5 tips that INSTANTLY made my sketches better

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Have you ever tried to draw like Paul or Kim Jong-ee? If so, you probably realize it’s harder than it looks. At least that’s the case with me. So, why does Paul Hon call this type of drawing a mindless exercise? Well, in order to find that out, I took his course and he’s on to something because my drawings went from this to this in a week. And it’s because of five tips I learned that instantly improved my sketching. And if you applied any one of these, then it would elevate your art right away. But once I incorporated all five, it made a world of difference. And the first one is actually written on the page here, and it’s to trust your eyes because your brain lies. This is one of the most important lessons because if you want to be able to draw what you see, then you have to trust your eyes because your brain is a machine of interpretation. It does not see what’s there. It interprets it to what it understands. The prime example of this is if I asked a kid or someone who hasn’t drawn before to draw some eyes, what they do is draw an eye like this or maybe like this. Or if you said draw a smiley face, they would draw a person like this. The brain thinks in symbols, which is why it can’t draw what it sees. So you have to actually shut off your brain and draw exactly what you see. Trust what you’re looking at. And this gets really hard when it comes to scale. And sometimes as you’re drawing, you’re going to want to make something bigger or smaller because from your perspective, it just feels right. But you have to remember, trust the measurements that your eyes see. But one of the ways to trust what you’re seeing is to make sure you’re getting the correct measurements. And traditionally, if you wanted to draw what you saw perfectly, you would put a grid over the reference. But when we’re drawing on location, we don’t have the luxury of using grid. Or if you just don’t want to use a grid because you want to just draw with a pen and understand this stuff intuitively, then you can do the next best thing, which is to use a line. Now, there’s an underrated simplicity to just imagining a line as you’re drawing your subjects. For example, as I tried to draw this car, using lines would have helped me better measure my proportions, such as the relationship between the edge of the car and the side of the car. You’ll see in the reference that this shape is actually much bigger and I didn’t use the line here, but throughout your piece, you can use vertical and horizontal lines to orient the relative positions of other objects. So, a straight line across the windshield helped me orient where the tree was supposed to reach. And even in the reference, you can see that the windshield is just slightly above the base of the tree. And using these lines one at a time will eventually lead into thinking like a grid. But most people can’t imagine a grid in their head right off the bat. But everyone can imagine vertical and straight lines throughout their piece. So we can sort of triangulate relative positions in our drawing by using straight vertical and horizontal lines for reference. Now, if you want to build out your scene to have objects all scale accurately, then you might want to use a more sophisticated method than a line. And this one was right from Paul Hston’s course, Anchoring. By the way, this course of his that I watched was on Craftsy, who is the sponsor of today’s video. Now, Craftsy is an online educational community of artists, bakers, seers, and a bunch of other creatives where you can learn whatever discipline you’re interested in. For me, I was drawn to Craftsy because they’re the only place I found Paul Histon has his courses. And there’s a bunch of other drawing courses as well. But in this two-hour lesson about how to draw what you see by Paul Houston, I learned so much. And you guys can learn just as much. And the best news is that it’s only $1.49 49 to study his course because the first 1,000 people to use my link in the description will get a full year of Craftsy premium membership for $149. Whether you’re interested in drawing or some other creative outlet, Craftsy has got you covered with over 2,000 classes. So, check out the link in my description or the QR code right here to sign up today. And thank you Craftsy for being the sponsor of this video and introducing me to Paul Histon’s course where he talks about anchoring. Now what is anchoring? Anchoring is using one object to anchor the sense of scale and the size of every other object is measured in relation to this object. So in this piece the anchor was my sketchbook. As I drew, every object was related back to the size in comparison to this sketchbook. So, as I drew out my leg, I looked at based on the length of this sketchbook, how much shorter is my leg? And it’s about half the size of the sketchbook. So, I put the leg down. And then looking at, well, compared to the sketchbook, how far apart are my legs? And you can measure these proportions out. And when you do this, it’s another way to shut off your brain and trust your eyes. Literally, just trust the proportions based on what you see. And this is super important in POV drawings because the perspective is constantly warping. No matter where you look, your perspective is going to be warped. So, this is a huge practical technique to apply right now that’ll ensure your accuracies. When I didn’t do it, my drawings suffered. For example, here I didn’t do it. And you can see that my foot is way larger than the surrounding objects around it and the scale just doesn’t read as nicely. Now, another way to capture the proportions accurately is to just squint. Because, as we said, the more information your brain has, the more interpretations it wants to make. So, if we reduce the information that our eyes bring in, our brain has less to lie to us about. For example, when I’m trying to draw this car, I start out by just squinting so that I’m able to see the overall shapes. Rather than getting all these individual irrelevant pieces of information, I see the bigger picture. And once I have the bigger picture laid out, only then is the detail relevant. This was another example of how I drew some cars. First, I start out with the base gray sketch. And you can see I didn’t get a chance to finish here. I start out with the gray sketch so that I can focus on the overall shapes and then afterward I can add on detail where it matters. And speaking of overall shapes, we have tip number five. This fifth tip is one I heard from my life drawing professor in college. Shout out Mr. Thurman. And it’s a way of measuring your proportions at a glance. And that’s by using negative shapes. Everything we’re drawing is three-dimensional, so it can be easy to get lost in the dimensions and the form of it. But if you want to ensure that your objects read at a glance, what you can do is look at the silhouettes between them and look at the shapes that they make. So, for example, here when I’m trying to measure out how the car reacts to this fence, I could think about the form and the perspective. Or I could simply look at the s the negative shapes that are being made where the car and the fence overlap. You see these simple shapes? And what you want to do is match the shapes that you’re seeing to the lines that you’re putting down. So, a perfect drawing from observation would have these shapes match the reference. Now, those are five tips that have instantly elevated my art and I think they’ll elevate your observational sketching, too. And a sixth bonus tip. If you want to improve your art, join drawing club. That’s a weekly class hosted by me and some other teachers where you get to ask questions and interact in a live weekly lecture. Check it out if that’s interesting. And also check out Paul Hon’s course on Craftsy because that thing is a five out of five. I hope you guys found this video helpful. If you did, then definitely check out this video on form because it is the number one way to draw. And I’ll see you guys in the next video. Bye.

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