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Learning to draw and paint is a journey with plenty of challenges. You are much more likely to succeed if you have a plan for what skills you’ll learn, how you’ll learn them and you have the right learning mindset going into it. You’ll need to give yourself time and allow yourself to make a lot of drawings that don’t work!

START WITH A QUICK OVERVIEW

Learn Everything About Drawing in 10 Minutes ▶︎

Here you’ll see the big picture – all the major drawing skills outlined concisely. These take a while to learn, but it’s doable and we are here to help!

UNDERSTAND FIGURE DRAWING SKILLS

The First 7 Skills You Need to Learn ▶︎

Within figure drawing, there are specific skills to learn. Here are the first 7 of those.

MAKE A PLAN

How to Improve Massively Across 12 Months ▶︎

Creating art can be spontaneous! But learning art skills often benefits from having a solid plan.

GESTURE

Gesture is what breathes life and movement into your drawings. At first it can feel confusing, but with time, it can become one of the most enjoyable aspects of figure drawing.

START WITH A BASIC OVERVIEW

Beginner Gesture Drawing ▶︎

In this simple article, we learn what gesture is.

THE FIRST SKILL TO LEARN

This basic skill fixes 90% of gesture struggles ▶︎

Gesture is often described as a mysterious thing you feel. However, a huge part of it is really clear and easy to define.

AND THEN WORK ON THIS SKILL…

The Secret of Gestural Flowing Curves ▶︎

How to make those lovely flowing gestural marks that we love in gesture drawings.

AND THEN COMPLETE THE PROCESS…

The 11 Steps to Great Gesture Drawing ▶︎

This article outlines the full process of learning high level gesture drawing skills.

PERSPECTIVE

These skills will help us create a 3 dimensional world on our 2D drawing surface. Perspective can get complex and technical, but fortunately we only need the basics for most of our artwork.

START WITH THE BASICS

1, 2 AND 3 POINT PERSPECTIVE MADE SIMPLE ▶︎

The first thing to learn about perspective is how parallel lines converge towards vanishing points as they go away from us. Here is a super clear guide to that.

THEN LEARN ABOUT THIS

EYE LEVEL AND HORIZON LINE EXPLAINED ▶︎

The horizon line is often poorly explained which is a shame because it’s such an important part of perspective. Fortunately, we have it covered with this article.

AND ONCE YOU’RE READY, TRY THIS…

DRAWING THINGS WITH BOXES (link to YouTube)

At this stage it’s useful to start drawing simple objects with box shapes using your new understanding of basic perspective. This will be a great way to start applying the theory in practice.

VALUES & SHADING

Value means how light or dark something is. An object has its own value because of its colour. The value we see is then affected by how much light is hitting the object. So the value of each part of each thing we see comes from a combination of the local colour and the light.

START WITH THE BASICS

Rewire your brain for art in 4 steps ▶︎

It’s so useful to start grouping values together. In other words, see everything that is relatively dark as a distinct group and everything that is relatively light as a distinct group. Learn how to do this with this article.

THEN CHECK THIS OUT

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SHADING (link to YouTube)

This article will guide you through the types of shadow we see and also how to shade figures using that knowhow.

TO DIVE DEEPER, TRY THIS

SEEING LIGHT AND SHADOWS IN DAILY LIFE ▶︎

This article will go into more detail about the shadows we see and why they are the way they are. Understanding these ideas will help you see

And now for the really fun part

SHAPE DESIGN ▶︎

EDGE DESIGN ▶︎

Now we can use our understanding of value get into some fun elements, such as shape design and edge design.

DRAW WHAT YOU SEE:
PROPORTIONS AND MORE

Drawing what you see is actually quite hard! The reason is that our brain love to distort our observations because it has preconceived ideas about what everything looks like. We have a ‘symbol’ in our heads for what a hand looks like, what a face looks like and so on. Even experienced artists struggle with this. So with the skills outlined in these articles you can draw what you are seeing.

START WITH AN OVERVIEW

PROPORTIONS OVERVIEW ▶︎

This article shows you how to combine the basic principles of proportions in your drawings.

GET INTO ABSTRACT SHAPES!

2 BEGINNERS RAPIDLY IMPROVE ▶︎

This article will introduce two case-studies of students who use a simple tecnique to rapidly improve.

AVOID COMMON MISTAKES

TOP 5 PROPORTION MISTAKES (LINK TO YOUTUBE)

Almost all students make similar mistakes with proportions. See the top 5 in this video.

FORMS

Drawing and painting from life always requires us to create an illusion – the illusion of depth. Our paper is 2D and the thing we are drawing needs to feel 3D. How do we give our drawings that sense of 3D form? These skills, which can be combined with the perspective ideas above, will help.

START WITH AN OVERVIEW

THE 3 STEPS TO GIVE YOUR DRAWINGS FORM AND DEPTH ▶︎

This article will help you understand the ways that we can create depth and form in a drawing.

