15 Tips to Improve Your Drawing Skills
People are born with innate drawing talent or they are not.
{Fact? Fiction? Urban Legend? Fairy Tale?}
post updated 02/01/24
Drawing is making marks on paper. To draw well, you've got to practice. That’s the only secret.
When my kids were little, I was always looking for things to do while waiting everywhere — swimming lessons, soccer practice, or dentist appointments. This was 15 years ago, so I brought along an iPod (loaded with podcasts and music), a notebook, and some pens. I drew repeating patterns, alphabets, words, knots, and mandalas. It never occurred to me that I would/could get better — I figured it was something other people knew how to do.
What I learned? If you draw a lot, you get better. It might seem like magic that involves charms and pixie dust and the perfect fountain pen — but honestly it’s just about drawing.
If you are in search of tips for getting better at drawing (or if you are frustrated because you feel you are not making progress), I’ve got a variety of starting points for you to explore!
TL;DR
Some of my go-to pens for doodling & drawing & mark-making:
Faber-Castell PITT artist markers, Sakura Pigma Professional brush pens, Sakura Pigma Brush Pens, Zebra Sarasa, and Uniball UM-151 🌈💚✨
Looking back now I think of years of drawing in coffee shops, in the carpool line, waiting on hold, waiting in line at the DMV, at the breakfast table, on the porch, and in book stores. Drawing in all sorts of notebooks and journals all over the world on planes, buses, and trains. Most of what I draw is abstract but I’ve sketched monuments and landscapes and cathedrals and people as well.
It’s easy to lose steam and think you’re not making progress. But it is happening! Keep drawing and you’ll gradually feel more comfortable|confident with your drawing tools and build fine motor skills.
developing drawing skills is a gradual Process
Look at your progress over a long time frame. If you compare your work today with your work from a month ago, you probably won't see clear differences. But if you look at a longer time frame - compare the drawings you did 1-2 years ago vs. current — you’ll see a difference! Progress is measured not in hours, but in months and years.
Be patient with yourself. The more you draw, the better you will get. As I look back through my journals, I see that every time I challenged myself to try a new idea, I made a leap forward.
What paper to use? Try all sorts of papers and notebooks and gradually you’ll start noticing differences. Paper & pen choices are so personal to the way you draw. Usually, I use moleskine journals, field notes notebooks, loose watercolor paper, and index cards.
Try index cards! Index cards are a key part of my creative practice - I write about this and share examples in the simple beauty of index card art. Each summer, I facilitate the Daisy Yellow Index-Card-a-Day Challenge which is a fiesta of creative fun (2022 was our 12th challenge)!
Think of drawing as making a series or collection of lines or marks. The art of drawing is about moving the drawing tool and understanding how to convey/transform what you see into marks on the page. I would first suggest working on refining the fine motor movements involved in drawing by trying to capture the essence (the idea) of simple subjects.
Things to practice in order to improve your line work. Mark-making, doodling, sketching, scribbling, automatic drawing, contour drawing, gestural marks, and hand-lettering. Oh, and early in the learning process, I made the decision not to use a ruler to make lines - I figured that this would be a way to push myself to get better at drawing them and I didn’t want to get too perfectionistic.
So how to decide what to draw? Look around — ideas are everywhere - you can pick anything. I remember finding things to draw in my backpack, like bubblegum labels, geometric designs, book covers, and even UPC codes! I never considered that my style would evolve -- I was found the process intriguing. Waiting time FLEW by. I liked drawing. After spending 20 years in the world of accounting and analysis, it was refreshing to do art! It was like I was in high school again, drawing patterns in my room late at night with Jackson Browne or The Stones playing on the radio.
Fifteen (15) things to draw to improve your line work
1. fill a sketchbook with freehand doodles
Start a drawing habit - dedicate 15-30 minutes each day to draw in your sketchbook. Draw whatever you want to draw. The key is returning every day to keep those creative wheels spinning!!! Here’s a flip-thru of Field Notes #1 where I just drew every day for fun.
Draw as much as you wish, turning the page whenever it’s finished. If you don’t feel satisfied or happy with the end result — as long as you love the process of drawing — keep going! And it doesn’t need to be literally a page per day, because some things take longer than others. Sometimes it takes me several days to fill two pages, other days it’s something quick. Keep at it and do a bit each day. Try adding details and changing things around, playing with new ideas that pop into your mind. Practice developing different types of lines and patterns.
2. Draw ordinary things
Look around your room and focus on one ordinary everyday item. After you sketch it, you can jot notes about what you drew, the weather, your mood, using the sketchbook page like a mini-diary. If you’re in the mood, you can add a little bit of color with markers or watercolor.
