Відео

I wish I'd been given something like the Kistler book at that age! It was a little juvenile for me when I actually used it, but I have to be honest, even at the age of 40 I found it very enjoyable! 😆

Thank you so much!!

Glad you enjoyed it!

In the junk sketchbook, after the first couple of pages I didn't use an eraser at all, I just kept moving across the page. It did take me those first couple of days to settle into the no-erasing mindset, but once I did I don't think I ever used an eraser again. In general, I think when you decide whether to erase or not you should ask yourself whether it matters if this *specific* drawing is correct. So, if I was filling a practice page full of cylinders in a junk sketchbook, erasing was a waste of time because it really didn't matter if any specific cylinder was bad, or even, at the start, if the whole page of cylinders turned out bad. My goal in that sketchbook was not to produce pages full of well-drawn cylinders, it was to learn and practice the techniques of cylinder drawing -- drawing the ellipse, making it look like it is in perspective, etc -- so that in the future, I could draw a cylinder in any position and any perspective right first time with no erasing or corrections. In this mindset a cylinder with a big mistake is just a data point ("this cylinder looks wonky because the ellipse is too flat") that I used to improve how I drew the next cylinder ("I'm going to draw the same cylinder, but draw the ellipse differently"). My focus was not on correcting a mistake I had already made, but trying not to make it again, and then later, my focus was not on being pleased with a good cylinder, but making sure that I knew what made it more successful that previous attempts, and also that I could keep drawing it successfully any time I wanted. In the end, of course, with enough practice I did end up with pages of well-drawn cylinders, but it's not because I spent hours on one page, carefully drawing, erasing and correcting each line and ellipse on each cylinder. It's because I drew pages and pages and PAGES of bad cylinders and then better cylinders and then good cylinders, until drawing a good page of cylinders is just something I can do now, without much effort. On the other hand, if I was working on the early stages of what I hoped would be a finished pen and ink drawing of a tree, and I was drawing a cylinder as an underdrawing of the trunk and it went a bit wonky, I would erase and correct my drawing. Getting that drawing right MATTERS: I know that no matter how well my subsequent details on the tree turn out, it's never going to look right if my underlying cylinder is bad. At some point my practice pages of cylinders started to pay off because as I improved at the basic skills, I made fewer mistakes and spent less time correcting my underdrawings, and could spend more time on the parts of the drawing that are more fun. Sorry, that reply got long! Hope it helps!

