As beginners, we often get overwhelmed by a lot of things about starting and finishing a drawing. The fact is, it is actually simpler than one might think. Bear in mind, I am not saying it is EASY, I am saying it is simpler than we make it to be. Intrigued yet? Well, read on then.
When we are first drawing, we tend to give more importance to a few things way earlier in the process than needed. A few of these include:
Materials used:
In today's world of art, there is no shortage of the variety of materials, mediums and media that one can use. As a result we start over thinking about these things. What pencils do we need? How many types of pencils do we need? What is the best brand out there? What type of paper/canvas etc do we need? While these are very valid questions, they are not the most important things to create a good drawing! While good materials will take your art to the next level, they do not play a big role in the initial stages.
Truth be told, all you need to start drawing right now is a sheet of paper and one pencil! YES, not even an eraser (channel Bob Ross ;) ).
Grip:
One particular thing that always held me down was how to hold your pencil/brush! I have seen various artists hold their materials at various lengths and draw them with a variety of grips. While you sometimes change the way you hold and use your materials, even this in not the most important aspect of beginning a drawing.
Tools:
Another aspect that can bog us down as beginners are the variety of tools that are available in the market that are aimed at 'making artists life easier'. There are plenty of tools available that do make it easier to draw like a scale, compass, proportional divider to name a a few, but again these are really not necessary at all to start drawing or for getting better at drawing. In fact, if we start using these tools too early in the game, they might end up become crutches and can hurt us in the long run.
So what to we need then?
If it is not materials, tools and grips what else do we need? Honestly speaking we need interest, patience and thousands of hours of practice if not more! Think of drawing, especially realism more of how we see and observe things. Drawing is more about how we see what is in front of us and how we translate it on paper.
We have to start looking at things as shapes, both known and abstract! Start thinking in terms light and shadow! There are no outlines in real life, only dark foreground/background against light background/foreground. Think of what you see and try to imagine how light moves. We see differences in shapes when there are changes in light reflected back from something.
More often as beginners, we draw things that are not really there or visible on our reference or subject. We often try to draw what we 'think' is there instead of actually drawing what is there. Another huge mistake we do is drawing from memory! For example, when we are drawing a nose, we might draw a generic nose from our memory rather than actually drawing the nose that we see! To remedy this, we might try and trick our brain to see the nose as just another shape rather than a nose.
So, to me drawing is 75% observation and 25% implementation.
Keep drawing!
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