Drawing Tutorial

This tutorial is about observational drawing, or on how to draw realistically of what you see. 

There are different ways to draw. This tutorial is only on how I do it. I may not mention some fundamental theories such as value scales or anatomy etc., because they aren’t relevant to my approaches. But feel free to contact me and ask questions.

I try to simply make a duplicate of what I see. So basically making copies. It’s a simple concept but to actually do it competently requires knowledge and skills. Especially if you are duplicating what you see from life in 3D into 2D representation on paper or canvas.

What’s really important is to learn to see than to draw or paint. You can copy or write any letters of the alphabet easily because you know them and how they are written or constructed. But you’d struggle to recreate a Chinese letter that you aren’t familiar with until you are. But anyone can draw or paint easily if they learn to see. So my tutorial will focus mostly on observation skills rather than setting you up with step by step how tos with your pencil or paint marks. This way, you can have your own style instead of looking similar as others that uses the same formulas.

I use basically three ways of seeing: values, shapes, and forms. I’ve made a lesson with studies and exercises focused for each of them, because I recommend them to be learned and grasped separately. After all three are learned, you would use them all in your vision as second nature without having to draw this way or that way or like the exercises done here, as you will draw freely however you want to make your marks. Give that a shot after you’ve become adept at below three ways. 

Lesson 1: Seeing Values

Lesson 2: Seeing Shapes

Lesson 3: Seeing Forms