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Sketching tips and tricks for newbies
Team Nas Academy
03 Sep · 10 mins read
3 Easy Drawing Tips to Take Your Art to the Next Level: A Guide For Beginners
Have you always been interested in visual arts and illustration? Have you been looking for ways to build your drawing skills and turn your simple drawings into masterpieces? Well, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve got some great beginner drawing tips right here to get you started:
“Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see – to see correctly – and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye.” Kimon Nicolaides
Use the Right Tools
If you’re looking to take it a step further and commit to taking a deep dive into building your drawing skills, then it’s time to start focusing on detail. You can improve your drawing significantly simply by focusing on the small things – like choosing the right pencil grade or using the right shading techniques. The pencil strokes you use, all the way to how you’re holding your pencil in your hand really can make all the difference in your drawing process and final product.
To start, make sure you’re using the right drawing tools to get the right effect f. If you want to draw a hard, thin line but only have a dark, soft pencil, you’re going to lose what gives your piece the variation and visual interest it needs.
So, for the first of our drawing tips, let’s talk about some basic tools you might want to consider using:
A. Pencils
Your pencil is the bridge between your mind and your drawing, so it’s important to make sure you’re using the right one. You may have noticed there are different kinds of pencils that have numbers and letters on them: B, F, 2H, HB…
It can get a bit confusing – especially if you’re just beginning your drawing journey. But don’t worry. It’s actually pretty self-explanatory.
All these letters and numbers will help you understand how hard and dark the lead will be. Here’s a simple breakdown:
H pencils – H stands for “hardness”. You might see 2H, 3H and so on. The higher the number before the H, the harder the lead will be. The harder the lead is, the lighter and more harsh it will appear on paper.
B pencils – B represents the darkness or “blackness” of the graphite. The higher the number is before the B, the darker and softer the lead will be. 2B is a recommended one to start with, it has some softness and darkness without being too overwhelming, and you can get a decent range between dark and light.
HB pencils – HB pencils will give you more or less the same look as the standard pencil we use to write with.
F pencils – F stands for “fine”. The F pencil is pretty similar to the tone of an HB pencil, it is just slightly harder and lighter in color and will therefore stay sharper for longer.
It’s also important to keep in mind quality, brand, and geography when choosing what pencils you use as it might change the look of the graphite on paper.
When it comes to drawing tools, you might not use pencil and paper. Instead, you might choose different drawing tools like charcoal, pastels, pens or mechanical pencils. You may even want to start digital drawing! But a great way to improve your drawing and achieve more detail, depth, and texture is by simply paying more attention to the different tones you’re drawing with. This will help add complexity and improve the overall visual interest of your work.
B. Erasers
In your drawing practice, you can always opt for the standard type of eraser you used in school. But there are also some different options that can help take your drawing skills to the next level.
You can invest in what’s called a kneaded eraser that looks and feels like a piece of clay or putty. The great thing about this eraser is that you can mold and shape it however you want to remove very specific, detailed parts of your drawing.
For less detailed parts of your drawings or larger sections of your page, a gum eraser is great. But make sure to find the right eraser that works best for what you need as an artist. Being particular in what drawing tool you use when erasing different parts of your piece can really can make all the difference in the quality of your work – and it help ease the drawing process overall.
1: Stand Back and Glance Back and Forth
Throughout your drawing, take a break and stand back several feet, glancing back and forth between your drawing and your reference image many times. This gives you fresh eyes — the same effect as if you left your drawing for a while and came back, so you can see if it’s accurate.
If you don’t do this, you’ll find out the hard way that you inevitably end up with a drawing shaded so heavily it leaves a ghost image you can’t fully erase. I recommend using this secret throughout your drawing sessions — especially before you start heavy shading.
2: Draw Upside-Down
When you can’t figure out what the verbal identity of an image is (a bird, for example), you start focusing more on the shapes that make it up. This tricks your mind into taking on complex images you would otherwise find intimidating.
– Claire Watson Garcia
3: Basic Shapes and Measurements in the Human Figure
A trapezoid shape, with the wide part at the top, works well to suggest the upper portion of the human trunk from the shoulders to the waist. A shorter trapezoid, turned upside-down, can be used to rough in the area of the trunk from the waist to the crotch.
In the average person, the crotch is the mid-point of the figure. The arms and hands hang down to the mid-point or slightly past.
The head is roughed in as an oval shape. The average adult human is approximately six head-and-neck-lengths high. The two trapezoid shapes representing the trunk are usually as long as two head-and-neck sections.
The upper legs extend up into the lower trunk to connect with the pelvis, making the area taken up by the legs and feet approximately the same length as three-and-a-half head-and-neck sections.
