I Didn't Know How to Draw Until I Learned This
2024 ж. 26 Нау.
98 427 Рет қаралды
After about 19 years of painting, sketching and doodling, I have realized that I don't know how to draw. In this video I talk about how I will learn to draw even after so many years of "thinking" I knew how to draw.
FREE COURSE MENTIONED:
drawabox.com/
The word 'draw' used to exclusively mean To pull or to drag. In fact, Drag and Draw come from the same ancient root, _dhregh._ Around 1200CE it was first applied to the act of forming lines with a marking instrument or chalk/charcoal. The word draw - as in drag/pull - was used (instead of To Push, for instance), because a sharp point such as a sharpened reed or quill could not be _pushed_ on most rough drawing surfaces of the time without snagging in the pits of the material. Likewise, chalk or charcoal could snap if pushed against a rough ridged surface. So pulling - _"drawing"_ - it would be! :^)
WOW! Thanks for that etimology lesson :D
Also "draft", as in draft horse and draft beer... that is, beer drawn from a keg, as opposed to in a bottle. Living all over the US I noticed regional differences when ordering beer in taverns: "Get me a draw." "Pull me a pitcher", etc. Also smokers take a drag. Consider as well the words "deLINEate" and "deSCRIMinate".
@@jeffolsen4983 Good bonus material, keep it coming. :^)
drawing a weapon, or drawing your bow is the best way to show an example
Best book I ever found was called " The natural way to draw" by Kimon Niccolaides....if you can find it. It's a journey, no "right" way, just a lot of "wrong" ways! I beg to disagree with you here, best way is to go outside and sketch in nature.
Cool! I will see if I can get it! thanks for the suggestion!
I agree, I found it over 25 years ago and I still flip through it and go back to it to this day
@@joshclapp2991 I've bought it three or four times...it keeps mysteriously disappearing!!!!
I went to art college 50 years ago and made a living at drawing until my recent retirement. All the drawing teachers talked about this book. I appreciate that people trying to learn on their own have limited resources, but every city has life drawing classes or cooperative workshops. This 'boxes' course is maybe what interior design students learn so they can sketch their concepts. Drawing from life is so different from copying photos or making up cartoons. You're exercising your brain to translate 3D into 2D. In life drawing classes we warm up by having the model pose for 30 seconds. That's where you learn to draw with your whole arm! You use soft chalk or charcoal and work on big sheets of cheap newsprint. You could practise on newspapers if money's a barrier. You're learning to really LOOK. I just once taught adults a 10 night class in basic drawing. They did all the exercises we did in first year. I was quite amazed how well they could draw by the last class. They also discovered that learning to draw well takes years of daily practice. Like playing piano, which I'm doing as a beginner at age 70. So I know what I'm talking about. It's about MASTERY, not tips & tricks.
I recommend “The Natural Way to Draw” as well. Also, Rhoda Kellogg studied children's art and found that the type of line and placement of those lines can aid an artist in their drawing evolution.
Wow… Antonio this has taken me back to when I was helping my own children to work within their learning styles. An early childhood educator friend showed me how to encourage writing skills by drawing. We would get the children to spend 20 or so mins a day doing shapes, lines, concentric circles, zigzags and many other lines from small size to as large as possible on white paper. (For dyslexic children coloured paper works best.) My children learned so well this way, the expansion of their mind (how to remember the shape or line instinctively) was linked, I believe to the expansion and movement of their whole arm from the shoulder out. We encouraged the children with starting to draw/ make marks or lines or shapes from the wrist first and then with each ‘drawn line’ move the arm ever wider up eventually till the whole shoulder was involved in the drawing activity. The success in learning to write letters with ease was much enhanced in my dyslexic, challenged children. To think a similar style of learning can expand one’s ability to both draw and paint is to me nothing short of wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing.
Wow thats an amazing story! I had no idea! Thank you so much for sharing too!
Just beginning to draw and paint, and I appreciate you sharing your journey so much. The discipline in learning to draw is a tremendous challenge for me, and the support of the class structure and your content may be of great help. Thank you! New subscriber and grateful for your presence and content. 🙏
Glad to have you on board! Lets learn together then :D
@@antoniocabrero Yes. Yes, indeed!
Yay!
Thank you for that review/explanation and the link. Much appreciated.
Glad it was helpful!
