I'm a self-taught artist and count drawing as a skill of mine. I wouldn't say I'm a "natural" at it and would have definitely benefited from some structured learning.
Here are some of my recommendations/thoughts:
1. Bring a sketchbook with you everywhere and draw and observe what you see. There are shortcuts and techniques but like anything else it takes practice and time.
2. Humans are the most difficult because they are what we're experts at. We see and react to human faces from the day we are born so it's tricky to get right. Don't be discouraged.
3. Writing your name is drawing a picture. You've probably practiced it along with the alphabet numerous times. This is drawing in it's essence.
4. Learn what a core and cast shadow are if you don't already know. This will quickly improve your rendering.
5. Youtube. There is a higher level of skill in art then at any point in history and you have access to it. Just like any other field the knowledge passed down improves year after year.
6. Don't worry about the outcome. Drawing is intimate and doesn't need to be shown to anyone ever.
7. Drawing is a beautiful skill. You're creating something out of nothing.
>Humans are the most difficult because they are what we're experts at. We see and react to human faces from the day we are born so it's tricky to get right. Don't be discouraged.
Totally agree. A few thoughts:
1. I watched a show once on TV that used a grid pattern approach that appealed to my engineering aesthetics. They made a transparent square grid pattern that was placed on the desired picture as a temporary overlay. You then create a scaled up grid in very, very light pencil on your desired sketch piece of paper. You finally, started to work the large outer boundaries first and then iterate inwards to the greater details of the face. By doing this, your proportions relative to one another stayed pretty spot on (almost like bumper rails) and yet you could then start to take more liberties with how to express the smaller details:
- light vs. heavy shading
- smudge vs. crisp
- solid vs. wispy, etc ...
While not the fastest way to begin sketching, it gives you confidence and made me better with each one.
2. I've learned that natural forms like Human faces never have well-defined lines - otherwise it looks too cartoon-like. Whether its because of bad eye-sight :-) or the 3-dimensional view, most boundaries tend to be fuzzy, gradations of tone and soft boundaries.
3. After the rough outside boundaries of a face, I focus on the eyes first and foremost. I will obsess on building out the eyes until they "look right" to me. I won't move past this until they feel right. I've found that neglecting or deferring the sketching of the eyes ... has always resulted in a face that I wasn't happy with. I can't express it precisely, but the entire mood, expressiveness and essence of face is evoked by the way you represent the eyes of a face, human or otherwise.
4. After practicing with just pencil sketches first, I then found pastel chalks to be a fun next step to take your finger smudging and shading to a whole new level.
5. Eventually, after some practice and experience - your eye for proportion gets so good that the grid becomes mostly unnecessary. You are then able to freehand other irregular body features much better like closeups of hands and legs as well as animals in general.
To add on to #2: people are hard to draw because we instinctively recognize imperfections in other humans (maybe evolution behavior?) and can easily fall into uncanny valley when things like joints/bones don't exactly look right
FWIW, I found male faces/bodies are somewhat easier to get away imperfections since they're generally more rugged
A few additional points, as someone who spent several years taking courses in drawing in college.
- Don't get caught on the nerd treadmill of tools-before-effort. You can draw with whatever is in your junk drawer. You can draw well with $40 of different hardness pencils and kneaded erasers from an art supply store. Beyond that is a waste.
- As parent said, practice practice practice. Which means finding time to practice. For which a portable sketchbook and basic portable kit is a huge help.
- (Disagree with parent, here) Find someone(s) who won't hold back to judge your work. You need someone who can say (and who you can handle hearing say) "This part sucks." Because you need to hear that, and work on it, until it doesn't. In professional training this is "jury." One-directional courses (them to you) aren't going to help here, as you need feedback.
- Start drawing from life, because you have an infinite supply of content that all obeys the laws we assume to be true (perspective, lighting, gravity, etc). And you'll be able to tell if it looks correct or not.
- Drawing from pictures can help "freeze" a moment. This is especially important for outdoor light and shadow, as otherwise the sun angle will change while you're working.
- Learn to draw what you see, not a representation of what you see. This means don't draw a symbol of a house, but draw the house in front of you. Focusing on details and working through them methodically helps avoid symbolism. E.g. draw that line, or that corner, not the whole thing.
- Draw with intent: every drawing should have a concrete goal when you're learning. It doesn't have to include everything. Consider including or excluding lighting and shadow, which takes a huge amount of time to get right. E.g. circular mass studies, perspective line work, proportion. Think about what you want in this drawing, and then practice only that.
- Find an art buddy or community. This is the opposite of jury! ;) Where you go when you're feeling like your work sucks and you'll never be good, and they'll remind you of all the ways you're awesome.
Edit: 110% agree with sibling comment re: grids for proportion work, when you're learning. Inability to maintain proportion across the work is a huge source of beginner "doesn't look right"ness. Eventually you'll internalize it, and get better at relative proportion with other things in the drawing, but they're a good crutch to start with.
Here are some of my recommendations/thoughts:
1. Bring a sketchbook with you everywhere and draw and observe what you see. There are shortcuts and techniques but like anything else it takes practice and time.
2. Humans are the most difficult because they are what we're experts at. We see and react to human faces from the day we are born so it's tricky to get right. Don't be discouraged.
3. Writing your name is drawing a picture. You've probably practiced it along with the alphabet numerous times. This is drawing in it's essence.
4. Learn what a core and cast shadow are if you don't already know. This will quickly improve your rendering.
5. Youtube. There is a higher level of skill in art then at any point in history and you have access to it. Just like any other field the knowledge passed down improves year after year.
6. Don't worry about the outcome. Drawing is intimate and doesn't need to be shown to anyone ever.
7. Drawing is a beautiful skill. You're creating something out of nothing.