Improving drawing skills?

Question

OK, I was in my Fine Arts class today, and we had to draw our teacher. I was sitting behind him, and I got the sombrero and the back of his head looking really good.

But I couldn't draw the rest of him. He had his legs crossed and arms folded, but every time I tried to draw the pose it cam out really bad. And by the end of the session I had nothing but the head and dark eraser lines.

What are some decent ways to improve your drawing skills?

Thanks!

Answer 1

It's best not to concentrate on one area for a long period of time when you're life drawing, as you often find you run out of time before you've even really started the rest of the figure.

The best way to draw a person sitting in an unconventional way (i.e with their arms or legs crossed or twisted round in their seat) is to imagine their skeleton inside the muscles and draw that first - as a basic 'wire frame' - and then flesh it out with the musculature and silhouette.

Answer 2

Usually it takes time, and patience when drawing a concept character. When I took drawing classes, such as digital animation, it took time. You can't get it straight off the bat. You will need to learn basic shapes such as rectangles, triangles, ovels, and circles. Plus, also you need to learn how to shade, start off with an orginal 4B pencil. Then start to draw out the outline gently. Then go with a higher graphite pencil. Like a mechanical pencil those always work. Well good luck! Hopefully you'll go far with the art. Remember one important tip! And that is, patience, and practice. If you don't have those necessity of skills, then you will not be a good artist. Develope those skills, and indeed you will succeed.  

Answer 3

All it takes is practice!

Nobody gets it straight away.

Answer 4

You have to develop both your technique, the physical act of drawing, and your perception of what you're drawing. It's much like learning to read and write: you must practice having your hand go through the movements, and your brain must have some time to learn how to translate what's on the page before you.

For starters, never stop taking drawing classes. You will do the same exercises over and over again, but you'll learn new things each time.

Those basic exercises will aid in breaking down your perceptions. You probably think you need to enhance your perception to draw, rather than break it down, but since your brain understands the three-dimensions you see so well, it can be hard to alter your view to see how the same thing will look flattened on paper.

Some of those basic exercises are:

Draw a rocking chair at an angle. Rather than draw the chair, draw the negative space around it and between its legs and cutouts. You're essentially outlining it, but only where it doesn't overlap itself. Try to think instead, that you're outlining its nothingness.

Take an already competed line drawing for reference, preferably a portrait of someone, turn it upside-down, and copy the drawing (copy, not trace). It's easier to think about drawing curved lines than drawing lips or lashes.

Draw your hand. Do not look at your paper, and do not lift your pencil from the paper. This will help give you a feeling of translating proportion from life to the page. When it looks awful and distorted, not to worry! These never look good. If they do, then you cheated :)

These three exercises will aid in breaking some of the habits of perception common to beginning artists. The following exercise is about working from general to specific:

Have someone model for you in dynamic poses. Draw with loose charcoal or chalk but not pencil (think messy and loose, not precise) on a large drawing pad. Each pose should only last 20 seconds. Flip the page over, and start fresh on a new page. Try to capture the body's frame. You'll essentially be drawing stick figures. Have the poses last a minute or two and work your way into longer poses. Start all figure drawing this way for best results. The goal of this exercise, rather than breaking perception, is to keep the focus general, and then specific. If you can get the general shape of the body, or anything, laid out correctly, you can then easily add details as you work. If you add details early, and realize that they're not quite in the right place, you already feel committed to them.

There are endless things you can do to improve, but these will get you on your way quickly.

Answer 5

Gesture drawing and blind contour drawing as exercises.  Essentially you just have to draw what the masses of the figure or body in front of you are doing rather than what they look like.  What they are doing is moving away from you.  Once you begin to get it you begin to see the connection between drawing and sculpture.

I suggest you go to the library and borrow both Kimon Nikolaides's The Natural Way to Draw and Betty Edwards's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (through Inter-library loan if you have to).  Read as much of both as you can, but don't feel obligated to finish both, and try the exercises as you come to them.

Answer 6

this link kinda talks about that,

http://www.quazen.com/Arts/Visual-Arts/D...

I might be good at drawing some things, but suck at others like people, check the link to see if it will help you