“I Know There’s Something Wrong With My Drawing, I Just Can’t See What It Is.”

When you are learning how to draw, this is probably the biggest and single, most often heard statement by drawing students.  If you are one of those, then fear not, I am going to help you right here to understand WHY your drawing is “wrong”.

A trained artist’s eye can instantly pinpoint what is wrong with a drawing.  What may surprise you is that almost anyone (other than you at the moment you are drawing J) can see what’s wrong with your work.

That’s because they’ve never seen it before and they can see the problem in the “blink” of an eye.  Now that should tell you two things right up front:

1. The faster you can draw the more accurate will be your drawing (which takes practice), and

2. If you step away from your drawing for some period of time, you too will forget what it looks like; you’ll forget your attachment to those lines you are so certain of, and you too will “see it” for the “first time”—and then, you too will instantly spot the problem.

Let’s first see if we can pinpoint your weakest areas.  Here’s how we’re going to do that.

So let’s start a new drawing—a good place to start is static arrangements or even other pictures that you’d like to copy.

And let’s start simple to isolate the weaknesses.  If you are reading this, I am going to assume you are not drawing something that is moving, swaying, changing or wilting (like plucked poppies)—let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be.  

Now I’m going to ask a series of checkpoint question that as you do your drawing you should be on the watch for.

1. Do you draw an object, and then another object, and then another?  That unto itself will pretty much be a show stopper right there and the reason is simple.  There is an extreme tendency of the eye to lose it’s proportions when you work this way and you’ll be spending way too much time “fixing” your issues.  I strongly recommend that draw a big oblong circle around your main central subject to get a relative size of the ENTIRE central subject.

2. Are you using any measuring device to check your length by width to check your work?

3. Are you using triangulation, that is, are you selecting and comparing 3 points and their angles to each other throughout the entire drawing?

4. Are you using your midpoints and quarter-points to check your distances?

5. Are you using your radial points (from corner to corner) to check your relationships?

6. Are you looking for angles?  Close one eye, position the pencil at an angle between to “tip objects” and carefully maintaining the pencil angle move that pencil over your drawing to check the points. This will really help you to see the perspective of objects in the arrangement

7. Are you checking for “flows”, that is, are you looking at the flow of your lines through, in, and around the objects of your arrangement?

These are just a few of the many tips and tricks that will help you with your drawings.

But if you're really interested in learning how to draw--how to draw people, how to draw flowers, how to draw animals...how to draw ANYTHING, then here's where you can get a complete video course to help you steer clear of common mistakes and avoid creating bad habits.

 

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Paul Wagner
Founder, Art Training International
How to Draw Online

 

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