Change Your Tools, Change How You See
The advantages of using lots of different drawing tools.
YouTube Video - Practice Drawing Opened Chest — Web version.
was listening to a YouTube video on photography (as one does) about monochrome cameras; why take pictures with a monochrome camera when you can also use a color camera and reduce to black and white on the computer? One reason he gave was that you look at the world differently when you carry around a black-and-white camera, and that clicked in my head.
When you paint with watercolor, you see the world differently than when you walk around with pen and paper.
I had noticed that old illustrators like Joseph Clement Coll , when they drew with pen and ink, drew abstract shapes as if they were painting with oil paint. They looked at the work as if it were an oil painting, but then they rendered it in pen and ink.
Change up your art materials and notice how they make you look at the world differently. Then, return to your preferred medium and notice how it is now informed by your experiences with the other material.
Examples where I turned a pose on a photo into a manikin using simplified forms.
The Free Online Drawing Course Is There!
I am proud to announce that the Free Online Drawing Course is here! The first part of it, at least.
You can find it here.
There is an introduction, and chapters on improving dexterity, drawing from observation, and memory, and two chapters on drawing using 3D models for reference.
The course is structured as a series of chapters that each discuss a “practice session”, a type of exercise, and then it goes through different variants of that drawing exercise, from easy to hard. You can keep doing these exercises while you get better at drawing. You just start doing the more difficult ones eventually.
The goal of the course is to show you how the drawing practice tools on the website could fit into your drawing practice routine.
These six chapters already cover the most popular resources on the website, most notably the 3D models. There are more chapters planned: another 3D models chapter, a chapter on creating visual puzzles for yourself to solve, gesture drawing, composition, anatomy, drawing Heads, hands, and folds.
I don’t know how quickly I’ll get to them, but the current chapters are already quite extensive. Please check them out!
FREE Online Drawing Course!
This free course helps you build real drawing skills through quick, fun exercises that fit into even the busiest schedule. Each activity has levels from beginner to pro, so you can improve no matter where you start.All you need is a small sketchbook, a pen, and your phone. With exercises you can do in just a few minutes, you’ll learn to draw with confidence — anywhere, anytime, and at your own pace.
Check it out
Yours sincerely,
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