To Enhance My Drawing Skills

Maha, if you want tips, tricks, and technique advice should you be working with charcoals, I have started this topic, wich i will be adding new things to on a regular basis:

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1439792

Well Joe, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. It MAY be true art can not be taught but TECHNIQUE certainly can. Alone at home one will have a hard time discovering technique, which can be picked up with a bit of sage advice through teachers. Some of course will be better than others, but going out into the world to learn can be a short cut to years of trial and error. Plus you have an added benefit in meeting other artists with whom you can share ideas. A very valuable resource if I do say so.

My opinion, art can not be taught...you either have it in ya or you dont. I suggest practice as well as trial & error experimentation.

1) Buy yourself a spiral bound sketch pad.
2) start clipping random images from magazines
3) open your sketch book so that two sheets of paper are showing
4) on one side, tape one magazine cliping
5) repeat until sketch pad is filled
6) start drawing what you see, turn page, repeat.

I find myself quite masterful in charcoals. I can not teach you how to draw, but I am always more than willing to help with techniques.

All good advice above I would add:

Many high schools have "adult" classes in the evenings, which can cost only a few dollars. Many years ago I enrolled both of my boys and myself; it was a great refresher course for me. Also in 1995 when I felt my drawing skills were slipping I began to carry a sketchbook with me everywhere, along with pencils, and kneaded eraser. I am currently on books 7 and 8. I started to add water color sketches along with pen and ink and began making notes so the books are both art and a diary. It has been very fulfilling.

Good luck to you and remember... life is a drawing class.

Look for local artists that teach what you want to learn. It may be cheaper than college classes.

I am glad that I got many replies n solutions... Thanks all :) and pls do visit my gallery it's jus a starting stage and help me with ur feedback I have long way to go and iam practicing for that,thanks again :)

I assume you mean tradtional over digital. (Not that it matters) I started painting traditionally, cause I never owned a computer until I was 25. And the idea of painting on a computer back in the early 90s was a primitive and ludicrous idea. However, the prinicipal is very much the same.

Whilst I completed my years in art college, I actually quit my BA Hons course in Graphics cause tbh I hated it. What I was being taught was restricting and if you will excuse my French utter b******s. So I went to a local college, got myself into Desktop Publishing and spent the next 20 years in Magazine publishing. Now that may not sound very arty at all. But I was lucky enough to be using the packages everyday.

However, that said, more recently I've left the profession (not by choice) and had to come back to basics now trying to make it as a self employed artist. And oh boy. What a smack in the face that has been!

Learning a program on a computer is one thing, but learning to draw well and sell art is something entirely different.

It is also a question asked so often and usually the hardest to answer.

I always remember my dad learning watercolours for the first time, and as the artist in the family, I always used to say dad, just remember that the grass is never green and the sky is never blue. Always look beyond the obvious, practice till you're bored, and if you still find you have a passion at the end of it, then you will probably find yourself amongst the happiest people alive doing what you love the most. ART! :D

And if that still doesn't help, get yourself on a decent art course or buy a good book!

This is a good book:

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Figure-Drawing-Burne-Hogarth/dp/0823015777

Books from Amazon ( very reasonable) , videos from Youtube.

Join Pinterest & collect as many tutorials as you can.

Nothing beats practice though. Just keep doing it. Over, & over, & over again.............

I took some Lynda.com courses for Adobe Illustrator which helped me learn how to use that software but I have never taken an online drawing course. Everyone learns differently. I didn't do it the way Roy suggests by drawing basic shapes and putting them together. I mostly learned by finding the shapes in shadows and contours of the subject. That said, there are a few "tricks" that you can learn in a drawing class that you may not discover on your own. As Roy said, use cheap paper to practice, like newsprint. That way you won't be too afraid to waste it. Try drawing with charcoal as well as pencil. And practice, practice, practice.

Well, if you want to pay money to learn to draw that is ok. My advice is to find a good drawing book at the library or in a book store (an art book store should have several good ones). First you learn to draw shapes - just like in geometry - circles, squares, triangles, etc, then you add dimension into tubes, pillars, cubes, pyramids - a good book will show how this relates to everything/every object. then it's a matter of practice, practice. draw ordinary things first, a glass, a bowl, a book, a bottle or can. boring and tedious sometimes - but when you can get those simple objects done - then you can graduate to things that are more oddly shaped - trees - which don't look like lollipops - houses and streets - where you learn perspective. Finally you learn to add texture and depth along with that perspective. finally you graduate to The hardest part of the art of drawing is perhaps the human figure and animals - to get it right. Learn to draw on "cheap" paper and using ordinary pencils - even a mechanical pencil. Here is my one hint - even a single line has two sides to it - regardless of how thin it is.

You may be able to find some free tutorials on Youtube that might help too.
Best wishes with your studies.

Thank you so much Anderson :)is it ok to take some online courses? Is it very helpful ?

If you have a community college nearby you might want to take a couple of art classes there. I took basic drawing and photography at community college and learned a lot. The most important thing with learning how to draw is to keep practicing. Set up a still life, use a photo reference, whatever subject you choose then really try to observe the play of light and shadow on the surfaces before putting anything on paper. For linear drawings try to vary the width and darkness of your lines to give variety to the composition.