A lot of youngsters tend to move the paper around to meet angles. The issue with is that it puts the draftsman at the mercy of altering their line strokes and movements. You end of up losing your consistency. For those who do life drawing at large scales, you can't afford to shift a giant sheet of paper around. Another thing to point out, depending on which drawing implement you use, that can change your grip and arm or wrist movements. If you use conte or charcoal sticks, it forces you to draw from the arm (shoulder all the way down to the wrist). With enough practice, this facilitates that large movement of lines. As opposed to drawing with ballpoint pens or ink pens, you're restricting yourself to smaller wrist movements which happens quite often to novice drawing artists. The reason people are able to handwrite, is that as young children, we were taught to learn those 'shapes' or 'characters' to the point of second-hand nature. Most people don't realise that certain techniques for gripping a drawing implement can affect the overall presentation of their drawing. Hence, the importance of line quality and form. You can be really well-versed at shading but if you lack the form, it will reflect in the drawing. This can be a very hard thing to comprehend as young artist. It's a culmination of years of understanding of line and form that needs to be put into practice like anything else. It doesn't happen over night.
Thanks for that insight! yes I am restricting myself. It is just my way of learning, I dont believe its the best way, but its the way ive learned the fastest :)
When i was a kid there was a great art book series called; 'How to Draw...' by Walter Foster. I would sign them out from the library and covered a wide range of subjects from animals faces etc.
That sounds fantastic!
Thanks, Antonio! I've just taken up watercolour painting, and I'm loving it. At the same time I realise that I also can just copy and have no clue how to draw properly. So your insights are much appreciated!
Draw real things, especially things that move, like animals. You'll improve faster than anything else.
That makes 2 of us! Im glad you found it useful!
Really? like to try to nail down gesture?
"i didn know how to draw until I learned how to draw"
Basically 😂
This may have come at the perfect time for me. Lately I've been trying to work with larger brushes in order to make more confident strokes and fuss less/overwork the paper less. When I started painting, I knew I was terrible at drawing, but thought it was never a skill I'd need with painting. I've come to realize that knowing about drawing plays into many other skills in painting. Perhaps this is something that folks learn in art school, but as someone who came to painting through the University of KZhead, it's not something I realized initially.
Yes, thats definitely the case! Dont worry though, as you see, you are not alone! :D
This was very helpful! Thank you!
You're so welcome! I amm glad you found it helpful!
Wow, this is such an interesting perspective to come at drawing from, starting back at the fundamentals after 19 whole years of art experience just in a different medium that I would think of as related. And yeah, it makes sense that the art of painting, where you frequently end up with strokes that are much more focussed on tiny detail adjustments than the big movements of just creating a continuous outline, ends up giving you a habit of only working with those smaller strokes. The end result is certainly unique, because of how the work still turns out amazing in a ley person's eyes, despite it having been made without the artist actually understanding the tool they are using. Makes me wonder what other intricacies of each medium would be revealed if someone else with over a literal decade of experience in one was to attempt working in one that still works in the same dimensions, but would normally require a different thought process and workflow to go along with the new set of tools. Regardless though, as an absolute beginner myself (I am all of roughly 10 pages deep on an A5 noteblock... yes, my stroke confidence is pretty much complete garbage as a result and I am working way too small for the amount of detail I could put into my sketches and scribbles), I thank you very much for introducing me to this course along with showing this unique perspective of yours. Literally the exact thing I thought I could need right about now.
Thanks remor, I’m glad you found it useful. I find that we tend to find it easier to stick to small detail because we already have the motor skills from writing. Enjoy the process not the results 🤗 you’ll do great
At the end of the day.....all art is a rendering.....art is how an artist interprets an object ...living or not. Classical learning is a great....and fundamental s are core to any discipline ....but some ppl just like to draw or paint . We all have been lead to believe that if you don't have a piece of paper or take a course that you have no knowledge of a subject. Which is not true....art is so subjective...unless you just feel the need pay someone learning thru trial and error is what makes the artist journey enjoyable
Sure rendering is the end state of anything artist do, I am just trying to find out about how to see the structure of some things :) But yeah art should just be an enyojable process thats for sure!
Dude you are so right ! I can copy and interpret ( sorta ) but real bare bones drawing yep nah . So I’ll be watching your videos for your progress. Whole arm movement !? yeah ive used this application in calligraphy textualis quadrata , copperplate and I don’t want to think about fraktur ( that’s scary ) but I resonate with you on real understanding of drawing and getting to the bare bones of it .
