I'm a non-artist, and I've read several books on how to draw, including the (in)famous "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." Every one of the books was way too advanced for my primitive skills, including the ones that claimed they were for absolute beginners.
I haven't tried this guy's exercises, but I applaud his approach. Just learning to control your pencil, learning to make smooth and organized marks on paper, are skills that many people (definitely including me) don't have.
I am an artist and these kind of articles and numerous similar videos on YouTube: 'How to draw faces... How to draw a cat... How to draw a horse...' annoy the hell out of me. As if 'learning to draw' consisted of following some formulaic recipe, without even having the object in question in front of you, or even having seen it.
The number one skill in learning to draw is learning to see properly. The vast majority of non-artistic people look at things without ever really seeing them. A classic example can be found on Gianluca Gimini's Velocipedia project:
Mechanically filling a page with shapes or following some idiotic 'how to draw a...' tutorial on YouTube will only teach you how to fill a page with shapes or make a bad copy of someone else's bad drawing. Learning to really look at things and attempting to put down what you see [as opposed to what you thought the item looked like before you actually studied it] is a far far more useful exercise.
I take your point that this article might provide some useful exercises for loosening up your doodling technique, to people who find it awkward to manipulate a pen or pencil freely. But calling it 'learning to draw' is as hyperbolic as calling some warm-up stretches 'learning to run a marathon'.
allears|3 years ago
I haven't tried this guy's exercises, but I applaud his approach. Just learning to control your pencil, learning to make smooth and organized marks on paper, are skills that many people (definitely including me) don't have.
Normille|3 years ago
The number one skill in learning to draw is learning to see properly. The vast majority of non-artistic people look at things without ever really seeing them. A classic example can be found on Gianluca Gimini's Velocipedia project:
https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/
Here's a another example:
https://www.boredpanda.com/famous-brand-logos-drawn-from-mem...
Mechanically filling a page with shapes or following some idiotic 'how to draw a...' tutorial on YouTube will only teach you how to fill a page with shapes or make a bad copy of someone else's bad drawing. Learning to really look at things and attempting to put down what you see [as opposed to what you thought the item looked like before you actually studied it] is a far far more useful exercise.
I take your point that this article might provide some useful exercises for loosening up your doodling technique, to people who find it awkward to manipulate a pen or pencil freely. But calling it 'learning to draw' is as hyperbolic as calling some warm-up stretches 'learning to run a marathon'.