If you want to enjoy more freedom whenever you draw, free-hand drawing might be the technique that you should start to learn now. Enjoy loosening up your lines, have fun doodling more and practice your sketching skills!
In this article, we'll share with you some practical tips that we hope will give you a great start at free-hand drawing. Let's begin!
Tip 1: Loosen up your mind and imagination
We encourage you to try this!
On a blank piece of paper, draw circles in a single smooth motion. Try not to rest your palm on your paper. Simply hold your pencil with your fingers when making your circles.
On the same paper, create lines in every direction - horizontal, vertical or diagonal.
The objective of this simple activity is to help clear your mind and loosen up your drawing motions.
Our advice is before you start with your free-hand drawing, treat this activity as an exercise. This way, you will be more confident with the motions you create.
Tip 2: Make your observations your biggest inspirations
Remember: In as much as you get inspiration for your drawings from your imagination, how you observe the people around you, your environment, the buildings, the trees, and the cityscape is what will fuel your drawings using the free-hand technique.
Tip 3: Always have your sketchbook and pencil with you
In the middle of watching passengers in a train, you might have a sudden knack to draw them, sketch how they look and how the creases in their clothing look like and so much more!
As a total beginner, do not worry if your drawings aren't as neat as you wish it should be. Start scribbling your subjects and later on, you can boost your skills for the better.
Here's a quick advice:
Start with non-moving subjects if you are having a hard time observing mobile subjects. You can take a picture of your subject and once you are at home, start observing the subject from your photo and then start drawing it on you sketchbook.
Tip 4: Concentrate and always improve on your proportions
To have a better understanding of the human anatomy, read up on books or watch videos that will tell you the important rules on human proportions. We found this video below extremely helpful and we hope you get to watch it too.
Did you know that the distance between our eyes is equivalent to that of one eye?
Did you know that the height of a human totals up to 8 heads?
Did you know that the legs have the same length as the torso and the head combined?
Check this out too for a fun and helpful guide on human body proportions.
Tip 5: Make your drawings more realistic with depth
As a quick tutorial on shading, observe where your source of light is coming from and where the shadows of the subject will fall on.
From there, sketch the shadows, highlight, and add other tones on the subject for more depth.
Your turn!
Here at Art Smart, we can help you improve your free-hand drawing skills! And aside from that, we'll also teach you other fun art techniques, such as painting, grid drawing, finger painting, canvas painting, oil pastel painting, tile mosaics and so much more!
Here at Art Smart, we accept students as young as 4.5 years old and above. Kindly see our schedule below of art classes for your reference.
Thank you and we hope to see you all in any of our studios!