

Being an artist includes continuously evolving your skills, improving your technique and pushing yourself beyond the next boundary. It's part of your growth as an artist and can even see you changing your artistic techniques completely several times during a lifetime. Becoming a better artist is a journey and will bring greater satisfaction to you as you continue to build on what you already know.

Steps

Stocking up

  1. Buy all of the necessary supplies. Drawing pencils, erasers, sketchbook, pastels, paint, an easel... whatever you think you will need for your area of expertise. New supplies and mediums can be encouraging. Try beginner sets of artist grade supplies, because they are often easier to use than the cheaper, student grade supplies.
    • Begin with an inexpensive sketchbook with lots of pages, and a sketching set that includes kneaded putty eraser and different grades of graphite pencils. It may also include charcoal pencils, charcoal sticks, graphite sticks and brown, gray, or reddish sketching sticks. All these tools are useful, and the supplies are cheaper in bundled sets than bought individually.
    • "H" and 2H, 4H, etc are "hard" pencils that sharpen to a fine point, and give a very light mark, easily covered by paint or inking. They're for design. "F" is a "fine" pencil, a little harder than an HB, which is a normal No. 2 pencil, and middle hardness. "B" means black, and each successive degree of B pencil is softer, blacker, and smudgier. 2B is a good sketch pencil, 4B is a great one that gives good shading, and 6B or higher is almost like using charcoal, for ease of smudging and shading.
  2. Purchase some how-to drawing books. This includes books on specific subjects, like how to draw animals, how to draw horses, how to draw seascapes, etc. Whatever you like most or get interested in. Try to accomplish at least one drawing a day. You can even frame them and put them up on your walls, to inspire you to keep going through the next day. You can also check out drawing books from your local library, and find out which one inspires you the most before buying it. Work through each of the exercises in turn, rather than trying to do everything in the book at once.

Progressing your art skills

  1. Date your daily sketches. They don't need to be complex or difficult - a five minute "gesture sketch" is as useful for learning to draw as a half hour spent doing a detailed drawing. If you have a half hour, spending it on half a dozen shorter sketches will actually give better practice. Try to get it right, but don't worry about perfection. You'll achieve good, recognizable drawings by constant practice more than anything else.
  2. In addition to daily sketching, choose a favorite subject. This might be your cat, a favorite flower, a rock, a bottle with light coming through it, anything you would really like to draw well and care about personally. Draw the same thing over and over many times, in many different ways. Repeated drawing of the same subject or type of subject (Each of your cats, your cat from several different photos, your cat's paw one day, your cat's nose the next) will give you a much richer grasp of the anatomy and proportions of that subject. When you've drawn your pet cat enough times, it becomes easy to sketch a tiger on the first try. Draw enough pebbles, and a mountain becomes easy and understandable.
  3. Sketch and draw anything you see! It could be the homeless dude begging for change, or the little girl skipping around with a balloon in her hand. Whatever you see that looks interesting, draw or sketch it!
    • Still, life is one of the easiest subjects for beginners to draw. Literally, the objects don't move. Choose simple ones at first, a vase without too many curlicues, a few pebbles, a flower without too many petals, a clear bottle with an interesting shape, etc. Draw each of the objects separately as a study, then start arranging them together in different ways to see how they go together. The big advantage to still life is that your models don't move, and if you do it indoors, the light from your lamps doesn't change with the time of day, either.
    • Animal drawing may be your passion. Start with your pets. Start when they're sleeping, even if that doesn't seem like an exciting pose - it's when the animal's more likely to hold still long enough to be drawn. Or, use photos of your pets. Visit zoos with a camera, and snap photos of every animal you see and like, then work from your own photos. Alternately, look for open source photos like Wikipedia Commons and other photos where the photographer gives permission to draw from them. You can also contact photographers who take good animal photos and post them on Flickr or Facebook, asking permission to draw from their photos. Many will be happy to give permission, and most will want to see your drawings. When you're used to drawing animals fast from life, try drawing at the zoo, or wildlife like the birds at your feeder. Life drawing of animals is a good way to learn to do quick gestures and detail them later!
    • Buildings and architecture. Study perspective, as it's important in buildings more than anything else to make them look real. Find a good book on perspective, and do all the exercises. Be careful about working from photos, because they will sometimes distort vertical lines and alter perspective. You may have to correct the photo once you understand what you're doing. This is another popular fine art subject that never loses its appeal. Like still life, you can go out and draw buildings in person, without your model getting up to walk away.
    • Landscapes are a traditional fine art subject. Sketch your own yard from life often, sometimes a small beautiful area, sometimes trying for the big panoramic view. Go out on camping trips, or visit local parks with your sketchbook in hand. Do several quick, five minute or less gesture sketches, to get the main elements of your landscape design down, just rough outlines, then pick the best small thumbnail and draw that view larger. This saves a host of troubles over starting with the details of a leaf, and only finishing one branch of that tree in an hour. Details are actually easier than doing the big shapes of things. Landscape drawing is about textures, shapes, and light that changes quickly, so learn to draw fast! Get the shapes of shadows down first thing, because the angle of the light will change in half an hour, and so will the shape of the shadows.
    • People are a popular subject for drawing. Start with the friends and family members you can convince to sit still for a half hour or more to let you draw them. Paint the ones you love. Sketch anyone who interests you. Again, practice quick small "gesture" drawings in public, so that you can get the gist of a figure or a face within a few minutes before the person wanders off or does something else. Sketching in public is also a great ice-breaker, a good way to meet people, because someone often wanders up to see what you're drawing. You have a topic to talk about right away - art - one that most people like and one that isn't controversial.

