Tips For How to Draw Better Instantly

Charles Yang’s course is a great place to quickly improve your craft and
make your drawing ideas easy to bring to life. Covering everything from
breaking down your artwork into manageable pieces to creating a 3D
look and feel to your work, you’ll sharpen your skills in no time.

Armed with these techniques, take some time to practice the following
exercises that will help you continue to improve.

Exercise 1: Keep a Daily Sketchbook

Daily sketching is a wonderful tool to file under “things to practice

drawing.” Whether you use your daily practice as a therapeutic measure
or simply as an outlet for your creative energy, you will find that both
your drawing skills and your idea generation will improve when you put
pen (or pencil) to sketchbook on a daily basis.
For those who are new to drawing, sketching regularly is a great way to
hone your skills. And while sketching ideas for new artists aren’t always
easy to come by, Skillshare instructor and illustrator Brianna Gilmartin
suggests taking a look around. An effective way to come up with good
drawing ideas is to simply start with the things you’re surrounded by—
people, places, or objects.

Exercise #2: Warm Up to Improve Speed and Coordination

As an artist, developing warm-up routines helps get your hands and arms
primed and working the way you want them to. Not only that, warm-ups
improve the speed and accuracy of your hand-eye coordination over time.
Want to try it yourself? This exercise involves drawing free-form textures
and is a great way to train yourself for more complex work.
You’ll need a large, clean sheet of sketching paper, a fine-point drawing
utensil, and a broad surface area. The goal is to fill your page with
clusters of different textures and arrangements in a short amount of time.
It’s less about quality and more about quantity. No judgment here—just
get going with easy things to draw.
Set a timer for five minutes and start doodling small, individual shapes
and lines in the top left corner of your page. Focus on keeping a quick
pace and think about capturing different textures as you go. When your
time runs out, take a moment to observe and appreciate what you’ve
created and look for patterns in your sketch.
 Skillshare instructor Emma Woodthorpe also suggests continuous line
drawing as a warm-up exercise to keep you connected to your drawings.
Continuous line drawing helps to disconnect from the idea that art
and drawings need to be perfect and allows for more nimble creativity as
shapes and objects begin to take form. It’s a great warm-up for both your
body and your mind!

Ready to give it a try? Start with a blank sheet of drawing paper and a
medium point felt-tipped pen. Next, imagine a subject or look at a
photograph, such as a portrait, for inspiration. Then, start drawing your
subject and don’t lift your pen until you’re finished.

Keep in mind that you’re working to find unexpected ways to travel from
one feature to the next—from the lips to the ear to the eyes, for example
—without interrupting the continuity of your lines. This helps you to
understand how, rather than what, you are drawing.

Another fun exercise for continuous line drawing is to look at yourself in

the mirror and to draw your face without lifting your pen from the page.
It seems counterintuitive at first but, before you know it, you’ll be more
connected to the biomechanics of your drawing style and ready to take on
more complex exercises.

Exercise #3: Use Perspective to Make Drawings More Realistic

Especially if you’re trying to improve your realistic drawing skills, you’re
probably familiar with the idea of perspective. Perspective is simply the
angle from which you’re viewing and drawing a subject. If you are sitting
on a park bench across from a fountain, for example, your drawing will
be displayed from that angle: with a large fountain front and center, and
the people and objects behind it much smaller.

However, perspective can be one of the toughest skills to master, and it’s
helpful to engage in exercises that will help you improve your grasp on
perspective. Once you do, says Skillshare instructor Milan Glozić, it’ll be
easier to draw and paint more realistic images from your imagination.
He suggests starting with this “gridded room” exercise so that you’ll have
guide points to help shape your perspective. Grab a piece of paper and a
couple of pencils, and dive in:
 Exercise #4: Improve Proportion

Much like perspective, correct proportions help make your drawings

more realistic. Simply put, proportion is the relationship between height,
width, and depth in art and helps to scale the people, animals, and objects
in your drawings.

The grid method is a great tool to practice proportions, says Skillshare

instructor Brooke Glaser, who explains it as “putting training wheels” on
your proverbial art bike. Her course teaches you how to use a grid to see
proportions better.

