So, how do you learn to draw?
Here are two simple exercises to train your brain to draw what you see and not what you think.
In today’s post I am going to go through two different exercises you can do to help train your brain to draw what you see and not what you think,
But before we do that, let’s go through what you need to know to learn how to draw.
If you’ve read my other posts, you know that I believe that anyone can learn to draw and paint when taught correctly.
With drawing, a large part of knowing how to draw has to do with knowing how to draw what you see, not what you think.
From a young age, we associate certain items with a basic way of drawing them. If I asked you to draw a tree, house or person- you’d have a simple, go to drawing that you would use.
The problem is that when we want to draw something in front of us, a large part of our brain is trying to get us to revert to a logical way of drawing and distracting us from drawing what’s in front of us.
In order to quiet the left side of our brain, the more logical side we need to train our right side of our brain to focus on drawing just what’s in front of us, without judgement.
To do this, there are several exercises one can do. I am going to share two of them that you can easily try. These exercises will prove that a large part of drawing is just accessing the right side of your brain, which is something anyone can do.
The first exercise requires you to draw this image below. Print it out and practise drawing it on a paper. I have purposely placed it upside down so you can draw it that way. This means you won’t be thinking if you are drawing it properly or if it’s coming out good as you won’t know until you have finished drawing it and turn it the right way up.
So have a go, and see if this exercise calms your questioning, left side of the brain and forces you to just copy exactly what’s in front of you.
The other exercise you can do is to take a piece of string and place it randomly in front of you. Then draw the shape the string is making-follow the lines and the curves-drawing it on your paper all without looking at your paper.
This exercise will also force you to use the right side of the brain and force you to focus on exactly what’s in front of you and not think too much about what you are doing.
So have a go and let me know how you did and if you are surprised by what came out.
Now before we end this post, I do want to say, that these exercises aren’t going to automatically get you to draw anything. They are tools you can use to start the process of training your brain to draw what you see, not what you think. As with any skill, the more you practise the better you will get.
But if you’d like to continue your journey to learning how to draw these are the steps needed:
- Train your brain to use the right side of your brain when drawing, so you are drawing what you see, not what you think
- Understand how to draw from an image and practise doing so using the right method to draw everything accurately and in the right proportion
- Discover how to draw still life using tools such as a viewfinder and what process you need to go from composition to completed drawing
- Move on to drawing portraits, once your skills are developed, as drawing portraits require great accuracy and you need to know how to use your right side of your brain really well
- Keep practising using these steps, havnig learned the correct methods and you will see your skills improve over time.
This is the exact way I teach all my students, whether in person or through my online course. Plus, I detail how I teach it in my teacher training course. Having an exact framework and method to teach any student how to draw has changed my life as I know I can get any student to draw anything and I am grateful for the many years I spent working out the exact process to teach drawing.
I used to stress how I was going to get students to draw- and thought it would take a lot of hard work and maybe only some students can get it. But I now know that anyone can learn how to draw and with these methods, any age can can grasp the process of training their brain.
So give these two exercises a try and let me know what you discover about your drawing ability!