I've taken classes from local art foundations and the like, which I recommend, and I've worked from books. This is the book I'd recommend, if you're the type who will not only read but do the exercises, and then practice the exercises (and then keep practicing them!):
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
posted by AbelMelveny at 8:25 AM on February 26 [21 favorites]

YES.

I came here to recommend the same Betty Edwards book as AbelMelveny just did, but also: you can start by trying to copy other people's drawings - especially simple ones. Pull up a picture of Mickey Mouse and see if you can't copy it line by line. Doing the practice exercises in that book is well and good but the dopamine boost you'll get by copying a simple drawing well is unbeatable.

Often when we (people who are "bad at art") think of drawing something, we believe that we must draw something original or from life. Well, that's all super advanced skills. It's like asking kindergarteners to write a novel. Nope. Let's learn our ABCs first, let's copy cartoons and line drawings done by others, and *then* we can start to try out our own original stuff.

Btw I'm someone who literally got an F grade in art all through elementary, middle, and two years of high school, at which point I stopped taking art, but then rediscovered drawing due to my ADHD-driven need to doodle, and now I doodle a lot better. I also learned to do a little shading, so I am passable at reproducing regular 3-D shapes. Next I'm going to learn how to draw drapes and other curvy or irregular 3-d shapes. This is fun and I'm better at it than I ever knew I could be.
posted by MiraK at 8:34 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is good - I've taken drawing classes that used it as a textbook, and drawing classes that didn't, but still had the same kind of philosophical approach to drawing, and that approach is: you kind of have to break your brain, because it's a filthy liar that tries to reinterpret what you're actually seeing into things it can understand, but don't look like reality. That is the "eye" part of it.

Then, it actually is a matter of practice and gaining muscle control over whatever you're using to draw, and experience with whatever medium you're using. It does take some patience.
posted by LionIndex at 8:37 AM on February 26 [7 favorites]

OF COURSE of course of course. Do not believe the hype about "talent". Drawing is a skill ANYONE can learn. Practice is key. Practice is always key. You can do it.

Some resources:
Proko on YouTube
LethalChris Drawing on Youtube
Alphonso Dunn on Youtube

(TONS on YouTube - it's often good when starting out to stick with the same instructor style for at least a month or two? Or it gets confusing. But you'll see what works for you.)
posted by Glinn at 8:40 AM on February 26 [7 favorites]

If there is a place that offers community classes, then definitely try to avail yourself of one. It's amazing what you find you can do when you are made to sit down and concentrate with a little guidance. You'll surprise yourself!
posted by eekernohan at 8:51 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Nthing Right Side of Brain
posted by bq at 8:54 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Is there a particular subject you'd like to learn to draw first? (people? animals? still life? landscapes?) I've been drawing for 30+ years and still don't have the hang of vanishing points, but it doesn't hinder me that much because I'm mostly drawing people and perspective drawing rules like vanishing points come into play a lot more for backgrounds and objects with lots of straight lines and flat planes.

I didn't PERSONALLY enjoy Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain but agree it was tailor made for folks who feel like they "can't" draw and something in their brain/eye is stopping or blocking them from being able to draw what they see, and you might like it a lot. It has tricks to help you draw what you see instead of what you think you see, like turning an image upside-down, etc.
posted by space snail at 9:17 AM on February 26 [3 favorites]

When was the last time you drew regularly? It was probably when you were a child, right? When you draw now, your drawings probably look kinda childish -- that makes sense, doesn't it? You practiced drawing up to a certain point, and then you stopped, and now your drawings always look like they did at the time you stopped. Understanding this helped me feel a lot more confident in learning to draw. I don't sing, dance, write, talk or do basically anything I do the same way I did as a child, because I have been practicing, learning and growing. But not drawing. With drawing I stopped.

