Here are ideas to improve your drawing skills at home.
- Find interesting objects around the house, choose things of different sizes, shapes, materials and textures. Draw them individually or in groups, this is known as still life drawing. Look on the internet for the still life work of other artists, which do you like the best and why? Can you do some work in the same style or find similar objects to draw? Try out still lives in as many different media as you can (pencil, pen, paint) Try and add some shading to your work. Where are the shadows and where is the light?
- Try drawing a member of your family. If you’re drawing the whole figure or just the face, look for the proportions and try to sketch these in lightly before adding the detail. Have a portrait competition with family, each person could draw a family member, or even a famous person and see who can guess who has drawn who! Try drawing people from photos in magazines, sometimes this is easier than drawing from life, at least your subject will sit still!!
- Try drawing your own feet or someone’s hand. These are very tricky to draw and a real challenge!
- Struggling with proportion? Use your pencil held out at arm’s length to do some measuring. See how much of the pencil your subjects head takes up then see how many times this length goes into the body (if you look n the internet you can find basic guides to body proportion which will help you with this)
- Try and be critical of your work in a way that helps you to improve. What do you like best about your drawing? What do you like least and how could you improve it?
- Look for the drawing work of other artists on the internet and see if you can emulate their styles and copy their work.
- Finally, don’t be disappointed when your work doesn’t quite turn out as planned. Even the greatest artists had to practise, practise, practise to get their art perfect!
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