Learning to Draw What You See

The most common problem encountered by people when they start learning to draw is that they don't realize that they are not drawing what the see, but drawing what they think they see. This happens because your brain is made to recognize objects as a whole, and not the individual components they are made of. So when you want to draw an eye, your brain tells you that you are seeing an eye, not the lines and shading that really make up what you are seeing at the moment. The result is that you will not draw what you see. You will be disappointed, you will lose motivation, and in many cases it leads to the end of the learning process. It doesn't have to be like that! Don't let your brain fooling you keep you from exploring your creativity.

In this article I'm going to show you techniques you can use to draw what you see consciously so you can stay motivated throughout your learning process so you will be able to develop your inner artist through drawing.

You can try to focus on drawing your foot, with or without shoe, over and over. It is easy to draw because your foot is always with you, easy to look at, and you don't need it to draw, but it still has a lot of detail you need to capture. Focus on the lines, the contours, the shading of your foot. Don't try to draw it from different angles, just draw it from the same angle over and over. Look at your finished drawings and your foot, see what you can do better, and then improve upon it. You can also try doing this with your thumb.

You can also try to draw without looking at your paper. This forces you to really draw what you are looking at, and not on trying to correct what you already have on paper. The results may look like doodles, especially in the beginning, but you will be training your brain to draw the components, and not the recognized composite objects.

Another good technique is to draw without taking your pencil from the paper. This way you will train your brain and your hand to forget drawing the wrong way. Instead you will train yourself to make every line count. This principle can also be applied by drawing with a pen instead of a pencil. By drawing with a pen, you don't give yourself the option of erasing the drawing. Again, you're making every line count, and are teaching yourself to draw the right way. Try it for yourself, you will see an improvement.

To help you break up the components of any object you are drawing more easily, it would be a good thing to draw those objects either upside down, or in the mirror image, or even both. This will make it harder for your brain to recognize the objects as objects, and easier for you to notice the individual parts the objects are composed of.

One last thing you can try that will make you forget about objects altogether is to draw the negative space around and between the objects. This will make it a lot easier for you to draw the real shapes that you see. Drawing negatives spaces is an important skill that will be useful through your entire drawing experience.

About the author:
Just like you, Jacob Neila didn't always know how to draw. Instead of giving up, he taught himself how and now he likes to share his knowledge with others

Article Source:  Learning to Draw What You See

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