3. Draw circles
Circles are tricky. So here’s what you can do. Try working fast, drawing circles without judging your results. You can do this with any drawing tool and each will work a bit differently. You’ll find that this helps your dexterity and improves your precision (while being meditative and calming too). Try not to evaluate everything you draw, just draw. Get into the process. Throw some circles into almost any page, as part of a pattern or to add playful bouncy energy. Keep experimenting and practicing! You can draw overlapping circles. Or draw loose concentric circles by putting circles inside and around other circles.
4. fill a grid with patterns, marks & symbols
In Drawing in Field Notes (video), I fill in this ⬇︎ grid with marks, patterns, doodles, whatever floats into my mind. Here’s a Mindmap of 24 Sources for Doodle, Design, Pattern & Drawing Inspiration.
5. write words & lyrics on your sketchbook pages
Printing is a form of drawing — letters are shapes, after all! On these pages, I drew block letters and added a little shading on one side to give them a little depth. You can pull up lyrics, a phrase, a question, or a quotation on your phone as a reference as you draw. Try filling a particular space with the words. It takes practice to string series of words together first in a defined space, then in rows, and then a full page. As you draw, you can toy with expanding or contracting the spacing between letters, within letters, between words, etc.
6. fill an entire journal with letters of the alphabet
One of my practices involves creating an entire journal filled with variations, just brainstorming possibilities. I also dedicate full pages in my moleskine sketchbook to quickly devising variations on one specific letter. The more letters you draw, the faster the ideas will surface! Try writing the alphabet as many ways as you can. Here’s more about my alphabet journal and a video where I brainstormed a page of letters with a bunch of different pens.
7. Draw faces
Portrait drawing isn’t something I do often - mine are wonky but better than when I started! If I only drew faces, things would progress even faster. Draw faces on index cards or draw a grid of boxes in your journal and fill each box with a tiny face. Experiment with hair styles and expressions. How many little faces can you fit on a page in your journal? Try not to evaluate the goodness or badness or anythingness of your faces. I find faces really difficult to draw, but at the same time intriguing to see the results. Details: 112 hours elapsed time, 100 faces, one ink
8. Draw repeating patterns
Think of a little icon, pattern, motif, symbol, shape, or mark. Repeat it across the page. Try to think of as many different shapes as you can. Here are pages of patterns with various pens in a Field Notes. Look around the house and in the garden for interesting ideas. Fabric, wallpaper, sea shells, tree branches, seed pods, whatever strikes you as interesting. Then simplify to the essence (the idea) of what you see.
9. paint repeating patterns
At first it seems counter-intuitive — but painting with a brush can improve your drawing skills!! I went through a period of many months where I was painting more than drawing, and when I went back to drawing, I was SO surprised that my drawing skills had not changed/declined at all, And I think it’s about using the fine motor skills with both drawing tools and brushes. These shapes were painted in gouache and a small brush.
10. Draw a shape that you find challenging
What kinds of shapes do you find most challenging or frustrating? That would be a perfect theme for a sketchbook page. Study the components that go into the shape. To get more familiar with how to draw vehicles, I drew the taxis swooshing into the taxi stand as I waited for my brother to arrive at the airport. When you start, things are always wonky, they aren’t going to be picture-perfect. I look back at these taxis and I love this little collection.
11. Draw knots
Knots are a great mental and creative challenge to draw. Invent a knot, or tie a rope in a knot, and draw it.
12. Draw everyday adventures
Take your journal with you in your backpack and when you are waiting, draw what you see. What you draw will be a quick rendering, try to capture the essence or idea of the scene rather than the precise scene. And it’s OK if it’s utterly inaccurate — it still helps you with translating what you see into lines in your journal (plus documentation is fun).
13. Draw mandalas
Start in the middle with a circle or star and build outward, drawing freehand without a ruler. The lines do not need to be absolutely symmetrical, try for sort-of-symmetrical. Index cards are great for drawing small designs and practicing hand-lettering.
14. experiment with different drawing tools
Use art materials such as charcoal, pastels & Neocolors. When you change your drawing tools you’ll change your experience and naturally explore different kinds of marks. Experiment by moving your entire arm to make fluid gestural marks. When you go back to a pencil or pen you'll have new ideas and perspectives. Drew this mandala in an altered children’s book on a surface of black gesso using Caran D'Ache Neocolor Wax Crayons.
15. draw organic shapes
This example is from WAY back in 2012 — I walked around the garden drawing rough sketches to try to capture the “idea” or essence of the shapes. I knew that I couldn’t draw the exact shapes, so I relaxed and just played. Please don’t get discouraged — it takes a long time to start seeing progress — keep going!
