Improving my sketching?

Question

How can I improve my sketching ?, often I sense that my sketchs are not life like, especially the portraits and for landscapes some of my features like distant trees go out of proportion

Answer 1

I found the book "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" to be quite helpful.

Answer 2

Hi. I was the one who had the eBay store with the drawings. You wanted me to give you some advice. I am actually self-taught. But I have tried to pick up as much as I can from talking to people, reading tutorials and books, and looking at examples from artists I like the most. There are some really good tutorials online for doing face portraits. Here is one I have read:

http://www.portrait-artist.org/basics/newbie.html

An important thing to get lifelike drawings is to know the proper techniques for sharpening, sanding, and use a kneaded rubber eraser. So get a basic drawing book that explains how to use the equipment. The more you draw, the more important these things will be.

Also, it helps to find artists to criticize your drawing. It's painful to hear sometimes, but it will improve them a lot.

If you have a hard time with proportion, use the grid method. draw a grid over a photo of a person's face, then draw the same grid over a blank sheet of drawing paper. Draw each grid seperately. This will teach you to look at individual lines and see things in real proportion. Your brain sees things in a picture that aren't really there, so you have to learn to see only what's there. It's hard to explain. there are a lot of books about drawing that will explain it.

To learn shading and how to control light and shadows practice drawing balls and 3 dimensional shapes that are shaded. There are exercises online for that too.

There are a lot of things to learn about drawing, and you will improve a lot when you read about it and talk to artists about it. You don't need to go to art school. Most of your skill comes from practice.

Answer 3

Try to improve your sense of proportion; draw directly from observation. (Use a reference- look at a subject) When you do this, be VERY critical. Are the shapes, angles, and spatial relationships you're drawing accurate? If the Answer is no. (And it should almost never be yes) then Correct yourself.
Repeat this process constantly, and your drawing will improve exponentially.
If you want to draw from your imagination. you really need to know exactly how light would fall on the object you're drawing, and therefore you must be intensely familiar with said object.
- This is why comic book artists are as familiar with anatomy as some phsicians.

Answer 4

My suggestion to you is if you like what you are doing then don't worry about everything being perfect. Draw to enjoy it otherwise it defeats the purpose. If you really want to get better at it, find a magazine or a photograph of what you want to draw and then practice drawing it. Nature has a lot of things that naturally go out of proportion so don't be afraid to make things different. That is what makes it fun.

Answer 5

I love sketching- it's hard to answer without seeing your work- but what helps my sketches come to life is RENDERING. Work on the light and shadows- alot of times you don't need to sketch the full outline of a thing, but the mere hint of a shadow brings a tree to life in the background. Don't measure things if you're working free hand, though- but if you're a technical sketch artist you might want to work on your measurements. I'm a freehand artist myself.

Answer 6

The best way I learned was to draw upside down, then turn it over. It was like looking at a different drawing, then I was able to pick out my errors and correct them, and, it was a lot of fun.
If I may brag, I became the top artist of my class and still have people rave about my work.
So, if it worked for a back woods stump jumper like me, it can work for anyone....

Answer 7

you like sketching? i like it too, i mean, I love it!...i also make mistakes but always remember that you can't copy anything exactly as you see...

1. look closely at the object/landcape/portrait you're drawing
2. make basic shapes like circles, squares, triangles and etc. that represents the objects shape
3. you can make their outline, drawn lightly because you need to shade still
4. follow the shape of the object, if it's round make it round, if it's sharp, make it sharp...
5. practice, practice, PRACTICE!

do your best, just keep practicing and practicing and you'll get it soon enough...don't invent you're own shape, always look back at the object...doesn't matter if you need to make a glimpse a million times, as long as you think it's right, it's right...

:) :) :) :) :)

Answer 8

how about a book... there's MANY MANY MANY books on porportions (yes even for trees!)