Getting lessons and expert advice

  1. Look into art lessons of some sort. Most places offer community classes, where you can sign up to take some art lessons. Just know that you will have to invest a bit of money, but it certainly will help.
    • Look for art lessons online, and art videos or DVDs. Many professional artists create instructional DVDs in various mediums, or on drawing in general. Websites with forums like http://www.wetcanvas.com will often have free art lessons, with volunteer teachers who give assignments, critique your work, and help in encouraging ways. Sites like http://how-to-draw-and-paint.com may have a lot of free instruction available, and downloadable e-books, as well as further instruction for sale. "Try before you buy" with online art lessons, some are as good or better than in-person art instruction. You should like the teacher's art, and also enjoy the teacher's style of presentation, to get the most out of an online class.
  2. Subscribe to art instruction magazines. The Artist's Magazine, Pastel Journal, Watercolor Artist, American Artist and others all have excellent articles on how to draw and paint. The more you read, the more you'll understand the many technical terms and different techniques there are to drawing and painting. Learning art is cumulative. It may seem easy, because people who do something well for a long time do it easily, but it's a complex field of study that takes time and effort to master. Patience, practice and study are what really constitutes "talent" - talent is loving the process so much, that you're willing to put up with your mistakes in order to learn how to do it so well, others call you talented. This usually comes at the point they can recognize what you drew for what it is.
  3. Learn composition and design. Look for books on design and composition, take classes in design, study it as much as you do how to draw things accurately. It makes the difference between whether you create great art or just copies of photos. Learn how to crop reference photos, choose which subjects to shoot or sketch in a landscape, guide a viewer's attention in the painting to the most important thing in it - a portrait's eyes, the sunlit patch in a landscape that you chose as a focal point, the animal bending to drink, the people on the beach. Some subjects are attention-getters by themselves, like a cute kitten, but you can improve on that cute kitten picture to the point it's irresistible, if you learn good design principles and give just the right balance of background space around it.

Working in an art-related field

  1. Get a job (if you are old enough). It could be at a craft store like Joanne's or Michael's, or you could be an intern at some sort of design studio. Get to know a gallery owner and volunteer to help with setting up shows, and you may eventually be hired to work at the gallery. Alternately, sell your art online at eBay or Etsy, sell portraits or pet portraits or landscapes in person off the easel, bring your portfolio to galleries, sell at art fairs, or science fiction or media conventions.
    • What type of art you do will affect where it sells best, and whether you're ready to make a living at art yet. The point at which good art supplies pay for themselves comes very fast, whenever you master at least one popular subject that non-artists like your work. This can be cartoon cats, dragons, cute manga animals or cute manga kids as easily as a fine art subject. Someone will offer to buy something. Sell it, give them that joy, even if you know you could have done it better. The connection they have with your drawing is real and emotional. Your technical criticism has more to do with your growth as an artist and less to do with the external value of your art. You're often its poorest judge, don't undersell yourself.
    • To make a living in art, learn how to become self employed. There are many aspects to self employment that have nothing to do with how well you draw and paint, everything to do with how well you manage your money and time. If you prefer to set your own schedule, make all your own business and financial decisions, work well without supervision, plan, schedule, and complete major projects without any outside authority, the life of a full time self employed artist may be right for you. If it's not, then enjoy having a side income, and look for a related job where you have an employer, a steady check, benefits, and someone else responsible for all the business stuff. How much you need to earn to be happy in life is a lifestyle choice. If you have your health, you may not need a high income to be happy as a full time artist. If you have dependents or health issues, it may not be practical to go full time until you can earn a professional level income, pursue your career part time till it matches your job income.

