Drawing is one of the most basic ways to exercise your creativity. Whether you're using a pencil, pen, crayon, or even your fingers, the skills you gain from the activity translate to a variety of different media.
The fundamentals of drawing are easy to learn, but only practice makes perfect as all things in life. And once you master your drawing skills, you'll undoubtedly create images that will make you very proud of yourself.
AnyTask.com has put together a few links to articles with sketching tips hoping they have the power to transform your creative journey for the better.
1.?20 top sketching tips to help you hone your skills
The Creative Bloq Staff has put together 20 tips from professional artists to help you get started, inspired, or take your skills a step further.
The tips go from choosing the correct pencil for your drawing project to learning how to take control of your pencil. "If you position your hand closer to the end of the pencil, you have more control and precision, but heavier strokes (darker markings)," says illustrator?Sylwia Bomba. "Gripping further up the pencil will give you less control and precision, but lighter strokes (lighter markings)."?
They also go through the different mark-making methods, such as hatching, cross-hatching, stippling, scribbling, small circles, and finger blends. They also show you the different textures and master realism, making characters readable as silhouettes, gradients, backgrounds, and more.
2.? Eight tips to improve your drawing skills by Alvalyn Lundgren
Successful graphic artist?Alvalyn Lundgren?has put together eight quick tips for those who want to draw better. In her article, Alvalyn explains that you're taking time to look at something analytically to reproduce it in your drawing when you draw.
And this analysis helps you become more aware of form, proportion, and color. You come to understand light and shadow and how these elements reveal and define form. This awareness translates to any visual pursuit.
The artist's tips recommend illustrators draw as often as possible and repeat the process because practice leads to improvement and confidence building. You should also check out her?YouTube channel?for a wide variety of video tutorials.?
3.?Sixteen top tips to draw movement by Creative Bloq
This article is by Brittany Myers, a California Institute of Arts alumni, a former visual development intern at Walt Disney, and a current freelance character designer at Sony Pictures Animation.
She explains how important the sense of movement is in a drawing. "It's important to design not only how your figures look, but also how they tell a story with their gestures and movements," Brittany says. "This is especially crucial in the animation industry because the characters you'll be conceptualizing are intended to perform as though they were an actor in a film or TV show."
So with that in mind, Brittany shares 16 tips on how to draw a more engaging character. She takes readers on a journey from how to draw a line of action to showing what a character is thinking through movement. She also covers straights and curves, gestures, shapes, tilts and twists, face squashes and stretches, giving a feeling of weight, and so much more.
4 .?Fifteen tips to improve your drawing skills
In this article, the Daisy Yellow also says that to draw well, you have to practice. "That's the only secret, "says Tammy, aka Daisy Yellow. She considers herself a mixed media artist. She teaches creativity and art. "My goal is to encourage artists to nurture their creative practice through open-ended experimentation."
Tammy says that what she's learned throughout the years of drawing is that you will get better if you draw a lot. "Your lines will become more varied, more interesting, with subtle variations. The more variety in your practice, the more you'll build fine motor skills and the more confident you'll be with a pen in hand."
She highly recommends that as a drawer, you be patient with yourself. You may not see clear improvements in your work in just hours, but more likely in months and even years. In her tips, she goes from recommending you draw ordinary things to drawing shapes that you find challenging, including faces and animals. Whatever your skill level is, Tammy's tips will help you.
5.?Improve your drawing skills in six days
Matt Fussel is an artist and teacher. He loves sharing his passion for art with others and teaching students from all over the globe. He has been featured in various publications and has produced commissioned art for clients worldwide.?
Matt makes an essential statement about artists saying that it is wrong to believe drawing is an innate ability that a lucky few are born with when drawing is, in fact, a skill that simply requires a bit of knowledge and lots of practice.
?"The truth is that learning drawing effectively is sequential. If you learn how to draw sequentially, then concepts build upon each other and seem to make a bit more sense," Matt says. With the sequential approach in mind, Matt shares his six-day approach, which he says will "dramatically" improve your drawing skills.
During six days, he will take you through the mindset, the need to loosen up, the importance of drawing lines and shapes, and contrasts, the illusion of 3D, to the final day when he guides you through the process of putting all the new knowledge into one last tip. Check out?Matt's YouTube channel?for dozens of video tutorials.
6.?Draw like a pro with these 9 tips
In this article, Nathan Hughes shares nine recommendations he believes will help you draw like a pro. He kicks off his list with knowing your tools and how important it is to know where to start. He recommends you start with a pencil, paper, and an eraser.?
In tip 2, he speaks of the importance of knowing how to hold your pencil. "Instead of holding a pencil as you would for writing, consider holding it in an overhand grip between all your fingers and your thumb. This grip forces you to draw with your shoulder and allows for longer, smoother lines."
Then tips three and four are about breaking things down into simplified large shapes and building up from those simplified shapes. In tip five, he speaks of developing your skills using references. "Your drawing skills will dramatically improve if you learn to draw from both photo and life references." Tip six is about taking a drawing class, while seven is aimed at repeating the same image over and over as a way to improve your skills around drawing a particular subject matter.?
Tip eight challenges you to face your drawing weaknesses and the final tip is about experimenting and having fun as you see yourself getting better at drawing.
