Become a Better Drawer

Improving your drawing skills is possible with dedication and attention to the methods by which you can advance your drawing beyond its current state. Some practice will require you to be daring and to push yourself to limits that you have previously considered beyond you or just not your style. By going back to the basics of holding your pencil correctly, using shading techniques, and simply practicing daily, you can improve your drawing ability.

Steps

Learning the basics

1. Learn to hold your pencil. Everyone will find a different method of holding a pencil which feels best. But there are some basics to help you find your sweet spot.
   • Place the pencil between your forefinger and thumb on your dominant hand. For basic drawing, you don’t want to hold your pencil too close to the tip or you won’t be able to move it enough. Likewise, holding it too far back won’t give you enough control. Try holding it a few centimeters up from the tip. About a fourth of the way up.
   • Keep a loose enough grip so that you can move your fingers, hand, and wrist.
   • When drawing a line, use your fingers. Think if it like a small flicking motion.
   • When drawing a curve or circular shape, use your wrist, while keeping your fingers in place. Though it feels weird a lot of the time, try to keep your pencil connected to the paper. Even when drawing a circle. Lift your wrist off the paper and practice making a continuous loop.
   • Don’t make small jagged lines. A lot of the time, novice artists will make small dashes, trying to connect each one as the pencil progresses. This won’t make your drawing look smooth. Though it may feel weird, and harder to draw longer lines and curves without lifting your pencil, keep practicing. Once you get used to the feeling, your lines will look much better.
   • Sometimes, you want to grip the pencil in your palm when shading. This technique lets you use the edge of your pencil to create a smoother shade and gives you more control on the amount of pressure you apply.
2. Practice basic drawing techniques. Most of what you are doing when drawing is using your pen, pencil, or another tool to define the edges and contours of forms. These forms can be anything from a coffee mug on a table, to a superhero flying between tall skyscrapers.
   • Begin with a pencil. When training yourself to draw, a pencil will be your best friend. You can control how dark or light a line will be. You can also easily erase any mistakes you make and correct your drawings.
   • A lot of what you draw is essentially made up of shapes like circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, and triangles. Your art will incorporate these shapes in different ways to form an image. Practice drawing these shapes. See how well you can sketch out these shapes with a freehand. Get a feel for how your hand moves the pencil on the paper. Keep practicing until you can draw these basic shapes well.
   • Practice shading. Draw a {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} x {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} rectangle. You can use a ruler if you’d like. Divide your rectangle into boxes which are each {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} wide. You will have 10 blocks. Number these blocks going left to right, starting at 1. Leave the first block blank. Then very lightly shade the second block. As you continue to each new block, make it a darker shade until the last box is colored in black. You will now have a shading gradient as a reference guide.
3. Practice drawing edges and outlines. Depending on how realistic you intend your drawing to be, you sometimes want to have hard outlines for your shapes. This is good for a lot of cartoon drawing. For drawing more realistic objects, you may want to use shading to soften your outlines to edges.
   • Outlines are are made by going over the outside lines of your object again with your pencil or pen and tracing over these lines with more pressure to give your object a solid outline and shape. This will make an object look more two-dimensional.
   • Edges are created by shading your object so that the darkest part of the shade is the same as your outline. As you shade farther away from the edge, lighten your shade. This will make your object look more three-dimensional.
4. Draw what you see around you. Whether you’re an experienced artist, or just starting out, getting back to basics is a great way to improve your drawing skills. A great way to get back to basics is to simply draw what you see around you. As you do, pay attention to light and shading.
   • Everyone’s seen countless drawings of bowls of fruit or a coffee mug on the table. This is because drawing these objects helps you to understand how to shade an object, incorporate depth, and light.
   • Find something near you like a bowl, fruit, or even your smartphone and practice drawing it on paper. Look at how the light source casts a shadow on and around the object. You can tell where a light source is coming from because the shadow will be pointing opposite the light.
   • Practice drawing an object you are looking at using shapes. Dissect the object and break it down into your basic shapes. If you are looking at a coffee mug, think about the different shapes that make up the mug. The main part of the mug is a cylinder, made up of a rectangle with a curved bottom, and an oval to show the curved top which is open. Practice drawing these shapes together to form the main part of your mug. Next, look at the handle. The handle is like a half circle or oval. Don’t worry about having your lines overlap or not making everything even. You can always erase and adjust.
   • Use your pencil to help you measure the proportions of what you’re drawing. If you line up your pencil to the coffee mug and see that the mug is about ¾ the height of the pencil when your pencil is vertical, and the width of the mug is slightly less the ¾ of the length of the pencil when it’s horizontal, you can use that knowledge to help you get the proportions correct on paper. Once you draw your vertical lines, use your pencil to make sure the distance between the two is relative to the width.
5. Study books and videos about and from famous illustrators. Take some time to read up on the different styles, techniques and ideas that inspired these artists. What about these experiences or techniques excites your interests? There should be plenty of ideas and approaches to enthuse you to learn from.
   • Books and videos that teach you how to draw using techniques on perspective, construction, anatomy, and color theory will help you hone your own skill. These kinds of material can not only provide you with exercises to practice in a visual way but can also help you discover what kind of drawer you are.
   • These types of reference materials will help you with step-by-step instructions or techniques that you can learn to improve your ability.

