When learning to draw its important to remember that you are learning, your not Leonardo Da Vinci. Alot of people simply give up because their drawing doesn't look like a photograph. There are alot of practice exercises to learn how to draw. These are just are few i have learnt to use and have helped greatly.

1. Continuous line drawing.
For this exercise you simply draw your subject without taking your pencil off the page. once you've had enough of that, try doing the same again but this time dont look at the page. This helps because when you look at your page your mind tells you what should be there. when you stop looking at the page, you start drawing what your eyes see rather than what ur mind thinks should be there. Altough most of what you produce will look abstract, it will still have a resemblence.

2. Drawing with shapes
When you are drawing, you tend to focus too much on the subject, and it can end up making the subject look distorted. To help counter this, in this exercise you draw the shapes surrounding the subject first. Drop a bunch of pencils or matches and draw them but start by drawing the gaps between them. Then try drawing other objects. Everything makes unique shapes, that when we dtaw them accurately can increase the recognisability dramatically

3. Still life
One of the best exercises is to draw still life. It doesn't matter what you draw because its the practice you get that matters. Its important to remember to draw what is there, not what you think should be there. Drawing things from different angles will also help you to get a firm idea of what it looks like so in the future it will become easier to draw.

Drawing seems to have lost a large amount of its importance with the increase in abstract artwork. Although i consider it to be a fundamental aspect needed to create an artwork that has any recognisability of the subject.

Remember to keep practicising, because the more you practice the better you become.

Learn more about this author, Eutychus.
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