Thanks tash! hopefully I can share some more things i learned along the way :) glad that you are going to stick around!
This is what I’ve been looking for…THANK YOU!
I’m glad you got something out of it :)
I like both this Way and a more improvised free style playfull and experimenting drawing and painting - and I also do believe that every art practice has to have some kind of dynamic balance bettween the classical sharing of techniques and the more spontaneous playfull inspirational ways of investigating drawing, painting,and end Other arts like, songing, dancing,choreographing and all the other ways of expressing and communicating about what we want to share and what we find of importance in our experiences of life - happy both meditative, and Experimentarium drawing and painting 🎵🌷🎶♥️😊
I am almost to the 250 box challenge hearing this encouragement help me to keep going. Thank you.
It’s well worth it!
Antonio, thank you for popping up on my feed. I had a horrible handwriting since I could write which is the last 51 years. Drawing is one of those impossible challenges that I've wanted to tackle in my life. Your explanation of the course let me see that this is actually something that can help me possibly fix a bunch of problems that I think her connected to the motor control issues which are actually a symptom of the deeper problem not the actual problem itself. Thank you for taking the time to make a video to explain the course and how the mechanics of it work. Best of luck to you, m8.
I am glad that youtube put me in your feed then! Thank you for watching. Also, its great that you found use of it. There was another comment in this video who talks about something similar that you explain. Try finding that comment, since i cant link it unfortunately :) Let me know how it goes! (Btw any drawing course will make you practice this, not only this one :) )
Thank you.
You're welcome!
Man your grip on the pencil is WILD! While it's certainly not as bad as I've seen, I think switching that up to be something looser could help you a lot too
haha yeah, ive always been told that my grip is weird (thats how i write too) but thanks for the input
This is awesome.,
Thanks :)
I have been working really hard on all fundamentals since I started to learn to draw and I've been aware of draw a box but I just know how strong of a mismatch it is to my ADHD to do such a long tedious grind on self motivation alone on a very boring subject, so I just don't set myself up to fail and feel horrible about it. I work on my perspective the more challenging way; the Kim Jung Gi way.
What is the Kim Jung Gi way? :D
I knew who he was, i just didnt know what you were refering to. Thats absolutely possible, I just like a bit of strucure :D
The draw a box course gets a bad rep. You don't need to do it all at once or only dedicated that time you have for drawing to make the repetitive exercises. The creator talks bout the 50% rule but honestly if you only have one hour to draw but take ten to fifteen minutes to do the exercises as a harm up then that's okay too. Also, you don't only draw boxes but plants, animals, mess around with hybrids, insects (or sea creatures if you don't like them) and break down objects and cars and, I don't even believe I'm gonna say that, but drawing cars can actually be fun. Not trying to pressure you to try it, just wanna to clarify that is not as dreadful as it looks like.
@valeriaaraujo9962 thanks for your clarification:)
"Draw a box" excercises are good when you need to get in some drawing practice but you cannot think about what you draw so you can do these basic mechanical tasks. You don't need to think about proportions of human body, anatomy, etcetera when you draw specific objects, you only draw lines, circles, squares and boxes. For more active practice these are not good because they are mind numbingly dull. Also an okay warmup before more involved practice, too. Just to get your hand in working order. So for anyone still looking into practicing from their site, prepare some podcast, tv series, movie, youtube video, idle videogame or videogame with low involvement, and go ham on these excersises. Talking with friends over discord helps too. Otherwise you will automatically kill your desire to want to draw.
Good one! I do want to just hang out and do some of the exercises :) but at times they need my full attention :)
So…… I don’t see how you can physically see and copy what you see but be unable to see basic shapes in what you’re seeing? Like looking at a train and seeing a rectangle. The details/information is your rendering. In real life there are no vanishing points. So no perspective exist in our world. We experience it all at once (aside from fish eye). But to show this on paper you need to converge to a point. To give that illusion. Outside of building your visual library and the amount of hours invested that’s it for drawing. A literal rule for drawing is draw what you see not what you think you see. So if you can copy. You can draw.
Thanks! Oh I like that, “draw what you see, not what you think you see”! That’s something I experience during my 100 days of plein air but I thought to myself paint the color you see, not the color you think you see!
I think that was the most painful website I've ever tried to navigate. What a mess.
