My Passion for Stretching Informed My Early Development as an Artist
My comfort with drawing has given me the confidence to embrace oil painting (or colouring by numbers, as I jokingly call it) and extend my interest in storytelling into diverse and growing areas. If I can work out my intent for a new visual concept as a drawing, then I can surely paint it!
Thinking back about how and why I pursued a path in the arts, the passion to tell stories through drawing sits deep as a motivating, primal factor.
It’s for this reason I continue to exercise my drafting skills, forever pursuing areas of expression and challenges as a visual artist. I hope these 15 tips to improve your sketches will lead you into new territory with life drawing and other projects as we work our way through these dynamic times ahead.
01. Keep your pencils sharp
One of the greatest pieces of advice I received regarding life drawing was from the great draftsman and teacher Jerome Witkin: keep your drawing instruments sharp. This quality to a pencil brings accurate and subtle mark making and control of gestural lines.
02. Observe carefully
Jerome Witkin provided effective instruction on the use of keen observation of the forms I wished to draw before making my mark. Careful, introspective observation led me to create marks that better described that form, and capture the essence of the drawing to a higher degree of satisfaction.
03. Learn from the classics
Yet another valuable lesson from Jerome Witkin came from creating copies of old masters’ drawings, emulating the drawing style and near exact mark making carried out by artists such as Boucher and Rubens, who are shown here.
04. Roll with it
I love life drawing for its forced engagement on variety, from the dynamic poses taken by the model to the unexpected lighting or vantage point you may find yourself in for a not-so-perfect session.
05. Vary the focus areas in your artwork
I always like to capture the entirety of the overall body gesture as an artistic challenge. Learning what works to record anchor marks that imply the outer limits of the model’s gesture is a great way for us to grow our technical skills.
06. From head to hands to toes
I always like to capture the entirety of the overall body gesture as an artistic challenge. Learning what works to record anchor marks that imply the outer limits of the model’s gesture is a great way for us to grow our technical skills.
07. Toned paper
Back in 1998 I bought my first toned-paper sketchbook and have never gone back to white. The incredible thrill of hitting a two-minute drawing with a few white chalk marks to make it come to life volumetrically is a high like no other!
08. Negative spaces are shapes too
With only a handful of minutes available to capture information, I use every tool in my kit to do that effectively and quickly. One of my favourites is to use negative space and shape drawing to describe how an arm or leg interacts with other body parts.
09. Create thumbnails
The lack of precise, laboured details within these abstracts allows me to quickly jump and move into new visual solutions as my thoughts evolve or become inspired.
10A. From tangent to tangent
The small abstracts are far too vague and in a ‘language’ that doesn’t open up this dialogue. So on most of my commercial projects, I step up the details and structure in a second pass, offering greater clarity for my clients on how I’ll approach visually solving their project.
10B. Roughing it out
For oil-painted projects, I almost always create a full-sized preliminary drawing of figures and objects as my final step before going to colour.
10C. Final preliminary drawing
Unifying compositional themes are explored and pushed here as I harmonise the individual parts.
11. Drawing for fun
A major change for me came in 2002, when I began to create drawings for the sheer pleasure of it.
12. Stay diversified
I keep a wall of some favourite abstracts pinned near me in case a future project could be married to one of those past ideas.
13. Draw without fear
I find that one of the best attributes for drawing out narratives, rather than laboured renderings as paintings, is that deficiencies can be masked and diminished by other rendering and design aspects of a drawing.
14. Inspiring new projects
A great spin off from all that fun drawing was that art directors discovered all those images and are now commissioning final projects that are actually based upon my new style.
15. Be a prolific creator
Draw. Draw. Draw. There’s so much that comes from doing: seeing the human body in new, atypical ways, hand-eye coordination, experimental choices in mark making, confidence building, and one many people don’t think about: materials familiarity.
Conclusion
These drawing tips can be applied to traditional methods using the best pencils for artists or on a computer, using the best digital art software and best drawing tablets. Remember to keep your pencils sharp, observe carefully, learn from the classics, and have fun while drawing.
FAQs
Q: What is the most important thing to remember when drawing?
A: Keep your pencils sharp and observe carefully to create accurate and subtle mark making.
Q: How can I improve my drawing skills?
A: By exercising your drafting skills, pursuing areas of expression and challenges as a visual artist, and staying diversified in your projects.
Q: What is the best way to draw for fun?
A: Create drawings for the sheer pleasure of it, without worrying about the final outcome.
Q: How can I stay motivated to draw?
A: By being a prolific creator and staying excited about new projects and challenges.