Developing Your Personal Style

1. Draw what you like. Drawing the objects, places, and even things from pop culture you like will help you hone your skill. This is because you will naturally pay more attention to the details of what you are looking at, and take more time when drawing it. Your natural interest in drawing a great rendition of something you like will help you understand how lines and shapes work. How shading is incorporated, and so on.
   • Draw the cartoons you like. If you like a certain cartoon or comic, and like that art style, practice emulating that style in your own drawings. Drawing your favorite characters in a certain style will give you an idea of what’s easier and harder for you.
   • Perhaps you find that you’re not as good at drawing very realistic objects or characters. But that anime or cartoon styled drawings come much easier.
2. Attempt different drawing styles. After you've done some research and practiced drawing what you like, move out of your comfort zone and try other drawing styles. You might feel comfortable with one method of drawing but if you don't try other styles, you'll never know if there are other styles that fit your skills well. Or styles that you can blend into your own mix.
   • Branching out will help you discover what you are good at and what you are not. You may find that you can draw beautiful, colorful cartoons, but have a difficult time drawing realistic figures.
   • Don’t discount an art style just because you’re not good at it. Keep practicing it and use this as a chance to improve on areas where you are having a hard time.
   • Pick a piece of art or drawing, that is outside of your comfort zone. Then try to recreate it by looking at it. Doing this will give you an idea of where you are having trouble, and it will force you to figure out how to get better. By drawing something that is hard for you, you will train your brain and hand to discover the movements your pencil needs to make.
   • Attempting different drawing styles will also help your own style to emerge naturally over time. You can't force a certain style, it has to develop.
3. Change medium. If you have always been drawing in pencil, try charcoal. Or switch to watercolor pencils, colored pencils, or ink.
   • While a pencil is great for sketching out the first part of a drawing, and sometimes doing the whole drawing, other tools may suit you better.
   • You may find that you have more control with markers, pens, or paint. Or that your personal style really seems to fit a certain medium.
   • Perhaps your style looks ok in just pencil, but once you add a pen, and are able to play with the thickness of the pen’s stroke, you see that your style really comes through.
4. Play with color. Artists use colors to evoke a certain mood or atmosphere. Colors are used to create space and light and shadow. Therefore, playing with not only what colors you use in your drawings but how you use these colors, will help you get better and create a style all your own.
   • Look at your favorite comics, cartoons, artists, etc. Notice how color is used in these drawings. Are there bright, happy colors in a shot of Batman as he jumps from a roof in downtown Gotham? Or are the colors darker, more muted? In Batman, the colors are darker and muted to enhance the noir-like tone.
   • Practice with color pencils to get a sense of how your use of color can be incorporated into your drawings. As you use your color pencils, take the time to study your drawing. Does your drawing look better because of the color, or worse?
   • Learn to use color to depict temperature and shades. Blue hues are cooler for example. The darker the blue and the closer to black, the colder the temperature is.

