Getting started with drawing

Today I challenged myself to try something I’ve been putting off for awhile: improving my art.

I spent some time with the first lesson of a Skillshare program titled Getting Started with Drawing by Brent Eviston.

So far, I’ve learned that the most important thing to learn off the bat is the ability to draw lightly. I spent around 30 minutes making the lightest lines I could, with a grip that I wasn’t used to on the pencil- an underhand, with my pointer and thumb about an inch from the pencil’s tip and all four fingers on the side of the tool. The underhanded grip allows for you to use the side of the pencil lead, rather than the tip, giving you lighter lines!

You need to be able to draw lightly because the lighter your initial sketch is, the more room you have to move and grow in the drawing later on. Eviston made a point to say that it’s unlikely you’ll get the sketch perfect on the first go; even the greats, like Michelangelo, have the faintest of lines covered by their final pieces.

You can see Mr. Moo happily crumpling my final sketch papers. If I did it well, you shouldn’t be able to see any lines on the sheets at all!

Btw, if you try this at home, use crap paper (like the printer paper I used). You want a lot of surface area that you don’t mind wasting to get used to the light strokes.

✌️ out

~sophia