Hi! Glad you found my video useful. So, if you're RIGHT at the beginning, you haven't drawn at all or not since you were at school, I think Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards is fun. Just... don't take the dodgy neuroscience as gospel truth. I bought the "workbook" variant of the book, and it was a genuine joy to go from the "before" to the "after" with the self-portrait. If you google it, you'll see really great examples of that before/after exercise online and I think mine is somewhere in this video as well. When I started, I genuinely was like, ha, that is OTHER people, not me, I'll never be able to do that, but it actually truly worked. Such a huge confidence boost and like I said, a joy to draw something successfully after very little time. I personally found it to be a very low time commitment and it's fairly inexpensive as these things go. I think I spent about 25-30 hours on the book in total over the course of about a month. It does not really try to give you too many technical drawing skills, but it will give you a chance to experience making a drawing, which is really helpful at this very early stage. If you're a bit past that point, then as far as the foundational exercises from my 100 day sketchbook are concerned, they were taken from online courses/videos that I watched or followed. I can tell you about the ones I did, but I think it's worth acknowledging that sometimes you just can't get on with some particular teacher's style or presentation, and it's worth shopping around a bit to find someone who presents the ideas in a way that works better for you. The basics themselves are really well-known and established, so there's not actually a huge difference in WHAT is being taught up to a certain point, so what you're looking for is a WAY that it's taught that really works for you. So, my personal favourites were: 1. Drawabox (www.drawabox.com). This whole approach to drawing comes out of fields like product design and architecture, and it feels more analytical and technical in many ways than other courses. I am quite analytical in the way I approach things, and I therefore found this course almost comforting when I was a beginner -- it managed to make what is often described in very non-analytical terms (beauty, style, feeling, imagination) more understandable. However, this ultimately wore thin for me once it got into drawing actual things (plants, animals, etc) and I never finished the course. And for other people that more technical/clinical approach never suits them at all. However, I think the first part of Drawabox (lessons 1 and 2, which cover lines, shapes, volumes, basic perspective) is brilliant. It does feel a little technical and dry (even the course creator acknowledges that very clearly in Lesson 0) and you definitely need to pace yourself so you don't burn out on grinding the longer exercises, but it's really basic and foundational, and a LOT of the exercises in my 100 day sketchbook are drawn from foundational skills I learned from it. For me personally, as a real beginner, JUST doing the 8 pages per exercise or whatever it was that Drawabox recommended was not nearly enough, but doing a whole 200 pages in that sketchbook was transformational. Pros: It's free, or close to free, very low barriers to entry (a pen and some paper), very well-established. Cons: It can feel very grind-y, especially things like the 250 Boxes challenge. For me personally, although I did lesson 3 (plants) and most of 4 (insects) I started not to like the pedagogy or teaching style as much, and when (for unrelated reasons) I stopped drawing for a while, I never went back to it when I started again. But those first two lessons would give you loads of things to work on actively that will underpin ALL your future drawings (lines, shapes, volumes) no matter what style of art you do in future (Okay, maybe not if you go into abstracts...) For someone short on time I think it is quite useful, because it is definitely the sort of thing you could work on in bite-size chunks. I had so many random sheets of paper scattered around where I'd spend ~20 mins a day just working on some very simple exercises. 2. Brent Eviston's series of courses on Skillshare "The Art and Science of Drawing". So, if Drawabox comes out of the product design tradition, Brent Eviston comes more from the classical drawing tradition. I liked his delivery of information, which is very methodical and flows very cleanly from topic to topic. He covers some familiar ground from Drawabox (lines, volumes), but some other new things (shading, measuring) and also he approaches it in a different way, with a slightly different type of explanation and a different medium (pencil rather than fineliner in DAB) which I found helpful. I finished the course and even re-did a couple of sections. I also like his basic figure drawing course (Art and science of Figure Drawing) but I'd recommend you do the more foundational course before that even if you only ever want to draw people. The courses are fairly bite-size, and you could definitely spend ~15-20 mins watching a short video in the course, and then fitting in another 15-30mins here and there working on it over the course of a week. I will say this type of more classic artist training course is *extremely* common -- you can certainly find a similar sort of course taught in a broadly similar way on many other major online platforms. Some examples: Proko.com, specifically Stan Prokopenko's basics course. It is $$ for the "premium version" but there's a LOT of free content on his site, and it is VERY bite-sized and easy to digest. Personally, I find his delivery overall quite irritating for no really rational reason, so I've never followed a whole course of his, but it's definitely well-designed and a lot of people LOVE his teaching delivery, so it's worth a look. Plus there are online art schools like NMA ($$), Watts' Atelier ($$$) , CGMA ($$$$) etc. Personally, I picked the Skillshare class because of the ubiquitous UA-camr "one month free" Skillshare offers meant a low cost of entry, and I think it's worth investigating the free month just to try the course out -- you can always cancel before you have to pay anything. I tried some similar NMA classes at one point, but there's a bigger upfront cost, and again, I didn't love the way some of those fundamentals classes were taught. (I bet I sound super fussy about watching some videos, but I think because I am in education myself and often professionally required to sit through people delivering information badly, I have very low tolerance for doing more of it in my free time!) There are also LOADS of books on this topic if you're more of a book learner. A book I liked along these lines was: "Drawing For the Absolute and Utter Beginner" by C Watson Garcia. Again, this covers pretty much exactly the same ground. You might also want to look into in person "Intro to Drawing" classes in local colleges (or whatever equivalent where you live) -- there are several offered near me for quite a small fee, but I was learning in 2020 so it wasn't an option. Although it sounds like a huge time commitment if you're already time poor, an American friend of mine who is insanely busy did one at a local community college and she found it was great -- just scheduling the time and setting up things like it was her husband's responsibility to feed the kids that night meant she felt like she had to go do it. She ended up going to I think all but one class in the whole semester as a result. So, you know, worth thinking about if you enjoy the in-person classroom experience and would enjoy meeting other beginner artists. If you look at everything I've suggested and you're like, nope, no, nope, then a quick search will turn up a dozen more options to consider. You are looking for something that covers: lines (sometimes called "mark-making"), shapes, volumes, cross-contours and shading (or "light" or something similar) and probably measuring or something similar. I would say overall, there are two cautionary notes I'd offer you: 1. Try not to make the technical drills the main or the only thing you do, because while they are really useful and will build skills, and they are super easy to do when you only have a short time to practice, they probably aren't REALLY what you want to spend all your time drawing and you WILL burn out and get bored. I am not saying this like I avoided this mistake, because although I did things like my books of trees and houses I honestly did not do as much of that kind of drawing as I probably should have early on. It's just something to have in your mind. 2. Patience and practice is hard and often feels extremely unrewarding, but it WILL pay off. There are things I can do now with a piece of paper and a pencil that I could NEVER have imagined I would EVER do back when I was struggling through DAB Lesson 1, trying to draw straight-ish lines. Think about your assumption that you started your comment with -- I must have had a head start on you, somehow. I really didn't. REALLY. No "talent", no skills from a hobby that has something in common with drawing, nothing. So truly, anything I have done is purely down to practice, time, and effort, all of it after I turned 40, and thus it is also within your reach. Wow, that was an essay! Anyway, I hope you found something in it useful and I hope you really enjoy drawing once you get started!

Thank you!

I know just what you mean about good drawings happening more by accident than design. I can't always isolate what I did better/differently in a successful drawing vs an unsuccessful one, so I can't repeat whatever it was I did.

That's great! I'm so glad you enjoyed my videos and very best of luck with your own drawing adventure!

Happy New Year! Thanks for your ideas, I'll definitely look into those prompt lists. Good luck with picking up your own drawing practice again!

Thank you! I am glad you liked my sketchbooks! Best of luck with your drawing journey. <3

It really isn't easy -- but I think it will be worth doing!

I agree, it's so hard to give up on the little bit of competence I've achieved in order to do something I am almost certain will fail! But like you say, progress comes from making yourself just a little bit uncomfortable, so I guess we will have to grit our teeth and make ourselves do it this year! Best of luck with your art this year!

Thank you, what a wonderful comment to read! I hope your own art journey brings you a lot of joy 😊

Thank you! 😊 I took a loooong break for various reasons, but I am back and busy with art again!

There is hope, for sure! I have tried to draw clothes before (you can actually see it in a sketchbook tour I posted in April, although the drawings themselves were done some time in 2022) and I have definitely made a lot of progress since then even though I can't recall trying to draw clothes at all in the interim. You'll get there!

Good luck!

Thank you!

He has online classes now! He definitely has a website and a YT channel, and also he has a whole class based on that 30 Day book on 21draw. :D

Thank you! I'm glad my videos have helped you a bit! I definitely plan to keep making them whenever I am able to.

Thank you too!

Thanks!

Glad it was helpful!

I'm pretty sure it was this one: ua-cam.com/video/_pnbxBNL_KM/v-deo.html. The tutorial is for watercolour, but I took the basic idea and did it in marker.

Thanks! I look forward to following your journey. Keep it up!@@charlottebrown1975