How to Improve Your Drawing Ability
With a few artistic techniques, you can improve your drawing abilities and begin sketching more complicated pictures. Drawing requires practice as you transition from simple shapes to three-dimensional images and finally to still-life images. The right drawing tools allow you to make this transition, adding elements of shading, carefully crafted junction points and varying line thickness to your drawings. Each element requires practice, as you learn to incorporate these techniques in your own drawing style.
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Instructions
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Practice drawing your fundamentals--straight lines, curves and geometric shapes. Use a sketchbook and spend your free time drawing these elements repeatedly. Practice resizing the shapes and lines by drawing them in different sizes. Make subtle changes as you practice, extending some lines as you alter the dimensions of each shape.
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Move to three-dimensional shapes and practice drawing them. Include three-dimensional cubes, triangles, spheres and rectangles. Practice drawing the shapes repeatedly, until you are comfortable with your drawings. Move the shapes, redrawing them from different perspectives.
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Vary your line thickness by pressing down harder for thicker lines and running your pencil over those lines multiple times. Draw thicker lines to represent surfaces further from the eye and thinner lines to denote areas closer to the eye. Incorporate this technique in your three-dimensional drawings of shapes, and practice using it to give your drawings more depth.
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Extend your lines beyond the intended junction point, the place where you would normally stop, to give your junctions a more naturally drawn feeling. Leave your arm loose as you draw, and allow your hand to move beyond the point you would normally stop. Incorporate this technique in your three-dimensional drawings of shapes, and practice using it to give your junction points a more natural look.
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Hold your arm loose and use gentle back-and-forth motions to create shaded areas on some surfaces. Avoid putting too much pressure on your pencil, as this could turn your shading into a dark black area in your drawing. Incorporate this technique in your three-dimensional drawings of shapes, and practice using it to give some surfaces the illusion of light and dark.
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Use an eraser and remove the excess lines extending from your junctions to clean up your drawing. Using ink, retrace the lines of your picture and add color with paint or colored pencils.
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Transition to drawing still photographs, starting with pictures of homes or scenery and then moving to pictures of people. Incorporate the techniques you practiced, drawing images in three dimensions with varying line thickness and smooth junctions.
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References
- Photo Credit Comstock Images/Comstock/Getty Images