I took several online classes from Sketchbook Skool, which were amazing. They helped me to develop my eye in the way the Betty Edwards book does. Most of their classes are demos, which might or might not work for you. I also took a drawing class at a local art center, which was really hard and I did not love -- but it helped me to understand seeing in a different way. I don't draw a lot, but when I do, it now more or less looks like the thing I intended, whether I'm drawing for others or for myself.
posted by OrangeDisk at 9:31 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

This is precisely what Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is for. I also REALLY enjoy Danny Gregory’s work (of Sketchbook Skool, mentioned above), particularly The Creative License. His art is in an “urban sketching” style that is very informal, lively, and easy to get into, and it will show you how even “bad” drawings can lead to beautiful results!
posted by ceramicspaniel at 9:38 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Yes. Start with the draw a box exercises, watch some kim jung gi (specifically the ones where he is explaining how to think about things), and just start practicing. There's a lot of great material out there right now that can help you understand some core concepts (the horizon is a height line, like wtf) that will "level up" your doodling to sketching if you look for it. Good luck.
posted by history is a weapon at 9:40 AM on February 26

A friend used Ed Emberly's books to learn to see and draw shapes and then other things. Practice. some people can draw easily, but if you practice and take classes, you'll get better.
posted by theora55 at 10:01 AM on February 26 [4 favorites]

Do you have any particular role models for what you'd like your drawings to look like? Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is a good resource for learning to capture your visual field, but it doesn't do much if you want to draw from imagination or construct technical diagrams.

There are a few good very books for general-purpose design sketching:
- Thinking With A Pencil by Henning Nelms
- Rapid Viz by Kurt Hanks
- Bert Dodson's Keys to Drawing and Keys to Drawing With Imagination
I'd even recommend the old Ed Emberley books.

The most valuable thing you can do is copy master drawings, working from printed copies as opposed to a computer screen whenever possible. In this case, "master drawings" just means drawings by anyone you'd like to draw like, not necessarily by Rembrandt or whatever. Master copies can spur huge leaps in understanding about how an artist translated their subject into two-dimensional layouts.
posted by MetaFilter World Peace at 10:02 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

the most helpful thing i learned from a drawing class i took at my local community art center was to draw in the same plane as the thing i was trying to draw, meaning i used an easel to draw objects on a table in front of me. this meant i was basically "tracing" the object onto the paper, which meant i spent more time looking at the thing than at the paper. when i drew with paper flat on a table, i would glance at the thing, then spend a lot of time looking at the paper trying to copy the (distorted) image from my brain to the paper, essentially making a bad copy of the thing.
posted by guybrush_threepwood at 11:10 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I went through this book, You can Draw in 30 days. It's cartoony, but you actually take some time to consider shapes and how to make things look real-ish. Super basic exercises and I really liked it. (I'm still terrible at drawing, but I am slightly less awful now. And feel like I could stick with it and actually improve if I did.)
posted by unlapsing at 11:36 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Even before copying drawings, try tracing drawings. Lots of lives don’t require any fine pen/cil work, you might need to practice having your hand does what your brain asks before everything else.

And you can look at drawings very carefully while tracing them.
posted by clew at 11:45 AM on February 26

One of Edwards' exercises is to try copying an image with the image turned upside down. Disrupt your brain's habit of drawing "what you know" but instead drawing "what you see."
posted by SPrintF at 11:47 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

For me, the hardest part of learning to draw for real as an adult was learning to draw what I was seeing. Took goddamn forever to stop drawing what I thought I was seeing. There are a bunch of tricks for learning how to do that which can be learned in classes and through books like those mentioned above.

The other thing you can do, particularly if you are good at memorization/mathematically inclined is to learn proportions of things and draw to rule, as from Loomis [NSFW: figurative nudity] or similar books. Alternatively/in addition, you can read books like Bang's Picture This to get a bunch of compositional rules & schemes down. Maybe check out Wally Wood's "22 panels that always work," if you haven't seen it. These two methods aren't mutually exclusive, but if you want to know how to make drawings while sitting in a meeting--no reference, no easel, not drawing stuff right in front of you--this can be a help.
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:25 PM on February 26

I guess i'll be a big downvote for drawing on the right side .. that book does not, in my experience, get students all the way there. but the good news is anyone can draw - drawing, at least if we're talking realist drawing ( a good place to start even if thats not your end goal), is a very precise craft - more akin to woodworking or knitting or even riding a bike - than an art, that anyone patient enough can definitely learn. You need a system to translate what your eyes see to the 2d picture plane on your easel. Traditional academic drawing instruction, as it's been taught in ateliers since the days of the old masters, offers such a system. It's not hard, just requires patience. It's the visual equivalent of doing scales, say, on the piano. .

