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Learn how to draw anything by seeking out shapes - basic drawing skills to help beginners get started drawing quickly and easily...
How to draw anything by seeing shapes
Drawing Skills for Beginners - Making Shapes
I want to get you started drawing by sketching nature. The objective of the drawing lesson in this blog post is to understand how to sketch out the basic shapes of your drawing so that your drawing is recognisable and accurate.
This is important because although art doesn’t have to look ‘realistic’ you do want your drawing to look recognisable (unless you choose to play with the shapes and proportions for style and effect)… It’s important not to give your viewer the sensation that “there’s just something wrong about it” which can often be the case when we get things even subtly wrong.
Accuracy is something even experienced artists still need to work hard to achieve! So do accept that this will need practice and however hard you practice you will still get it wrong sometimes…
But I’m going to show you the little drawing tricks and techniques that make it easier...
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In this previous post, I spoke about a renewed interest in our Celtic history and culture, my personal links with this, and how I’ll be introducing Celtic knotwork elements into my nature-inspired artworks.
I also mentioned calligraphy as part of this. Calligraphy is another hobby I followed keenly as a child – right into my 20s I’d create calligraphy and decorated lettering for friends and family, often to celebrate births and marriages. I’m afraid that in the last 20 years, I’ve rather left that by the wayside as illnesses and adult responsibilities caught up with myself and my household. But now, as with Celtic knotwork, my calligraphy is something that I’m recommitting myself to and learning/re-learning calligraphic skills. 
Learning Calligraphy skills
How to plan your artistic practice to fit into your daily life…
Create the right mood and mindset for your drawing by making time and having the right space for creativity. 
Make time for your art - create a space for your creativity!
In this blog post we're going to look at how to plan and prepare for your artistic time.
This is so that you are creating in a productive, mindful, and calming mindset for an enjoyable session. We want to make sure that you’ve got everything you need to make your creative times relaxing and enjoyable.
Aside from a pencil and some paper, the most important thing you need to bring is the right mindset… But we’re not going to leave it to chance!
There are some easy ideas that, once you get into a routine, will bring your busy mind into the quiet, meditative place where it’s so enjoyable to get creating… Because creating the right setting is really about creating the right mindset.
I'm proud to have contributed a 5-Day Start Drawing Challenge to the new Make it in DesignFREE 'Gift of Creativity' online classroom.
The 'Gift of Creativity' is a special online resource filled with creative inspiration, challenges, tutorials, colouring sheets and projects to keep you and your family occupied during these difficult weeks - great for adults or kids, home-schooling projects, beginners or the more experienced - there's a ton of resources there already and there'll be more added each week, so if you're at all interested, bookmark it and check it out. My contribution is the '5-Day Start Drawing Challenge' which you can find in the 'Drawing' section of the classroom. All the details are here... 
Top drawing materials - supplies to get you started with no fuss
The absolute basics! My recommended top drawing materials supplies to get you started drawing with no unnecessary fuss or massive expenditure…
This post is all about choosing the right drawing tools for you! It’s something that’s very personal, so there’s no right or wrong thing to choose. There’s only the thing that’s right or wrong for you – and it’s absolutely okay for that to change, either gradually over time or all of a sudden. 
Starting to draw with pen and pencil
It’s important that you’re happy and comfortable with how you do your art…
And that it feels like an extension of who you are and what you’re about so that you get the most enjoyment out of it. I’m also not about fancy equipment or expensive equipment… I’ve been broke… and art paper, pens, and pencils were an expensive luxury! But guess what? For drawing your own way you don’t need them! Let me repeat that… You don’t need anything fancy to get the benefits of creative and expressive drawing. All you need is something to draw with and something to draw on. Got that? Then you’re sorted. Having said that, your experience of drawing is always going to be far more pleasurable if you actually enjoy using your tools. So this lesson is about helping you choose what to start drawing with and what to start drawing on...
Of course, there are very many ways of using technology to create art – and I only know a tiny bit really – enough to create the work I want to create…. So we can’t cover absolutely all digital techniques here!
But I do want to share with you how I use digital art technologies to create art – and why I’m certain that this art form should definitely be considered ‘real art’. My own artworks all actually start well away from the computer, which isn't always the case for digital art, but is still quite common these days as artists look to take the best of traditional and digital techniques. I sit down with pen and paper – I draw and add colour. I use a black fine-liner pen, and Promarker inks. I find drawing in this traditional way allows me to draw naturally and in my own particular drawing style. 
Raven drawing
Drawing apple blossom flowers in pen and marker
Easy artist colour theory for you to understand how to use colour practically in your art.
Colour is one of those things that attracts us to creating art – it’s exciting and emotional and it gives our drawings life and personality. 
Colourful floral art by Lotti Brown
It looks so easy… so why is it sometimes so damn hard?!
Let’s start by looking at some easy ways to add colour to our art –
Colourful oil pastel ideas!
In this blog post, we’ll learn techniques for using colour to add form, depth, light, shade, and shape to your drawing – as well as the excitement of colour!
This is important, because as well as being an expressive tool to give emotion, feeling, and excitement to your artwork, colour is also a tool that you can use to give your artwork shape, depth, and form. In the earliest parts of our drawing, we spend time looking at our subject matter and not our page so that we can draw the outline correctly… We’ve done lots of hard work with our basic line drawing and may even have added texture and shade (mark making) with pen, pencil, or charcoal. So now we have that already in place, it’s the time to really immerse ourselves in the colour on the page or canvas. You can apply the following ideas to any medium that you choose to use to apply colour to your artwork. And you can adapt the ideas to suit your own style – and I would encourage you to do so.
Choosing colour for an artwork or design can be a really fun part of the creative process, but sometimes the sheer amount of colour choice available is just a little bit overwhelming, so here's a few tips I've learned over the past few years to help...
Of course, if the artwork or design is of flowers, animals, or birds I find the the natural colour of the flower, animal or bird is a great place to start, but for more abstract designs, or ones where you don't necessarily want the colours to look true to life, you can start by picking colours out of a favourite photo... Here are some I tried from some of my own holiday snaps... 
Inspired by Venetian reflections
Have you always wanted to learn how to use colour more confidently in your art?
Would you love to know how to create compositions that work? Then I've got the perfect courses for you... Today, I launch:
How we learn art matters!
Where some art teaching just teaches you specific art techniques so that you can recreate an individual artwork or copy the teacher’s style, I want to help you learn art to think like an artist, to be creative, and to learn art and drawing in your own way… There’s so many benefits to learning a creative way of thinking, an artist’s way of seeing and thinking… From the way that we can feel free to enjoy ourselves and not subject to judgement from ourselves and others as to if we’re doing art ‘the right way’… To how we learn to flex and strengthen our creative thinking muscles! Literally changing the way we approach problems in our everyday personal lives and potentially benefiting society as a whole as we bring new ways of thinking into the world… 
Learn to think like an artist!
We need to feel free when we learn art and we need to learn how to be creative…
Not just to learn to draw and paint but to learn how to be artists… You might have noticed that I teach art and drawing differently to a lot of other artists. This is deliberate… I don’t share my exact techniques and I don’t provide instructions for a quick fix so that you can quickly learn how to draw specific things… Because, while this may allow you to make a fair copy of the original – which feels good, pretty satisfying, right? – it isn’t you and it isn’t creative! Instead, I prefer you to learn art by me providing a basic instruction and understanding of the fundamental principles that allows you to go away and find out your own way of doing things… Play a bit, get curious, develop your own drawing technique and evolve your own unique artistic style. |
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