If you’re looking for a simple exercise to begin working with grids, begin
with an image that you want to draw, a ruler, your favorite graphite
pencil, and an eraser. Then, draw vertical and horizontal lines across your
image to mimic the look of traditional graph paper. One inch wide by one
inch wide is a common measurement for the boxes of the grid.

Once your grid is established, label the rows and columns with numbers
(horizontally) and letters (vertically).

Next, replicate the grid pattern on a piece of blank drawing paper—which

becomes your drawing grid—and lay it next to the original image, side-
by-side. Look at the coordinates of the grid on top of the photo, and
replicate them on the drawing grid. For example, look at box A1 on your
image, and try to replicate that in the A1 box on your drawing paper.
Then, look at box A2 and do the same. And so on. The goal is to
compartmentalize the drawing, so that you can replicate it and maintain
the proportions with accuracy.

It’s worth noting that though the grids will allow you to adjust the
proportions of your drawing, beginners may want to stick with the
original ratio until they have more experience.

With enough practice, you may not even need to draw the grid anymore
—experienced artists “see the grid” without having to outline it. Either
way,  this exercise is a great way to build your ability to perceive
proportions in any piece of art.
 Exercise #5: Perfect Working With Shapes

Shapes are some of the first things that we are taught to draw as young
artists, but as you continue to develop your artistic skills, they take on a
whole new value within your work. Shapes are important things to
practice drawing because they can help you create a more realistic design
or help you develop intricate patterns and fill space within abstract pieces.
But first, you need to master them!

“Shapes exercises” are simple yet effective techniques that can improve
your drawing abilities. Shapes exercises challenge you to examine
photographs and drawings by identifying the basic shapes that make up
their foundations. Once you train yourself to see (and sketch) the
foundational elements of complex works of art, you’ll become better at
understanding how images come together and ultimately end up drawing
more proportionate pieces.

To begin, you’ll need magazines or photos that you can mark up, a black
sketching marker with a chiseled nib, and a sturdy pair of scissors. Next,
select an image, photo, or advertisement that you find visually interesting
and search for basic shapes—triangles, squares, rectangles, circles, and
ovals—within the image. Trace every shape that you can identify with
your marker and repeat the process with other pieces in the magazine.
You can even cut out and save the marked-up images so that you have
examples to refer back to when you want to work on improving your eye
for drawing.

The goal of this exercise is simply to identify the shapes that make up a
photo or image. The more you practice, the more your natural ability to
see shapes in the world and in your drawings will improve.

Exercise #6: Use Stick Figures to Improve Figure Drawing

Though it sounds a little strange for an aspiring artist to draw stick
figures, they’re an exceptional tool for helping to improve figure drawing,
both realistic and freeform.

Stick figures provide the basis for our line figure drawings. When we
begin with a simple object that we’re familiar with and are capable of
drawing, it’s easy to turn these basic figures into more complex drawings.
Even experienced artists use them in their work: Glozić says he typically
starts a piece by working with basic stick figures, creating thumbnail
drawings to see what is working and what is not. Stick figures can also be
a great starting point of sketching ideas for new artists.

Exercise #7: Spend the Week Improving Your Drawing

Take it from Bea Bischoff, a freelance writer who spent a week learning
how to draw and to improve her drawing skills: there’s a lot to learn
about how to draw better! Bischoff took a different Skillshare course
every day and learned everything from how to properly hold her pencil to
how to draw her favorite subject, dogs.

Improving your drawing skills takes time and commitment. Why not plan
a week to follow in Bischoff’s footsteps and see what you can accomplish
in a five-day period?

Another fun add-on to your week of drawing improvement is to catalog

your art! By keeping a file of the pieces you’ve created, you’ll be able to
study your drawings more closely and easily measure your progress.
Pick up file folders, a cabinet, or a storage bin, and organize your
drawings in folders by type, by date, or by any other system that works
best for you.

Once monthly—or more often if you prefer—spend time reviewing your

catalog and work. Take notes in your notebook and evaluate your
strengths, areas of opportunity, and overall progress. Your catalog will
allow you to be closely connected to your art, which will help your
drawing skills evolve!

In the end, the more often you pick up your pen or pencil to do things to
practice drawing, the better you’ll become. Regularly work with these
seven exercises, and you’ll be well on your way to improving your skills
and becoming a better artist.