No one learns scales because that's the end goal, but rather bc you have to train your hands' muscle memory. Similarly, blocking in a drawing that you observe from life is not the most thrilling process, but it IS a very straightforward measuring process that anyone can do if they are patient enough, and like scales, it enables a solid foundation for everything that comes after. Andrew Loomis's books will give you an idea of it. A teacher probably helps. You might also check out New Masters Academy online. Whatever your end goal, you really have to learn this way of looking first to achieve it. In a way you are ahead of people who feel they are naturally "talented" at drawing, because they have to often unlearn a lot of bad habits and remap them to good ones to troubleshoot any area where "innate talent" falls short. You definitely got this. Happy to chat more and recommend a teacher if you like, you or any other aspiring draftspeople mefites are free to memail me : )
posted by elgee at 1:38 PM on February 26

OMG, YES. I'm a random dude on the internet and I completely *know* you can do this. (If all else fails, try a Camera Lucida?)
posted by Wild_Eep at 1:40 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Oh, for some retro-fun, check out The Secret City
posted by Wild_Eep at 1:50 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Some instruction definitely helps -- but simply drawing a lot is extremely effective. I decided a few months ago to get better at drawing and I'm amazed at my improvement, and I'm not even trying that hard (it helps I'm in an art-adjacent night class which also forces me to draw).

There's a meme going around that says something like "Sucking at something is the first step to being kinda good at something." Take this to heart. It is an eternal truth. Your first steps are to draw something, not draw something good. Keep drawing somethings, eventually it'll look sorta good and then you're on your way.

(In my link above, I was recommended and purchased How To Draw Adorable, which literally starts out with "draw a square", "draw a straight line", it is very instruction oriented and also the style is very subjective and not on realism, it's about learning to draw from a very basic point)
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:05 PM on February 26

I personally like Jack Hamm's Drawing the Head & Figure. It's full of tips and tricks. You have to try them out, though, and skip the ones you're not ready for.

I think learning to draw starts with unlearning. E.g. as a kid you draw heads as a circle and put the eyes too high, like a smiley face 🙂. As Hamm (or any book) will teach you, heads aren't circles and the eyes, strange to say, are halfway up the head.

Try putting a grid on a photo, then on your paper. Then go square by square, copying what you see. This is a good way to get the actual proportions rather than guessing. A simple drawing with the proportions right will look way better than a very complex one where the proportions are off.

In my experience, a sketchy, cartoony drawing is very attractive— also very hard to do. So more realistic drawing is easier for me. That doesn't mean you have to master shading or coloring at first... start by just getting the shapes down.

Also: artists like big sketchpads for a reason. Get an 11" x 14" sketchpad or something, and use the whole page. It makes the details much easier since everything is bigger.
posted by zompist at 3:31 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Go to Lynda Barry's instagram RIGHT NOW. She has so many tips. ANYONE and everyone should draw!
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:12 PM on February 26 [4 favorites]

I'd love to be one of those people who can toss out quick doodles and have it actually look like something you would see in everyday life.
I try to draw what I see and it just comes out looking like a blob. And believe me, I've tried.

Just to keep you being realistic, every one of those people you see tossing out realistic good art... they drew a metric shit ton of blobs. They have closets of blobs. Mountains.

If you draw once or twice a year for ten, 20 minutes you will always draw blobs. To go from drawing blobs to drawing decent realistic art - have in mind one hour, 3-5 days a week, at least two years. You can take classes, follow along with youtube videos, buy a few art books and work through them. All of that will work, but you have to put in the time.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the classic and a great starting point.
posted by Dynex at 7:44 PM on February 26

Every art teacher I've ever had from childhood on mocked my work to the point of tearing it up and told me that I should never try, so I get the trauma.

