7 Easy Ways To Improve Your Drawing Skills

Created by Pako -

In this article, you will learn how to improve your drawing skills. It gives you advantages not only for beginners but also experts. All want to sharpen their drawing skills. Having good ideas for drawing is not enough. You have to support yourself with technical skills and improve them. The following are some tips to start your journey. 

1. Starting by Brainstorming Ideas

As an illustrator, you may get a request from your clients to create a specific drawing. It can be brief and gives you a vague idea like only mentioning a house. From here, you need skills to improve their special requests.

Sometimes, they also tell the drawing request precisely. Let's say clients want you to draw an elaborate house with a beautiful garden and warm atmosphere with your skills. Both requests require you to improve your ideas and expand your drawing skills.

In the drawing, the client's request is like a blank page. You have to fill the page with anything that you have in your mind. You should use your drawing skills to visualize ideas.

Created by Russel Cobb

Drawing skills challenge both beginners and experts to change words into visuals. Through their skills, they have to transform ideas into illustrations. They use what is called brainstorming as a tool to improve their work. 

But, what is brainstorming? In general, it is a way to generate ideas to solve a particular problem. It allows the participants to think and share their knowledge using the skills. 

People share ideas through brainstorming activities. They deliver what has come to their mind as soon as possible. So, brainstorming is essential in drawing and can help to improve your drawing skills.

How to improve your ideas after brainstorming? You can start by writing down the brief keyword on a piece of paper. Then, mark them as the essential elements for your drawing projects. 

After that, you can use your skills to pitch what is most relevant for your drawing theme. By writing down the ideas, you will not forget what you have in your mind. Besides, it helps not only improve but also map your drawing. 

Brainstorming helps you to improve your drawing skills. Additionally, it is also a way to enrich your skills. It allows you to improve your ability directly and indirectly. 

Brainstorming will be the skills to get enough elements for your 'map.' You should be able to connect your ideas and build a story from them. Moreover, brainstorming allows you to improve the subject of your work. 

Created by Anais Borcier

2. Preparing The Sketch

The above tells you about one of the necessary skills to improve your idea. After you get all the supporting elements for your drawing, you can begin with sketching. You can use a sketchbook to improve your drawing skills at ease. 

A sketchbook helps you to gather all the necessary information to encourage your skills in drawing. You keep it as a personal art laboratory. Start your first drawing with a pleasant and chaotic feeling.  

In the drawing, sketching has multiple purposes and functions. It allows you to improve your work from different compositions and angles. For life paintings, sketching helps to form your final work.

Sketching in drawing skills helps to describe and record your ideas. It becomes the medium to let you explore your concepts. Then, you can get your ideas down and form them quickly. 

Created by Maria Prihodko

Through sketching, you can be more expressive to improve your ideas. By practicing sketching, you can develop your skills from the initial ideas in your mind down onto a paper.

Although the skills are essential, be confident to draw anything you want. You can start developing drawing skills from the surrounding objects, like a familiar street or situation in restaurants. From here, you can improve them into your sketch into the ongoing drawing projects.  

For the drawing skills preparation step, you have to gather any necessary documents. You can start searching online for the related picture that matches your idea. Through this, you can improve your drawing quality and sharpen your skills. 

However, you have to remember that the online source helps to improve research. You can get inspired by the images and enhance your drawing skills. You are not allowed to copy them for your work. 

As part of skills development, you can use real images or photos to help you compose your drawing. Photos can be a better reference to improve your drawing skills. So, you can create your own style instead of copying the images directly. 

Once you master it, you will have various sketches in your art library. Use these sketches to improve your ideas and support your composition.

Created by Guoyu Li

3. Applying Composition to Your Drawing

After completing your sketching, you can proceed to the next step, which is composition. In drawing skills, composition means the way to mix the objects and subject for your work. Composition skills are also necessary for you to improve your drawing skills.