Sorry for that experience, cant do anything about it tho :(
Why don’t you learn how to do Zentangle. That uses micron pens. You learn to move the paper. You learn to draw straight lines. It is so relaxing. Then after you can add paint
I'm also learning to draw that way. I found it's the best method for me to learn drawing. I stick with these absolute basics for a very long time until my lines are mostly even. But after all the organic shapes, I had some problems drawing straight lines and boxes. I probably practised the same thing for too long and then couldn't do the other thing any more. Furthermore, I should have always learned a little bit of everything every time I practised. Especially at the beginning, it was pretty quick to learn the individual basic shapes. After a few days of practising I was able to do every basic shape, and now I've had the problem for a few weeks that it takes a lot of practice before I can draw lines and boxes good again. At least I can learn other things in addition, such as a feeling for composition, brightness levels, colours and so on without drawing, when I rest my arm. Once I can draw the basics, there's no stopping me.
Well said! And thanks for sharing your experience! It is true, I have focused too much on one thing and then my brain doesn’t remember how to do the same thing again 😅 but it’s all muscle memory tho, so it’s still there 😊
Muito bom 😌😌😌😃😃❤
The word “draw” is so multifaceted. You pull the pen/pencil/brush across the surface. You draw/pull wire through ever smaller holes to make it smaller. Water forms a draw in mountains since it is pulled by gravity. A drawbridge is pulled open. We draw/suck the venom out. By the way your lines have good form. Mine end up looking like a willow tree trying to stand up very straight. Practice, practice, practice…
It definitely is multifaceted. Thanks! I still have a long way to go, but it doesnt matter :) Got to just enjoy the process
Interesting distinction between "drawing" and "rendering". For me personally, I feel confident in my drawings for the sake of painting, but drawings that stand on their own are quite hard for me. Nice video!
Thanks CD! yeah, I kind of felt the same way, but one thing that i miss about drawing accurately is the understanding of the subject itself. I really liked your video painting your puppy :D Great result too despite how much she moved!
same i have a problem
good video
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Drawing is about looking. It is a form of investigation. It is not about learning how to construct a box. Drawing is seeing the world a new. It is about discovery.
The course is exactly about that, not just boxes :)
i see you doing something ive seen a load of people doing that restricts your movement and makes your drawing really stiff... resting your middle finger on top of your pencil, instead of resting the pencil on your middle finger. it may seem like a small thing, but it restricts your hand movement a lot...
Thanks! Will try that!
Rendering is drawing. Honest you may be, but drawing is simply the pull of the stylus. Pulling your finger through sand is drawing. How detailed a drawing is depends upon many things. However, the desire to add more texture, detail, depth, hue, shading, etc. and is a learning process, it takes some talent, a lot of practice, patience, perseverance, creativity, and tenacity. Good luck.
Thanks David!
oh, this is reassuring, because i don't know how to draw either
I dont even know if this IS the right way to learn, but the important thing is that we want to want to learn :D and enjoy it!
I love you
Thanks :D right back at you haha
The way you hold your drawing instrument drives me nuts!
Haha sorry 😂
I enjoyed draw a box until the cube challenge. that destroyed my desire to draw for a long time. and then nobody would review it. I was very disappointed. If I took it again, I would just skip that.
I can understand that
I wonder if Rambrandt took that course? Mmmmmm.
Probably not :)
I am confused by their verbiage “a set of free exercises…” and the “25% off the first billing cycle” of $35 a month. A small fee for learning these essentials but too much for a dabbler who wants to dabble.
Thats not draw a box course. Thats their sponsor New Masters Academy. They advertise it but the course it self in draw a box is free.
@@antoniocabreroThanks. Looks like others are confused too. Maybe put a pinned comment at the top to tell people.
@billbucktube I thought I pinned a comment from the first person who pointed it out :/ maybe I didn’t . Thanks for the reminder/suggestion:)
You have it in the description but the site has some confusing things. I would pin it at the top of the comments not under a comment.
May I recommend x1.25 speed.
Good suggestion 🤣
It’s not free it’s starts at $35 a month, that is surely not free.
It is free. The $35 is for a subscription to the sponsors (New Masters Academy) and not Draw a Box.
I guess others got to this first :)
@@ThePrairieChroniclesthat’s incorrect. The course is free to access. You don’t have to pay anything.
This is exactly my problem I can copy but not draw
I feel you :)
My man.. the way you hold a pencil is WILD wtf
I get that a lot 😂
@@antoniocabrero I can imagine that being a huge hindrance for countless aspects of drawing... have you ever considered learning one of the several ways to properly hold a pencil?