Last year I did a Skillshare class on illustration via Procreate and oh my God what a boost. I got a bunch of good drawings out of it! The instructions are clear and Procreate has a lot of tools for you to adjust your drawing as needed. It's "Kickstart Your Creativity" by Lisa Bardot if you want a rec.
posted by creatrixtiara at 8:17 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

Since you want to be able to do quick little doodles of real objects, I would start by focusing on that rather than a more comprehensive drawing course. Every day pick a time where you will sit for at least 10 mins and doodle. Choose a different object every day and do an image search for "[object] doodle". Then copy as many doodles as you can within that timeframe. Choose stuff to draw that makes you happy, tied to your hobbies or interests.

Once you notice yourself improving, you can mix it up by drawing from photo reference, drawing from memory, or switching to more challenging subjects. Your skills will certainly get even better if you add formal drawing lessons to the mix, but I think you'll be surprised at the progress you make just from daily doodling.
posted by moleplayingrough at 9:18 PM on February 26

My family, drawers and not, enjoyed this Ted Talk.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:15 PM on February 26 [1 favorite]

I like Mona Brookes' "Drawing with Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too". It breaks things down into very basic lessons and ideas. Since it's aimed at children the goals and examples aren't Da Vinci or anything but if you last drew when you were a small child and also have some minor muscle coordination skill issues (like me), it will be about the right level. (It's always a bit disheartening to pick up a "learn to draw!" book where even the "before" drawings are way beyond what one could do now.)

I also like Brookes' out of print "Drawing for Older Children & Teens", if you're starting out at a more advanced level than what the previous book is aimed at.
posted by mochi_cat at 1:30 AM on February 27

I know someone who desperately wanted to draw, as that would be the only way he could produce the type of pictures he wanted to look at. He taught himself to draw by tracing photographs other people had taken, and art other people had drawn and stitching them together.

Tracing art will train your eye for shapes and forms better than trying to copy them by looking at an image or a the real thing and transcribing to paper or a tablet to one side. There are two ways to trace - one is to use tracing paper over the image you are interested in understanding, and the other is to cut out images and then trace around them. This is really helpful if perspective and foreshortening are part of your difficulties, but also will help you understand shapes and forms much better.

There is a good chance you have a learning disability, which is only a learning disability for artists and maybe for people who pack moving trucks, but that there is only one key area in which you are deficient. The trick is to figure out what that area is. Most people have some minor learning disabilities in math and reading and memory but have learned to work around them so well that they don't realise they are using strategies to compensate. Having minor learning disabilities is typical of all of us. But our brains are complex enough that we have many different ways to approach a task that is hard for us and we can hit on a way that will work.

Is your handwriting atrocious? If so fine motor control and focal dystonia may be the issue. Read about work-arounds for that, such as pencil grips and grid lines. Do you struggle with proportion? If so, try changing scale. See if drawing on post it note pads results in improvement. You might be able to draw what you want - if you use only a quarter of a post it note pad do it! Once you can draw things in tiny scale work on learning to draw them larger.

Also try shrinking and enlarging the image you want to copy. You may be adding detail because you know it's there, even though in fact you shouldn't be able to see it, as when a hand is drawn out of scale because the person doing the drawing felt they had to put in the knuckle bumps - when in fact on the scale they were drawing the hand itself was no more than a tiny triangular bump itself. Shrinking and enlarging your target images will help you learn to see when you are adding too much detail or you are missing important detail. Look at details of great paintings - the zoomed in close up of an eye, for example. You'll realise that the great artist used only enough detail that the eye looked totally convincing from a distance. Close up it may look totally wrong. This is because the artist knew which part of what was there they should draw and which part they should leave out.

You may need to train your visual imagination. For example, let's say you want to draw a car and you can picture it perfectly when you close your eyes - the colours, the glow on the polish, the rounded smoothness of it.... when you close your eyes and visualize what you have is an image of colour and light and texture. But somehow you have no concept of how many windows the car has because your strengths and interests lie in colour and texture. When it comes time to draw the car you immediately run into trouble with where those windows go in relation to each other. In that case you could be wasting your time working on realistic art, and could work on creating images of cars that are semi representational blurs of movement and colour and weight, so powerful people step back when they see them. You could end up deliberately adding extra windows because that creates the feeling that the car is an unstoppable juggernaut. Or your windows might be just one blur of blue-black glass which again adds the sense of power to the vehicle.