Tips

  • If you find yourself getting frustrated because you can't draw something just the way it is, breathe, count to 10, and just take a little break. Then try something easy that you've already mastered. If you're a total beginner, try drawing a very fast, timed, two minute drawing of a simple non-moving object like your eraser, or a can with the label stripped off. Just get it down in two minutes and try again. Realistic drawing takes a lot of practice, and also a lot of specific skills like perspective, contour drawing, shading, proportion measuring, and so on.
  • Practice makes perfect. In fact, get rid of that idea of "perfect." Replace it with "beautiful" or "exciting." Mistakes can be serendipity. Even the most skilled professional artists make mistakes constantly, and revel in them, because they are always learning from them. Accidents can become something better than you planned, and serendipity is common. Perfectionism can strangle your art, so let go of any perfectionist attitudes. Learn to enjoy the process and learn to see like an artist. You will find that once you can draw something realistically, you'll see the world differently, even when you're not drawing. Learn portraiture, and every human face becomes beautiful, while all the "beautiful people" have obvious facial flaws and irregularities. Those are what give them character.
  • Slow down. It takes time to become a pro.
  • Landscapes are very forgiving. If you make a mistake, like making the hill too high or moving a tree over too far, don't worry about it. If the picture looks good, that was your intuition recomposing the landscape. Your drawing is not a photo! It doesn't have to be that accurate unless it's a landmark, and even then, things like clouds or bushes can change. Or, you might have gotten it right if you sat down or stepped closer to it. Don't worry as much about accuracy in landscapes as getting a beautiful picture.
  • Go to a discount store or dollar store and purchase children's toys that are simple geometric shapes - blocks, balls, pyramids, and cylinders in solid colors without designs. These objects are great for practice drawings, because you can learn to see more complex forms like people or animals as connected cylinders, blocks, spheres, and so on. Set them up on a table with light shining on them from above to one side, to make good shadows, and draw them often to practice shading, and understand how light affects solid objects. This exercise is in most drawing books, but actually doing it with real blocks and balls can be an incredible boost to skills. Do it in color, with colored pencils or watercolor again, to study reflected color and the interaction of light and color. Then, later on when you're doing fancy still life with silver and lace and glass, you can always put a few of these colored, whimsical objects into the composition to brighten it. Or, set one just offstage to put a cheery blue or orange reflection on the silver bowl when it wouldn't fit within the painting.
  • Try drawing a grid on your paper, and then drawing a grid on a printout of your reference photo with the same number of squares. Draw exactly what's in each square, without paying attention to anything else in the picture, being sure to make any sudden changes of light and dark match up with the squares around it. This will give you a very realistic picture on the first go. Make the grid lines light, so you can erase them out of light areas. Renaissance master painters used this technique, by putting a glass window with a grid painted on it between them and their portrait subject. Grid Method is even better than tracing to get accurate outlines.
  • Tick Marks is another method for accuracy. Measure from the side and top of your reference photo to an important point on your subject, like the inside corner of the eye, or the spot at the very top of the head, or bottom of chin. Make a very small mark on the paper at exactly that point. You can scale up or down, by either multiplying the units on your ruler. or using an architectural ruler with different scales on it - choose larger units for the drawing, and smaller units for the photo if it's small or vice versa. Map out the major areas of the face so that the eyes are placed right in relation to the nose, chin, sides of face, outside of hair, top of head, and shoulders. Use as many tick marks as you need to place the subject. Then, try to sketch the contour lines between the dots as accurately as you can. The more dots you use at first, the more accurate the drawing will be. The more practice you get, the easier it is to get away with just a few for top and bottom of face, sides, eye corners, nose tip, corners of mouth. This works on any subject, but the portrait was an example used to show which are the important points to mark on a portrait.
  • Try tracing one of your own reference photos to practice shading. Just match the tone of each area on the photo as accurately as possible, without worrying about whether the outlines are right. If you practice each of these skills separately, it's easier to pull them all together, and draw realistically from life.

Warnings

  • Do not draw from photographs you didn't take without permission from the photographer. Look for photos the photographer has already given permission by using a Creative Commons license, or ask the photographer directly whether you can use it. Respect the terms of the license, always attribute your source image if they ask (and it's courteous if they didn't), and if they tell you not to sell the drawing, then don't. You're better off using your own photos, and learning to take good reference photos. That's a different type of photography, than taking pictures to be good pictures in their own right. It's an advanced skill to be able to change and combine photos, so much that you don't violate copyright, because it's not recognizable. Do not use magazine photos like National Geographic until you've mastered using references without violating copyright.

Things You'll Need

  • Art supplies
  • Art lessons (optional)
  • Books

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