Practicing Your Craft

1. Draw every day. If you truly want to become a better drawer, like every skill, you have to practice, practice, practice. Draw every day, whether it’s a doodle for ten minutes, or a larger piece of art you work on for several hours.
   • As you continue to draw, you’ll notice where your strengths lie, and where you can improve. Look at your drawings and analyze each one.
   • Take note of what is common throughout your drawings. Are you always drawing cartoons? Or do you frequently only draw part of someone’s body, like the face and head, but never the rest?
   • Spend more time on the types of things you avoid when drawing. If you have a hard time drawing hands, look up tutorials on how to draw hands, and practice drawing just hands over and over. Then, once you’ve improved, incorporate your new skill into your art.
2. Use anatomy as a guide. While you may draw pictures that don’t have a human, animal, or human-like figure, chances are a lot of drawings do. Use your own body as a guide.
   • Say you’re drawing a character you’ve created in action. Picturing and sketching the body in movement, or even standing still, can be tough. It’s not always easy to draw correct proportions or get the placement of body parts right.
   • Position your own body in the pose you are trying to draw. Look at yourself in the mirror or take a picture. Having this kind of reference will help you get a visual understanding of how the body moves, how the arms look in a certain position. What the head looks like when turned at a certain angle.
3. Work on composition. After mastering the techniques of drawing objects, adding depth, texture and form, the composition is the real telling point of an advanced drawer. The composition can be dull even if your drawing technique is excellent; the real art is found in careful and well-spaced composition.
   • Composition is the spatial relationship of your objects within a frame. Being able to draw with a good sense of space and distance between objects is a skill that takes time.
   • Use real life examples to help you use composition in your art. Say you’re drawing a fence going off into the distance. The gaps between each post will be slightly different.
   • Give objects different sizes and space within your drawing. If you’re drawing a crowd of people, not everyone will be the same height and width. And if some are closer to the eye, or further off in the distance, the size of the person and the detail will vary.
   • Use the rule of thirds. This means dividing your paper into nine equal sections. Your paper is divided horizontally into three sections, and vertically in three sections. Align your areas of focus near the intersections of your imaginary lines. Say you are drawing a person sitting in a chair in a room. You may consider drawing the head in the top left area where your top and left thirds intersect. This is an area of focus and will draw the eye to your person’s face. You might leave the right third of your paper emptier with fewer details and objects to show depth to the room and balance out your drawing.
4. Take your time. Some people can draw quickly, and fill in details with ease. But the only way you’ll improve your ability is if you take your time and draw slowly at first. The slower you go the more control you have. You can pay more attention to the slight curve of a line, or get the details of that hand just right.
   • It may get frustrating to go slowly as you draw, but it makes a big difference. Look at a drawing you did quickly, then go and draw again, this time going slowly, notice the difference.
   • The more you draw, and the more time you take to care for your drawing will be your biggest advantage to becoming a better drawer.
   • Once you’ve learned the basics of drawing, it really comes to down to practice and patience.

Tips

• Copy photos and paintings, but always try to make the drawing your own.
• Try to draw in a quiet place away from many, if not all noises. Keep all distractions to a minimum.
• Start with the basic shape of what you want to draw before you start drawing the details first. If you draw details first, you'll get frustrated.
• Duplicate the drawings you like. Practice perfecting certain objects or characters.
• Try shading. Always give shade to your drawings, but only after you've decided where the light is coming from. Keep the light source consistent. Always shade on the opposite side of your object from your light source.
• Try to always draw free-hand. Never use stencils or rulers, it helps make your drawings real. Nothing is perfect!
• Start off by drawing things you like.

Things You'll Need

• Pen
• Pencil
• Paper
• Eraser (just in case you need to erase)

Related Articles

• Encourage Thinking by Drawing
• Draw What You See
• Continue to Learn Drawing Skills
• Take Your Drawing Skills to the Next Level
• Become a Better Artist
• Get Good at Drawing
• Draw
• Draw (for Beginners)

Sources and Citations

See also

• Draw a Good Picture
• Think of What to Draw
• Draw What You See
• Draw Without Taking Classes
• Improve Your Drawing Skills
• Get Better at Drawing
• Become a Better Artist
• Draw With a Wacom Tablet
• Doodle
• Draw when You Don't Know What To Draw

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