Just Draw It, Issue #9 -- Back to School for All Ages!
August 14, 2008

Summer is over and it's time to get back to work on improving our drawing skills. As those still in school begin to get their backpacks, pens, pencils and paper organized it's important for all of us to realize the importance of learning as it applies specifically to art. It's never too late to get back into drawing and there's so much great info that can be found when you set your mind to it.

Mastering the Art of Drawing - Tips for the Art Student

- Focus on one thing until you really master it.

The artist's personality tends to be one that wanders and always finds new and exciting things to be inspired by - this is the nature of our creative minds, however this is not always the best way to approach learning a new drawing skill or technique. Let's take drawing a nose for example. You can learn how to draw it by looking at a lesson, or looking at photographs, and once you are able to draw your first 'good' looking nose you may think that you have mastered that part of the face.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Creating a 'good' looking drawing of any subject matter is really just the beginning. Now that your eyes and hand are in sync, it's time to engage your brain and really imprint the method of drawing that you just learned into your artist skillset forever.

If you stop once you have drawn your first good drawing it won't be long before what you learned starts to slip away, and within a few months you may have forgotten all together. This is unfortunate because it also means that the time you originally spent learning how to draw is now also wasted, and that's not a good thing!

So what's the solution? What you should do draw the thing you just learned over and over again. Before you start to think about how boring that will be (hehe!) start to think about the different ways that you could draw the object. Let's say for example that you are learning how to draw a tree. Really think about this tree and how it would look in all different situations, such as:

• How does the tree look from different viewpoints?
• How does the tree look in different seasons?
• How does the light and shadow look at different times of day?
• How would you draw the same tree if there was extremely strong wind blowing against it?
• What about if the tree were on fire?!

Try and come up with as many imaginative and different situations as possible and then use what you just learned and try to draw out the ideas in your imagination! This exercise will really help imprint what you have learned into your head.

Don't expect that all of your imaginative drawings will be winners - that's totally fine! What is more important is that you are building on your creative thinking ability and also expanding your understanding of the world around you and the things that you want to draw.

From the Mailroom:

In the last newsletter I talked about the free portrait drawing course. Well, all course lessons are up now, and there has been so much wonderful email response that I thought I would share a few of them with you all incase you still haven't checked out the course.

Thank You . You are just Awesome.. I enjoy the info You put on your site & I just wanted to thank You for the video workshops Awesome.. Thanks.
Barb

You are the absolute best! In my 60's I just started drawing, and was struggling until I found you. I am on a fixed income and can't afford to take lessons lessons here so you are a life saver. Using your lesson on drawing faces I drew the first face that actually looked like a human face. You make placement of facial features foolproof. I can't wait to try your other lessons. Thanks again.
Thea

That's it for now. I'm just back from a very inspiring trip to Japan, and it's time to get back to work learning and improving drawing!

Yours truly,

Mitch Bowler
http://www.drawingcoach.com