TEACH YOURSELF | How To Sketch

If you've ever been frustrated that the characters you draw from your imagination are missing something, perhaps your sketching practice is at fault.

When you use a sketchbook to study from real life, this enhances your understanding of a given subject. By studying real life, you can make drawings from your imagination more believable because sketching can give you an understanding of what you are drawing -- an understanding that no amount of studying still images can give you. 

To help in finding techniques for sketching, I've included some of my favorite advice from all corners of the internet.

Advice

Copying from still images can only take you so far. Worst case scenario, it can actually teach you to only copy what you see. When you copy, you will be incapable of reproducing the character from your memory. Or if you do, it will be that specific character in that specific pose that you memorized.

This is similar to stretching only a particular muscle: you may be really good at stretching that muscle from a specific angle but as soon as you try to stretch it in a different way, you fall short and are unable to do it.

To avoid copying what you see, mentors across the internet urge artists to draw humans and animals that move around a lot. This forces you to capture the essence of each pose (the gesture). You get the impression of the person or animal and then you put your interpretation down on the paper, all within a matter of seconds so as to retain that first impression.

Sketching this way allows you to understand what you are drawing so that you can draw it from any angle based on your imagination. It functions like a brain exercise.

In these two videos, Aaron Blaise, a 2D animator, discusses how he approaches sketching animals:

Also, here are some handouts on drawing animals, possibly by Glen Keane, from Animation Meat.

When it comes to specific exercises to practice in my sketchbook, I have found the blog post, Doodle Dump, which suggests that you can draw a subject three times; the first time, looking at the subject; the second time, looking at your drawing of the subject; the third time, from memory. This way, you will ensure that you are not simply copying the subject and are instead drawing from and enhancing your memory.

I hope these tips will help you as you go out and sketch from real life. Let me know how you go.