Drawing can be viewed as putting lines, shapes, values, and textures on a surface. Learning to draw as a skill is a lot like learning how to write and most of us remember that struggle, although cursive has become an extinct skill in lots of schools today. There are several terms concerning the graphic process of drawing: doodling, sketching, scribbling, etc., but this informative article will concentrate on the act of drawing as a process to translate a three-dimensional object(s) or setting with tools that make marks. This procedure is basic to many every kind of art and design. Look around you. Every manmade object began as a drawing on a surface. Sketched as a concept, then drawn more accurately to raised relay the vision, then maybe onto a drafting table or computer aided design (CAD) process for further refinements.
But let's speak about drawing not only as an art, something unheard of not too many years ago, but in order to see. As beautifully as Cezanne or Ingres or David could draw, in their lifetime, drawing was considered a preliminary foundation for a portrait, still-life, or landscape painting. Today, their drawings can stand on their own as beautiful works of art. Their procedure of analyzing form and translating it into shapes, lines, values, and textures written down with pencils, charcoal, chalk, and ink---with amazing vision---leave us with remarkable actively works to view and study. Occasionally, their drawings ended up by today's standards stronger pieces of art compared to the resulting paintings.
Drawing is a process and should be approached as a result. I would recommend that you never set out to "make a drawing". Use drawing to investigate what you see. Gain control over your medium (graphite, charcoal, etc.) and make use of large paper. Draw using large muscle control before trying to make use of fine motor skills. Which will come. Don't worry about detail. Which will come. Putting accurate details in a drawing which has poor form, no comprehension of spatial relationships or negative space, and little comprehension of composition, is similar to decorating a cake created from adobe. Observe your subject (let's hypothetically say it's a life class with a nude model) and start to attract in circular or elliptical strokes, rapidly capturing the torso, hips, upper then lower legs, arms, head---moving your hand almost constantly from part to part. This is certainly gesture drawing. Capture the position and relationship of basic shapes very quickly. You ought to have a loose pattern of "scribbly" circles and ellipses of the whole body in only a moment, you can forget. Gesture drawing forces you to concentrate on basic forms and their relationship to each other. Here is the basis of understanding form and its position in space. In undergrad school our drawing professor had us fill 18"x24" newsprint pads---both sides for the paper---and using 8-10 pads in a 12-week class. We used willow and vine charcoal for these exercises so we understood the human form in space. Do this and you'll as well.
Then, apply this approach to landscape, animal, and still-life drawing. Even portraits. We now have a propensity to desire to draw a "picture" with accurate detail. In the event that you work toward that goal as they are prepared to work diligently using this and other exercises, you'll be able to in order to make a "picture" which have meaning, that is truthful, that is accurate.
Draw. Draw just as much and as often as possible. Treat it as a way to see and to understand. A fantastic book with accompanying workbook is Betty Edward's Drawing on the Right Side associated with the Brain. See clearly to comprehend, then perform some exercises. You can actually draw (or draw better) in eight weeks or less. You can find it on Amazon, or better yet, at quality art supply stores where you are able to select from an enormous assortment of drawing supplies, pads, and papers.
