These Drawing Instructions & Drawing Tips Help You Improve Any Picture |
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To improve any of your drawings, you'll need to understand and evaluate this drawing first. It can be incredibly challenging to be objective about your own drawing as it is often difficult to see the faults in a drawing you have been looking at for hours. If you had seen the faults earlier, you would have corrected them!
It is therefore not advisable to try to evaluate a drawing too soon after you have completed it or while it is right in front of you. Get up, walk around, have a cup of coffee and then go back and look at it and see if you find anything new. Try putting your drawing away for a couple of weeks or even months and then go back and look at it.
Think about why you draw. What is the definition of a good drawing for you? Must it be realistic to be good? Or could a drawing that helped you to get rid of some anxiety also be a 'good' drawing?
If you feel as though a drawing just isn’t working visually then review the rules of composition (for example) and see if there is anything you might have missed that might be the key to a successful drawing.
You can also gain experience in evaluating your own drawings by asking knowledgeable people whom you trust to be honest to evaluate your drawings. See how their comments line up with your thoughts and ask about areas in your drawings that you are unsure about and then take their advice.
There are some things you should specifically look at to find opportunities for improving an existing drawing.
You can make sure that the areas of your page not covered in drawing are clean and smudge free. You can lift any smudges with a putty rubber (also known as a kneadable eraser).
If the composition can be improved by cropping a little (only a little) on one side then try that.
If your drawing is too dark and isn’t showing a wide range of tones then try bringing out some highlights with your putty eraser.
If your drawing is too light then try adding some extra shading.
Ideally you'll find out that your drawing is near perfect and doesn't need any improvements at all.
On the other hand, if you end up with a huge list of things you'd need to change to improve your drawing … then, please: Start again... In all sincerity that is probably the best thing you could do as your first drawing will then count as a practice run and your second drawing is almost guaranteed to be much better.
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