You don’t need to spend 7 years in art school to enjoy and please your loved ones with your signature painting. Start with this article, in which we tell you how to create drawings in different styles step by step.
Tips for the beginner: Where to start and how not to quit
Start with a correct hand position. It should not get tired, and the strokes and strokes should be clear. For this, you can take a lesson from an artist or devote a few hours to self-study.
The more often you train, the faster your movements will become confident. So practice regularly. It takes only 20-30 minutes a day to notice progress already by the end of the first week. Read more https://architect-yagupov.com/
Proceed in stages: first master simple forms, then move on to more complex subjects.
Watch lessons on YouTube. Self-teaching books are less effective than videos because they’re not as visual. But the best option is to work with a teacher.
Before you can learn how to draw with pencils, you need to put your hand to work. There are some basic exercises to develop your motor skills and observation.
Top 5 exercises for beginning artists
“Lots of Circles.” Take a sheet of paper and draw it completely in circles of different sizes. Make sure they are closed and don’t overlap each other.
“Hatching. Fill the sheet with multidirectional strokes. Do not rotate the paper – let your hand get used to taking different positions.
“Labyrinth.” Sketch a sheet of paper with winding lines. The only rule is that they must not intersect.
“Perspective.” Examine a static object, such as a closet, and try to transfer its planes to paper.
“Hand.” Try to sketch your own hand, but not the entire hand, just the individual, most striking outlines, such as the curve of a finger or lines on the palm of the hand. Don’t try to achieve perfection in this process, it’s just a practice.
After you sufficiently train, you can move on to the basic shapes: circles, squares, cylinders. It is from them in the future will be folded people, houses, animals, anime characters. In the beginning, experts recommend practicing drawing through tracing paper to feel the volume and thickness of the line. To do this, choose a linear contrast drawing with a good outline and trace it, gradually increasing the pressure. In the process, you will surely remember your elementary school and penmanship, because the principle is the same: first you repeat simple shapes, which will later turn into beautiful letters.
Drawing a circle
Arm yourself with several pencils:
Hard (2H or H) is good for working in the light.
Medium soft (F, HB, B) for hatching.
Soft (2B, 3B, 4B) for creating shadows.
A shading pencil will come in handy for creating volume.
Now draw a circle by hand – as you get it. To draw shapes, you need to master simple shapes. They consist of portraits, houses, landscapes, animals, clothes, food, and flowers.
When the skill of drawing a circle will be honed, move on to other geometric shapes: square, triangle, rectangle. Look around: everything around consists of simple shapes, you just need to learn to see and reproduce them.
This step may seem simple. In fact, it is difficult to draw an even geometric figure by hand on a white sheet of paper. It is very important to go through this stage – you will learn to hold a pencil in your hands and you will work braver. Without knowing how to draw geometric shapes you won’t be able to work with shadows and make your drawing three-dimensional.
How to Draw Shadows: Circle into a Sphere and Square into a Cube
So, simple shapes are already easy to get. Now your task is to learn how to draw light and shadow, highlights. Draw geometric shapes with pencil shadow is not difficult: you have to imagine that the future of the sphere light from the source falls. For example, it is at the top left. How will the figure look like then?
To start practicing, don’t make perfect shadow transitions. Rather rough strokes are enough, like in engravings. The most important thing is to understand how shadow and volume are interconnected.
The next step is to darken the space below the figure. Sphere or cube cast a shadow on the surface. It also needs to be shaded – first rough, then smoother lines. The transition of light into shadow should be shaded with a pencil of medium softness, and the shadow itself – soft.
Where the object’s own shadow passes into the incident shadow is a reflex. This is light reflected from the surface. It gives volume to the figure. If you want to draw shadows of geometric shapes with a pencil, don’t forget about reflexes.
turning a circle into a sphere
Academic drawing is the base for painting. After mastering cubes and spheres, you can move on to more complex shapes. Try drawing and shading an apple, pear, egg, mug, and other objects. At this stage, you can and should draw from nature, and there and not far from a portrait.
How to draw a person: a step-by-step plan for beginners
When shading becomes a habit for you and you learn to see the shape, you will become more observant and will be able to draw moving objects. To learn how to draw people from scratch, you need to learn a lot of skills.
To learn how to draw a person is difficult. You have to know anatomy and make sketches. You can sketch intuitively but that would be very unprofessional. When you’re drawing a person you need to have a basic understanding of form and drawing, of what flexibility, caricature, shape in space means. It’s like in math – you can’t learn anything without knowing the multiplication table.
For your first drawing, you’ll need a theoretical background:
Make sketches by drawing poses of different people in pencil. You can do these quick sketches in parks, malls, and cafes. Your job is to convey the pose in dynamics, don’t strive for high artistry.
Study your anatomy. Understanding how bones, joints, and muscles are arranged will help you learn how to draw a full-length person and breathe life into your sketches.
Sketch the proportions. This is where you need to note the important things. The average height of a person is 7 of his head. A woman’s figure looks like an hourglass. And fatty tissue, for example, is distributed differently in men and women. The more you sketch, the better you will develop your outlook.
Knowing all these features, it will be easier for you to learn how to draw a person with a pencil. Gradually you can begin to practice:
 Draw a silhouette based on your knowledge of anatomy and proportions.
To make it easier to keep proportions, divide the human body into 7 parts in your mind. The average height of a person is 7 segments the size of his head.
The proportions of the human body
 Add volume to the body.
Draw the curves of the body in women, the muscles in men.
 Sketch the basic facial features and hairstyle.
Just repeat the following scheme. Don’t forget to draw proportional ears.
Basic facial features.
 Erase the excess reference lines.
Reference lines are those lines that you very first draw on a sheet of paper. They are used to build the proportions and symmetry of the drawing.
 Add shadows.
 Work out the details: hair first.
Break down the hair into its main parts, repeating the shape of the skull. Position the light and shade: hair reflects light well. Carefully draw the front strands and shade the hair with light vertical lines.
 Then the eyes.
Sketch a horizontal reference line and draw the eye contour, round iris and pupil around it. Draw the volume and thickness of the eyelid, do not forget the lacrimal duct. In the portrait, it is important to work on the brow arches, the overall harmony of the drawing.
 Finally, draw the clothes.
Clothing repeats the curves of the body, but to look realistic, it is necessary to trace the folds and take into account the material. Light fabric will form less creases than heavy fabric.
