Every Drawing Beginner Should Do This!

[@eucrow1973]

What? A KZbinr saying Stop Watching? 😮 This is how you know whom to trust with your learning. I've been following several instructors, but I appreciate your skill building advice and methodical explanations the most of them, as well as such practical guidance and advice overall. You have a very clear teaching spirit that I find extremely reassuring and quite complete, to the point where I find most other instruction redundant, and mainly used for occasional curiosity. I appreciate your focus and I keep noticing that you say many very helpful tips and bits that I find nowhere else, making me go Huh. Lastly, it's such a great benefit to learn from a man who loves architecture and flora as well! Many cheers to you Stephen! Thank you for such a different and generous chanel. I can't quite believe all this value you offer here for the asking. Alex in UK.

[@beardmonster8051]

It may be that different people struggle with different challenges and dangers to varying degrees. For me personally, I've always been headstrong and rebellious enough to pick and choose from the advice and inspiration I see, and I've never been very worried about getting lost tagging along on somebody else's journey, but a modified version of your advice that would resonate better with me would be to constantly alternate between looking for advice/inspiration and trying out your own things, experimenting and figuring things out.

[@a..c..2469]

You read minds😂, im so scared to try and find my style, i judge myself harshly but i cant get away from drawing because its a antidote for my anxiety ,in fact thank you to all artist for bringing beauty to my ugly world ,thank you Mr.Travers for sharing and teaching

[@jomen112]

Fully agree! On my 760th Loomis head and still counting (with twenty new once per day)...

[@stephentraversart]

How does the most recent compare with the first?😀

[@jomen112]

@@stephentraversart Well, I am not doing a geometry study (and I draw them all from imagination) so they all look different, but I do start to visualize the skull form in my head and that helps drawing the form a lot, proportion more often gets right then wrong. And when watching faces, I know where to look now so I can identify values much easier now then before. I.e. I know were to expect to find edges for shadows so I purposely look for them. It's not a random search any more....

[@jomen112]

@@stephentraversart I am looking for shapes that are useful for drawing a head, and no more some randomly created shapes due to some specific lighting. I.e. I am looking for shapes that matters for describing the form and as such some are more useful than others.

[@jomen112]

I see young people struggle with deciding because they want to try out everything. I think we elder better understand that our choices in the end does not really matter, what matter is the journey and what we did during it.

[@stephentraversart]

Patience does seem more the preserve of the elders, but perhaps it’s always been this way. 😀

[@jobrown8146]

I'm 67 and want to do everything. As an older child I used to copy draw without grid lines but I've never had art lessons. I recently found a sketch I did of a real orchid flower from my late teens and I'm surprised at how good it is. Sadly I don't have a photo of the actual flower to compare it to. But after collecting a lot of art supplies over the years (I've recently been tidying them up and shocked at how much stuff I have) and not having achieved much, I've realised and decided that I need to find things that I enjoy actually doing (in the moment) rather than trying to end up with a result. My first step has been just drawing lines and circles and other squiggles and getting used to holding my pencil differently than writing. And I am enjoying that.

[@needlemuse367]

Thank you so much for all this information, I needed this.

[@karincarter4962]

😊 thank you !

[@jimmyguitar2933]

In other words, stop thinking about drawing and just draw?

[@dreamydafoe624]

Thank you!!! 😊

[@stephentraversart]

My pleasure 😀