@JoshuaAMG well as I explained in the video I never really tried to learn until now. So that’s for sure something I will explore
@antoniocabrero I'd definitely consider it man. Thats almost like learning to type on a keyboard with 2 fingers
@JoshuaAMG thanks for the tip!
It is not free! $35.00 per month.
I have a New Masters Academy subscription, it has been the best investment I've ever made!
Thanks for your input! I have been thinking on trying it out
I am learning from Peter Han
Drawabox was Peter Hans student 😄
I recommend Dynamic Bible, Peter Hans livestreams and his dynamic sketching online class that starts 7th of May, drawabox is amazing as well of course
Nice 👍 thanks for sharing! It’s paid I presume
Draw a Box is not free; it's $35.00 a month. But, thanks Antonio.
Hello Randy, that’s the New Masters Academy Membership Ad showing on Draw a box website. You can click the little X on the top to get rid of it. (Might come back tho but just ignore it) Otherwise Draw a box is free :)
where are your other pictures? (50/50 rule)
What do you mean?
@@antoniocabrero Drawabox has the 5050 rule, 50% exercises, 50% free drawings
Your drawings and paintings that aren't done for practicing fundamentals, the other half of the 50/50 rule
Oh, yeah I usually just painted instead of drawing 😅 so yeah but you can find them on my instagram
I don't even know how to copy...
That’s ok! We all start somewhere 😊 then this course could really help
@@antoniocabrero It helps :D
I quit draw a box in 2 weeks it was so boring
It’s certainly doesn’t inspire joy but it is not meant to do that :)
@@antoniocabrero I meant to say quit. Yeah but the creator said it is pretty tedious and to do drawings on the side separate from the project that you find fun. But yeah it was so horribly boring. Most fundamental exercises are that way. Nobody likes shading a spear
@@williammclean6594 But you better do it if you're planning to get any sort of decent at drawing. And be able to flip those shapes at will.
@@Darknight0681 I already can. I'm already a professional artist. I'm just saying that if doing something that's incredibly boring doesn't get you drawing. You'll never improve because u won't be drawing. I was never able to do draw a box because the way it was presented was too dry. I was able to learn all my fundamentals through different courses that made it more fun and entertaining for me
Could you share some of those courses for people who read this and might want to learn in taht way? :)
So if you don't know how to draw, how were painting for 19 years?
You can still paint and draw without knowing what you are doing. For example children can paint and draw, the result might not be pretty and they wouldn’t know what they are doing but they are still able to :)
Sorry to get somewhat off topic, but the way you hold your pen/pencil tells me you were not properly taught how to hold them at school. Schools don't seem to do these little [but important] things nowadays. No caligraphy either... It just looks weird, not to mention mechanically challenging, to see someone hold an instrument that way.
No problem :) I was taught to use the tripod but I never liked it 😅 so yeah I have an absolutely horrendous grip, I can use the tripod and other grips this is just my “natural” grip
@@antoniocabrero I appreciate that, but that's the problem right there: some of people's 'natural' grips are not mechanically correct. These things have to be taught. The same thing goes for Asians holding the chopsticks, thy are taught by their parents, and there's usually [pretty much] one and only one correct way to do it. The problem today is that there is little actual teaching going on: it used to be the case that drawing, calligraphy (which, when you think about it, boils down to drawing letters), civility, etc, were taught in schools at a very early age, so it was them, the [mechanically-correct] way, that became 'natural'. Having said that, I appreciate your naturalness in sharing your personal experience; it's very nice and refreshing.
you went through all of this for an ad for a site with drawing lessons and you do not draw any better now than before
Ad?
Ugh dude you're back to square 1 what's the point of this?
Revisiting the basics isn’t so terrible :)
@@antoniocabrero You're right sorry for being disrespectful, you draw what you see, so drawing what you love to see is the next step.
No disrespect :) yeah exactly:)
Complete nonsense. If you've been drawing, painting, etc. for nineteen years, you might not have the best technique, but you certainly know how to draw. As long as you can translate what you see into a drawing, painting, sculpture, etc., that's all that matters. Some of the most famous works are pretty horrible...but they're still "fine art". Even if you're unsatisfied with your own work, show it to people who don't do art--they'll praise your skills until you die of embarrassment. What I'm saying, is that you're likely your own worse critic.
Quite the true statement