Through composition, you will arrange, organize, and combine your ideas. It becomes one of the principal skills for you to mix both subjects and objects in your drawing. Besides, composition helps you to improve the quality of your work. 

Composition enables you to sharpen your skills. Additionally, it allows you to trigger the emotions and ideas from your viewers. It is a way to improve your drawing to attract viewers' attention. 

A good composition in drawing skills can make you pull the viewers onto your work. They move their eyes through the entire artwork. Then, they can settle on the main subject of your drawing.

Created by Cam Giang

As the essential skills, composition offers you to learn three fundamental bases. They are contrast, detail, and action lines. Practicing and understanding these basics do not only improve your drawing skills but also improve your artwork quality.

Contrast is the principal factor in improving drawing skills. It enables you to mark and create the difference between elements. It can make your viewer more captivated.

Understanding and learning contrast is essential to improve the necessary skills in drawing. It provides you with light and dark colors. These colors attract your eyes immediately, whether you are in a bright or darker environment. 

Details are another fundamental factor in drawing skills. Similar to contrast, it is the eye-catching technique skills to improve your artwork quality. Details make your work look stand out and warm your eyesight. 

Action lines become the imaginary element in your drawing. Multiple action lines can cover the same zone and improve the viewers' gazing. Learning this part can enhance your skills, especially for compositions. 

You can learn compositions in drawing simply by looking at your favorite artwork offline or online. It can be from comics, illustrations, paintings, etc. You can analyze their inner workings thoroughly and expand your idea afterward. 

Created by Camelia Pham

4. Learning about Shape

After the above skills, you can continue to the next step that is shaping. In drawing skills, creating a shape is also essential to create a layout. Shaping enables you to improve your drawing into a layout.

It is also a part of your drawing creation process. Besides, the layout encourages you to form shapes and improve sketches into captivated images. Developing them helps you to improve your drawing skills.

Similar to composition, you can classify shaping a layout into required skills. You can form the shape by following the composition in your drawing and another way to improve it.

In drawing skills, you should be able to build the scene from the action lines and volumes. This part guides you to form the shape and layout. That is why mastering layout can complete your skills in drawing.

There are many steps you can take to enhance your drawing skills. However, this step requires you to practice perspective. So, you will not only study it further but also improve your skills.

By practicing, it is easier for you to understand and learn about layout. Besides, the theory and description can be ineffective for your development. You had better use your sketchbook to improve your skills in drawing.

Created by Maryna Gerdiy

Start by picking up an everyday item that is nearby you to practice and improve your capability. It can be a vase, a chair, or even furniture. Take a simple object to initiate your learning process. 

Regular practice can make you accustomed to the shaping of simple objects. You can try until you improve your drawing skills. Once you feel confident with simple objects, you can continue by drawing something complex. 

Complex objects like room decorations help you to improve your skills. It enables you to expand your drawing skills and create a layout in more detail.

The exercises in forming a shape are primary for your skills. It makes you understand how to deconstruct each element into basic geometrical shapes, such as cubes, pyramids, rectangular prisms, cylinders, and spheres. You can try to create a drawing from various angles. 

Created by Pako

5. Understanding Anatomy and Design

After you master shaping and creating the layout, it is time for you to move to another step. It encourages you to improve your drawing skills. The information explained here is beneficial for you before you start your drawing. 

You have to involve understanding anatomy as a way to improve your skills. You should have good knowledge of anatomy as well as design. Both can support you in the process of improving your drawing skills.  

Understanding anatomy and design do not mean you have to master it. You need both basic skills to develop and improve your learning. It happens because drawing is mostly about anatomy and design. 

Anatomy seems challenging learning to improve skills in drawing. It is a part of the human body that may take time for you to study. However, human anatomy is a fun thing for you to learn. 

Besides, anatomy is an essential study for drawing. If you want to master it, you can improve yourself in anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, and creature design. 

Meanwhile, design is also a great study for you to improve your drawing. As a beginner, enrich your drawing skills by understanding how things are built. Thus, having skills in design is required to encourage your artwork. 