THEN CHECK THIS OUT

CROSS CONTOUR LINES – THE LASER BEAM APPROACH (link to YouTube)

This article is all about the lines that wrap around the forms of the figure. It’s essentially about imagining lines that are drawn onto the surface of the figure. This article will help you figure out how to see and draw these well.

ANATOMY

Knowing about the figure’s structure can help you see with more clarity. However, studying really advanced anatomy when you are just starting out is going to be overwhelming instead of helping. Our approach to anatomy is to simplify it and focus on the things you need at each stage.

START WITH AN OVERVIEW

HOW TO LEARN ANATOMY: DOS AND DON’TS

This article will take you through the process of learning anatomy. The key is to not bite off more than you can chew! At each stage of learning, there are specific things to learn – you don’t have to learn it all at once!

SEE THE FIGURE WITH FRESH EYES

THE FRESH EYES APPROACH

This article will introduce you to our Fresh Eyes challenge. It’s really a mini-course that helps you see the basic structure and forms of the figure across 10 days. This is the first tutorial, check it out.

THEN GET INTO DEEPER INTO DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE FIGURE

Once you are familiar with the major forms of the figure, you can start to dive deeper into the specidics of different areas using the articles below.

LIST OF ARTICLES

Ribcage

Pelvis

Arms

Hands
Shoulders
Chest
Neck
Abs

Armpits (an important junction point for various muscles)

Fat

PAINTING AND COLOUR

We have some really useful articles about painting and colour, including:

– The colours in shadows (link to YouTube)

– Understanding saturation

– How simplifying with an app helped me learn to paint (link to YouTube)

WEIGHT & BALANCE

HOW TO ACHIEVE BALANCE IN 3 EASY STEPS ▶︎

Balance is an often overlooked topic in figure drawing. In this article, you’ll see how balance is central to the gesture of the pose. If you’re an intermediate level artist, adding skill with balance will get you to that next level.

7 TOOLS TO GIVE WEIGHT TO YOUR FIGURES ▶︎

One way to make a 2D drawing feel more 3D and tangible is to consider the weight of the figure. This article breaks down a few simple approaches to give weight to your figures.

MATERIALS

There are a huge variety of materials you can use for figure drawing and painting. This article goes over many of the options in front of you with their pros and cons.

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

Every week or two, I send out useful tips and insights about life drawing. When you sign up, I’ll also send you our guide to the skills of life drawings so you can see where you are and what skills to work on next

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Student blog part 1

Student blog part 2: drawing bigger and going charcoal crazy

Student blog part 3 – drawing while stressed

How did you do that amazing painting?

Student blog part 4: learning from mistakes

Some great drawings from ULU Art Society life drawing class

Student blog 5: different strokes

More great pictures from fellow life drawing lovers

Love Drawing Podcast 1 – All About Life Drawing with Mayko Fry

Not sure where to start?

LEARNING PROCESS

START WITH A QUICK OVERVIEW

Learn Everything About Drawing in 10 Minutes ▶︎

UNDERSTAND FIGURE DRAWING SKILLS

The First 7 Skills You Need to Learn ▶︎

MAKE A PLAN

How to Improve Massively Across 12 Months ▶︎

GESTURE

START WITH A BASIC OVERVIEW

Beginner Gesture Drawing ▶︎

THE FIRST SKILL TO LEARN

This basic skill fixes 90% of gesture struggles ▶︎

AND THEN WORK ON THIS SKILL…

The Secret of Gestural Flowing Curves ▶︎

AND THEN COMPLETE THE PROCESS…

PERSPECTIVE

START WITH THE BASICS

1, 2 AND 3 POINT PERSPECTIVE MADE SIMPLE ▶︎

THEN LEARN ABOUT THIS

EYE LEVEL AND HORIZON LINE EXPLAINED ▶︎

AND ONCE YOU’RE READY, TRY THIS…

VALUES & SHADING

START WITH THE BASICS

Rewire your brain for art in 4 steps ▶︎

THEN CHECK THIS OUT

TO DIVE DEEPER, TRY THIS

SEEING LIGHT AND SHADOWS IN DAILY LIFE ▶︎

And now for the really fun part

SHAPE DESIGN ▶︎

EDGE DESIGN ▶︎

DRAW WHAT YOU SEE: PROPORTIONS AND MORE​

START WITH AN OVERVIEW

PROPORTIONS OVERVIEW ▶︎

GET INTO ABSTRACT SHAPES!

2 BEGINNERS RAPIDLY IMPROVE ▶︎

AVOID COMMON MISTAKES

FORMS

START WITH AN OVERVIEW

THE 3 STEPS TO GIVE YOUR DRAWINGS FORM AND DEPTH ▶︎

THEN CHECK THIS OUT

ANATOMY

START WITH AN OVERVIEW

SEE THE FIGURE WITH FRESH EYES

THEN GET INTO DEEPER INTO DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE FIGURE

WEIGHT & BALANCE

MATERIALS

There are a huge variety of materials you can use for figure drawing and painting. This article goes over many of the options in front of you with their pros and cons.

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

DRAW WHAT YOU SEE:
PROPORTIONS AND MORE