Drawing lessons, learning to draw

Here are a few simple drawing lessons. You really can learn to draw with confidence! Read through the entire exercise, and then go play!

Some simple warm up exercises you can do.  Just copy the below pictures.  First, do a few loops attempting to make a uniform circle.  Why warm up?  The muscles in your hands, forearms and shoulders need to warm up a bit, especially as you age.  Not saying you're old, but as any athlete prepares, you should too.  A few stretches of the fingers, shoulders.  A few windmills to get blood down to your fingers.  You'll be surprised at the level of control and stability this will create in your hands as you are drawing. 

Ever see a concert pianist warm up, or a rock musician.  They do!

Try different things like keeping the height uniform, or the spacing between each circle the same.  This will help with warming up the finger, hand and wrist muscles and helping your eye hand coordination.

Pictures of simple drawing lessons exercises below:

You might think doing the above is abit simple and dull. Trust me, it does work in helping you get started.  Sometimes, this is all I do when contemplating my next painting. 

Then drawing pencil sketches of my subject, I check out a small thumbnail to determine if the subject is right.  This is why a few drawing lessons now are so important to your future painting.

Drawing is a skill that can be re-learned fairly quickly, and these drawing lessons are the place to be.  Why do I say re-learned?  Because, we all have this ability.

As a child, we all have learned these exercises in Kindergarten and First Grade.  We were taught in order to Write!  We learned how to draw all sorts of things. 

Somewhere, however, in that process, we received either positive or negative reinforcement.  You either continued to draw, or began to look at other things you were good at in order to receive that positive reinforcement. 

Your drawing skills may have began to wain from that point on.  We can get them BACK! Start with these simple easy drawing lessons!

Simple shading drawing lessons

Does this seem mundane?  Trust me, doing a sheet full of simple shapes, then adding shadows help again with your eye to hand coordination.  It teaches you that applying a bit more pressure to the pencil will give a darker line, and sometimes a wider line.  Varying the pressure will give you a dark to light effect.  

Shading or Modeling is one of the keys to making realistic paintings and drawings.

As discussed in greater detail for the dead layer, when you get this right, your paintings will be extraordinary!

Picture of barrel to tree example:

Then below, a picture of an easy apple:

Lessons that feature drawing roses

Roses can be intimidating, but they are one of my favorite things to sketch and draw.  Follow along with me on this lesson that includes 2 videos that cover a simple to a more complex rose drawing.

Perspective, what is it?

We will talk a little about perspective.  This is difficult for some to understand, but it is explained here in a very simple manner.

This is more of something you need to think about, or a bit of head knowledge that explains what you see in nature.  If when drawing and painting you draw and paint exactly what you see, this will not be a stumbling block for you.  The key here is "observation". 

I repeat myself here because it is something that needs to be remembered throughout your art travels.  You must paint and draw exactly what you SEE! Not what you think should be there, or what your brain tells you should be there, but only what your EYES show you to be there! 

Below pictures of perspective:

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Please explore more of these drawing lessons below.  

Related Drawing Pages

Beginner Drawing Lessons Complex Drawing Lessons Drawing pencil sketches Drawing Tips Learning the tools A special Drawing Guide Tool Drawing Tutorial-how to draw anything How to Transfer a Drawing Learn to Draw Flower Drawing Rose Drawings Warm-up Drawing Lessons How to draw a wolf

More on perspective and drawing what you see, not what you think you should see.

What your head knows is that the road is equal distance from either side of you (parallel), but what you see when you stand there are 2 lines that converge onto a point way down the road in front of you. 

This point is called the vanishing point.  To make convincing drawings, this needs to be drawn as you see it.  You will notice things further away from you are smaller.  Colors that are bright up close become faded and gray the farther away they are from you.<br><br>Don't get to caught up in perspective right now.  Still life pictures will have a certain amount of perspective to worry about, but if you draw and paint what you see, you will not have any trouble! 

A fantastic resource,  so grab it while you can!
Nolan Clark has done it again!  By putting together this comprehensive course in Drawing, he never fails to amaze me.  A great artist, author and a great teacher with a course that will help you in this must have skill of drawing.  Remember, painting is drawing with a brush, and you need to be able to draw well to improve your painting skills!