Skills in design also let you understand how people and things interact with each other. From here, you can draw a door and avoid scale or proportion errors. 

Created by Marius Kindler

To improve your skills in anatomy, you can start by analyzing human skeletons. Understand its proportion and mechanism for your drawing. You can do online observation for this study.

Begin by learning how bones move from faces and view the skull to the mandible. Studies in anatomy help you to expand your drawing skills. Additionally, you can use it to master other elements. 

Skills in anatomy equip you to draw the right proportion of the human head. It can enrich your understanding and perspective for drawing a human head. So, you can draw the rest of the bones at ease. 

You are recommended to study how to draw bones accurately for better. Once you have them down on your paper, you can improve your learning for human muscles. 

Created by Julián García Mejía

6. Mastering Coloring Techniques For Drawing Skills 

Aside from the above skills, there is also another thing you should improve to expand your ability in drawing. The choices and techniques in coloring can make your artwork more attractive. Besides, it is also a way to mark style on your work. 

Coloring can show you how to present the light source. It allows you to show which area is darker and which one is lighter. It is one of the essential skills that you can improve without difficulties for your drawing. 

Before starting a coloring technique lesson, you have to know where the light source will be. Then, you can decide which area in your drawing needs extra color. These skills are beneficial to improve the quality of your work.

Created by Marius Kindler

In drawing skills, you have to know about the base colors before you move with color palettes. From base colors, you can improve your understanding of certain colors and apply them to your drawing. 

The coloring technique helps to improve your drawing skills. However, you have to know the source of the light first before starting with your drawing. You can use your smartphone or flashlight as an exercise to practice the skills on coloring perspective. 

By placing a flashlight closer to your work, you can observe the light and its way of facing the subject. Then, you can study the subject's luminosity and how to improve coloring your work. Coloring allows you to spread your surface evenly and support the gradient on round elements.

Learning these skills also includes a good understanding of color theory. You must comprehend coloring better as a way to enhance your drawing skills. So, you can use it to compare two drawings. 

By comparing, you will know which subject stands out more than others. You may need this theory to improve the style of your drawing. However, there are many things you should learn further about improving skills by color theory.

The brief illustration above about coloring and its process may help you to understand drawing elements and their fundamental skills. You can independently improve your understanding of the discussion.

Created by GINKGO Han

7. Practice Regularly to Improve Your Drawing Skills

From the previous explanation, you will learn some skills that can improve your ability in drawing. All of them are worthed for you to try and explore. Yet, there is one thing that you should not miss about improving your drawing skills, which is practicing. 

When you get much knowledge to enrich drawing skills, you must improve these skills simply by practicing them. Most experts suggest regular learning and see the progress from your learning process. For sure, the routine helps to enhance your drawing.

There are various things you can learn on how to create a better drawing. These do not merely limit you to specific lessons and skills. You can find a reference or ask for recommendations on how to improve your ability from the expert.

As a beginner, you can start yourself with daily training independently. You can learn every element to improve your skills in drawing step by step. Start with how to hold the pencil properly to draw complex subjects.

Created by Marija Tiurina

Final Words

Remember, every learning process requires commitment. You may spend a lot of time improving your skills. Therefore, it is recommended to make a schedule so you can know your progress in drawing. Additionally, you can see what you have accomplished in a certain period to enhance your drawing skills. You will notice what skills you have mastered and what you need to improve. 

In a fun way, you can create a simple drawing improvement report. It becomes a catalog of your work from time to time. You can keep it in a file as skills progress documentary. You can organize this file by placing it in folders. You can add the date or store it in other systems to ease your search. Choose the system that only works best for you.

Spend your time once a month to review your work. You can evaluate your work and know further about the strength, including the overall progress. Thus, you can improve your skills. 

Additionally, this file helps you to see your drawing more closely. From here, you can measure what you have learned and how to improve it further.