Investigate what sort of art really appeals to you. You might be someone for whom colour and value is pointless, and so you prefer ink drawings without shading. Or your strengths and focus might best be applied in a different area. Do you like ornate? Dramatic? Cosy? Sinuous? The trick is to know yourself better and learn what part of drawing you want to do and what part you don't and what part is giving you trouble.

If you haven't already done so, I'd suggest you start collecting images that appeal to you, saved off the internet. Once you have a collection of thirty or so pictures you can use, look at each one and figure out why you like it. You might be trying to do something very difficult before you master some of the beginning steps, if what you like requires a lot of technical skill. Trying to draw moody mist in a twilight forest before you can draw a tree and without having much of an idea what the ground vegetation looks like is going to result in a mess - but the solution may not take that long because you don't actually need to learn to draw a tree, just a tree symbol, and a vegetation symbol, rather than taking a six month course in botanical studies.

Absolutely do not start with life drawing, until you feel you are somewhat competent with copying two dimensional images. Classically artists were trained by copying two dimensional images before they were allowed to start sketching sculpture and only after they had mastered sketching statues did they get to attend an atelier with life models. If you want to draw a fish pond shimmering full of fish you can't start by sitting down beside a fish pond because the darned fish will be shimmering too fast for imprint the shapes and masses and perspective that type of an image needs. But copying some photographs of fish in a fish pond will train your eyes so you understand what you see.

Most kids start by learning to draw something symbolical and get reasonably good at one or two things. When I was a kid, about half the kids in my class could do a good drawing of Snoopy on his dog house and a bad drawing of a house, and a bad drawing of a person, seen full front... and they couldn't draw anything else. Once they were expected to draw better than that, and to improve the picture of the house so it had perspective, and to draw a profile instead of a full front picture of person, they gave up drawing because they couldn't figure out how to see it and no one showed them.

People will likely tell you to draw what you see and leave you floundering because you don't know how to translate it from reality to something flat. Before you can learn to see, tho, you need to learn to draw multiple symbols, and enlarge your competence at those symbols.

Can you draw a very simple figure of any type, such as an apple? To learn do draw you first draw a generic apple, then you learn to draw three types of apples - granny smith is the same as the generic one, except it's green. Red delicious tapers a bit at the bottom and is also red like the generic one. From there you progress to drawing an apple with a bite out of it, and to drawing a royal gala apple which is reddish-yellow. Once you have learned to draw six different cartoon apples, it's time to learn to draw two apples in the same location, one slightly behind the other. When you master that you have enough apple symbols in your visual image bank to get a photograph of an apple and draw that, modifying your apple symbols to look more like the real apple photograph.

So the question to ask yourself is where are you in that progression of drawing apples? Can you not yet draw an apple at all? Are you struggling to get the tapering right on the red delicious? Do your overlapping apples float in space because the one in the back if visible below the one in the front? Learning to draw those symbols and cartoon style simplifications will train your eye and your hand so that you can analyze the difference between what you are trying to make the pencil do and where it is going wrong. It will also train you to see the difference between your symbol of an apple and a photograph of an apple, and how to close some of that difference.

You don't actually have to learn to draw realistically, just learn a big enough bank of symbols that everyone can recognize what your drawing is because they recognize the symbols. If you work with two different symbols for the same thing, you'll learn to modify the symbols in your repertoire. For example look for a winter tree identification guide to learn to draw trees. You'll see that a maple tree and an oak tree have different lines - the oak tree has branches that go out horizontally where the maple only has branches that slant upwards. If you draw both types of trees you'll get the practice you need to master variations in branches.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:09 AM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Hey! You're the me of a year ago. I wanted to be able to draw but had no natural inclination to it, and had never done it for fun in the past. (Well, not much anyhow.) I started taking community college classes (and various "extended learning" classes) last fall, plus I started to watch a lot of YouTube videos. I'm still not very good, but after about six months of moderate work on this hobby, I can occasionally produce pieces I'm proud of.

Seriously, take a look at this blog page where I show where I started and what I did a couple of weeks ago. I won't claim to be anywhere near good, but I'm certainly not awful anymore.

If you want more info on books/YouTube channels, send me MeMail (or leave a blog comment). Happy to share.

