Why Drawing is Hard (7 Tips To Make Drawing Easy)
Loomis study in pencil.
Creating beauty out of nothing on a blank piece of paper is profoundly satisfying.
That’s why drawing mysteriously draws people into learning it.
Unfortunately, many beginners lose their initial excitement when they have their first bad drawing day, and realize drawing is hard.
That doesn’t have to be so.
In fact, there are several reasons why beginners struggle to learn drawing.
Knowing those reasons and how to address them will help you overcome that beginner’s slump.
After all, you started drawing, because it captured your imagination. So let’s make sure you continue to ride that excitement by getting great at it.
7 Reasons Drawing is Hard - And 7 Tips to Make Drawing Easy
Reason 1: Visual thinking is unfamiliar in a world that rewards conceptual thinking
Drawing teaches you to think visually. Toned paper drawing from life.
We spent most of our schooling life learning to engage our analytical, thinking brain.
Some might learn a musical instruments, which requires developing auditory intelligence, or get into sport, which again requires different faculties of your brain.
Who do you know that had effective, useful art classes from a young age? At least in my home town, it wasn’t available.
Compared to music and sports, it’s much harder to get a great education in classical drawing and painting techniques.
The result:
Even if you’re drawn to visual arts, you likely haven’t spent much time developing your visual thinking and problem-solving skills.
Make Drawing Easy - Tip 1
If you’ve been drawing a little bit you might have experienced, that when you draw, you enter a different zone. Betty Edwards in her famous book “Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain” called it the R-mode.
It’s essentially a conscious state similar to meditation, where you don’t think in terms of words, but you are fully focused on what you see and solve problems visually.
Here’s what I recommend:
Read the Betty Edwards book. It has targeted exercises for beginners to shift from analytical to visual mode (L to R mode as she calls it). It is perfect for beginners who struggle to make that mental switch.
Make it a habit to look at great representational art for long periods of time. E.g. take the flowers by Hokusai below and spent 10 minutes looking at it. Notice as much as you can about the design, composition, colors etc. Looking is the basis for drawing. Spent more time looking.
Read my guide on value drawing. Expanding your arsenal from pure line drawing to a mix of linear and tonal drawing will expand your visual thinking.
Reason 2: Hand-eye coordination takes time to build
How you hold the pencil can make up for a heavy hand.
While the visual side of drawing is critical, it also requires very specific hand-eye coordination, especially once you get more advanced.
Very subtle tones on a portrait can get ruined by one sharp line that can’t be erased.
Long fluid contour lines like those of Alphonso Mucha below, take time and practice to be able to draw in one continuous stroke.
Luckily, there are workarounds to build your hand-eye coordination, and to even make up for a lack in it.
Make Drawing Easy - Tip 2
Practice drawing straight, curved and S lines, value scales, shapes, and basic forms. You can find exercises in the mark making section of my drawing fundamentals guide.
Practice those with an overhand, underhand, and back end grip.
Especially the back-end grip shown above is extremely useful for very light tones.
Just 10 minutes a day of mark making exercises for a week in all three grips will completely change your hand-eye coordination and pressure sensitivity.
Reason 3: It can be difficult to see what’s wrong in your drawing
Knowing what your drawing lacks is key to doing it better next time.
Finding out what that thing is, can be tough, especially as a beginner.
Yet, it’s important to realize, that drawing as a process is all about “seeing what’s wrong” and making adjustments along the way. You have to develop an eye for what works and what doesn’t over time.
So how do you do that?
Make Drawing Easy Tip 3
This is how I improved my own judgment over the years:
Get your drawings critiqued by a professional. This is the most effective way of developing a great eye yourself, especially if you’ve never gotten feedback.
Get a strong base knowledge of the fundamentals, make it a habit to look at master drawings/paintings and your work, and analyze which fundamentals they excel at, and which ones they lack. The fundamentals are a checklist you can always use yourself, to figure out what needs improving. I linked to my guide earlier.
Reason 4: Polished masterworks hide the Process
It’s easier to study anatomy from the Michelangelo drawing on the left, than the polished Bouguereau painting on the right.
When you look at a Bouguereau painting, it’s easy to lose all hope for your drawings. How on earth could he build such flawless, perfectly executed paintings?
Well, what you have to realize is, that all great masterworks still rely on basic drawing concepts combined with process.
In Michelangelo's drawing for example you can see every thin line he made, to model the form of each anatomical landmark. Bouguereau just hid those lines.
Make Drawing Easy Tip 4
Learn to see past the perfection and study isolated components of great paintings. E.g. take the Bouguereau painting and just study the shapes and lines, by drawing them.
Find master drawings or instructional drawings that show you the process. They are often called sketches or studies. Draw them.
We live in the great age of the internet. Find representational artists online, and watch their process, take notes. There is a process behind every great drawing that you can study.
Reason 5: There are limitless possibilities, which can feel overwhelming
Stop overwhelm by developing your taste and setting limitations.
Drawing is a bit like writing. There are a million things you could draw, so how do you decide what you draw?
While it’s true possibilities are endless, you also have to remember that something got you into drawing. You saw something and wanted to draw it.
That innate visual taste, combined with consciously set limitations, is your key to stop getting overwhelmed and gain focus in your drawing practice.
Make Drawing Easy - Tip 5
Follow your innate visual taste, by collecting drawings, paintings, and artwork that speak to you. Either do this by collecting books that show artist works, or digitally by creating a folder of master works you love.
Try and notice patterns in what excites you to draw. Is it figures? Is it portraits? Is it landscapes? Beyond the subject go deeper. What style do you like? What line work? What colors? Become deeply aware of the elements that make up your unique taste.
Apply limitations to your work. Set a time limit. Or a limit on materials. Or a limit on what you draw and what gets edited out. Or paint something with only 3 colors. Limitations can help you regain creative freedom and focus.
Reason 6: There are so many skills to juggle before you get good
Mapping out your skills can be both illuminating and intimidating.
When you go below the beginner surface and learn about all the different areas to get good at drawing (like perspective, shapes, composition, etc), it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
So many skills to master before you get good!
While that’s true, you have to realize:
You can only get better from today, as long as you study consciously, with a structured drawing practice.
The deeper you get into each drawing fundamental, the better your drawings get.
Once you have practiced all foundations at least a little bit, you’ll already have decent consistency. From there the quality of your drawings will keep motivating you to get better.
Make Drawing Easy Tip 6
Realize that there are a finite number of fundamental drawing skills. You can get a base knowledge of each within a few months, significantly improve your drawings, and understand the process.
From there, analyze your skillset, identify weaknesses, and then take a focused study period just for that weakness. By focusing on weaknesses you’ll get good faster.
Reason 7: It takes so long to get good at drawing
Sketches from life in pen and marker.
While it’s true it takes years to become really good at drawing, that is also true for anything in life, whether it’s music, sports, work or anything else.
You can get small wins on a weekly and monthly basis, and learn a ton with each drawing you create.
These wins will feel significant and push you forward.
Once you’ve gotten a taste of the progress you can make within a year of effective practice, you’ll develop an intrinsic pull towards more practice.
Make Drawing Easy - Tip 7
Make drawing enjoyable: Listen to a variety of music while drawing, try new materials, and read books on new concepts. Make it a creative pursuit.
Learn to practice drawing effectively, so you feel like you actually make progress. You should look at your past year’s sketchbook and see significant differences between earlier drawings and recent ones.
Closing thoughts
That’s it, I hope those tips help you make drawing easier if you’ve found it hard so far.
If you remember one thing, let it be this:
You can improve, if you educate yourself and take control of your learning.
See ya in the next article!