And one last thing: From watching a bajillion hours of artist videos on YouTube, I can say that many of these folks don't believe in natural talent. In fact, quite a few bristle when folks tell them they're talented. Why? Because they've worked hard to develop their skills. They don't consider it talent; they consider it the result of time and dedication. That didn't make any sense to me at first, but I get it now.
posted by jdroth at 12:08 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]

That book You Can Draw in 30 Days that unlapsing recommended is really quite good -

and the author, Mark Kistler, mentions his art teacher in the text. That teacher was Bruce McIntyre, who wrote a really solid, approachable Drawing Textbook in 1965. Mark Kistler's 30 Days emphasizes extremely similar ideas - Kistler has Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing, Bruce McIntyre has Seven, but they're clearly related.

Kistler's laws are:

1. Foreshortening: Distort an object to create the illusion that one part of it is closer to your eye.
2. Placement: Place an object lower on the surface of a picture to make it appear closer to your eye.
3. Size: Draw an object larger to make it appear closer to your eye.
4. Overlapping: Draw an object in front of another object to create the visual illusion that it is closer to your eye.
5. Shading: Draw darkness on an object opposite the positioned light source to create the illusion of depth.
6. Shadow: Draw darkness on the ground next to the object, opposite the positioned light source, to create the illusion of depth.
7. Contour lines: Draw curving lines wrapping around the shape of a round object to give it volume and depth.
8. Horizon line: Draw a horizontal reference line to create the illusion that objects in the picture are varying distances from your eye.
9. Density: Create the illusion of distance by drawing objects lighter and with less detail.

The easy, engaging exercises in the book make all those ideas concrete and understandable and easy to apply yourself.

Kistler is known for a TV show for children that teaches kids how to draw. You can find some videos of Kistler teaching drawing online.

And here's a five minute video of Bruce McIntyre on The Seven Elements of Drawing.

If you have a good library, see whether they have any of these books - You Can Draw in 30 Days, Drawing Textbook by Bruce McIntyre, Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain (I've also found that one helpful) - ANY of the books mentioned in this thread. If they do, check them out one or two at a time so you can get a feel for each one, to see whether it's helpful to you or not.


There is absolutely, definitely hope for you. You CAN learn to draw, and I hope you enjoy it a lot!
posted by kristi at 6:36 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

I have two friends who wanted to become professional artists. They were both rejected from medium-skill college art programs. They practiced. They went to different programs. One has now drawn a major comic book that you've totally heard of, and the other directs an animated show that everyone in the world has heard of.

All my college roommates were visual artists. Their first year assignment was to draw the same thing every single day, for half an hour or so (this was an evening assignment after they had taken a few classes each day). One roommate chose to draw 100 still lifes of a few fake fruits and a lamp, using soft charcoal (satisfyingly bold but messy!) and one did 100 self-portraits in pencil (much neater and easier). The jump in their skills after a couple months was actually astonishing. Takeaway: It is 100% possible to get better at art!

Art is two skills, a SEEING skill - seeing the shapes and colours of what you're drawing - and a MOTOR skill - teaching your hand to physically record what you want it to. Vanishing points are important but waaay advanced for a beginner. A lot of artists start by drawing apples (nice easy shape so you can think about light), and faces (fun to draw and more interesting than apples). Try not to get too technical, make sure it stays fun and interesting. Good luck!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 5:27 AM on February 28 [3 favorites]

I have no innate drawing ability. But my best friend as a kid absolutely did and it made me jealous. So I started practicing and yeah, it's a skill that can be developed.

How To Draw What You See was super helpful guide. It argues (and demonstrates) that everything is just boxes, balls, cylinders, and cones, at least in their underlying structure. Learn how to draw those things and you can draw anything.

It's practice, sure, but if you keep at it, you'll see improvement. Just beware the pitfall of judging yourself against others. Sure, you may not be Da Vinci, but Da Vinci isn't you either. It's a subtle, but important point. Learn from the masters if you like, but ultimatley draw in a way that pleases you. Draw thing you enjoy and focus on that pleasure,.

Shame on those who laugh at your drawings.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:27 AM on February 29

My family, drawers and not, enjoyed this Ted Talk.


Christ I need an editor.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 3:33 PM on March 1