How To Draw Sketches From Your Head

Drawing what you see in front of you, around you is one of the most difficult things to do, especially if your just starting out... yet some how it's one of the best things you can do if you are tying to get you head and your hand to move in sequence, if you want to learn how to draw sketches from your head. While you can't always get exactly what you were thinking down, doing sketching like this can help you get closer the the result you DO want.

Sketching what you see around you takes practice, lots and lots and lots of practice.. and work.. yes continuously working at it will help you improve much much faster then not working at it at all or very little.

However you also don't want to burn your self out so don't over work it either... you really just have to watch out for either under working or overworking depending on your personality, either can be fatal to your desire to improve. Starting to sketch what you see around you is easy, first you will need some supplies for drawing. You don't need much, or anything expensive but you will want some decent quality supplies!

• A Pencil
• Some Paper
• An Eraser
• A Pencil Sharpener
• A Clean, Flat Surface To Work On

Now that you know the basics of what you are going to need lets go into a bit more detail about the individual supplies themselves. A Pencil is easy, very very easy.. when your first starting out just use a good old HB #2 pencil! Heck, everyone uses those.. starting out or not.. it's just the base to a lot of pencil drawings! You can find them at any store, Walmart, Target, Safeway, Smiths.. practically anyplace! You can also find them easy online... Amazon is a trustworthy place.

Paper, that's easy too... I would recommend working on a sketch pad, they are pretty easy to find and not that expensive. I like to work on heavy weight paper... but that's my preference because I work with inks a lot.. although I find it difficult to work on light weight paper so I would recommend going with at least medium weight paper. 8x11 or bigger is always great, and if you can find someone who says won't yellow that's always a plus! This just means your paper won't fade away and well, yellow!

An eraser, that's easy! You can pick up any eraser but different erasers have different qualities and disadvantages to them... check out Here to learn more about that. :)

Pencil sharpeners are also easy however it kind of depends on what you're doing. If you are using generic pencil a generic pencil sharpener will be just fine if you have different pencils or pencils like Prisma colors you need the pencil sharpeners for those. Just remember that as with anything else the more expensive the pencil sharpener the better, we are after all paying for quality! However a lot of artist like to combine their pencils and pencil sharpeners and use mechanical pencils. Since they never need to be sharpened it can cut back down on time you are spending sharpening your pencil, and allow you the freedom to more elaborately work on your drawing rather then your pencil.

Work Space, whether this is a clean cleared and washed tabele or a clip board is really up to you.. and well, what your doing. If you are sketching outside a table just won't cut it.. but a clip board type item will do fine.. so on and so on. Just make sure that whatever surface you are working on for your drawing that it is clean, and smooth... you'll regret it later if you do not, better safe then sorry!

Now that you have your supplies it's time to move onto the actual sketching part, the entire purpose of the activity of making a gazillion bad sketches of some boring old object is to teach your hand to move the pencil in sync to what your brain is thinking, which is the picture you are thinking of. So in other words, the point of this is to learn how to draw what you want to draw.

So begin! Pick some object to start sketching, however you will want to keep in mind that if you use an object or scene as a model that you like and are interested in that you are more likely to be able to concentrate on it and work more freely and non judgmental. You need to be able to keep an open mind.. a free spirit and a positive attitude! Do this and you'll be surprised how far you can come. 

Start with basic, loose sketches that you are comfortable with doing. Slowly you will be moving on to more advanced sketches until the go from loose sketches to drawings.. well, as most people think of them anyway. Try to break things down into shapes to figure out how to draw anything more anatomically correct... study the structure of everything, this will help you a lot.  Now don't forget, your first few drawings will suck. Now when I say first few you have to get this right.. when I saw the first few, I mean the first few hundred! There's no round about way to it... when you are first learning you screw up.. that doesn't make you bad.. you just need practice, so one of the biggest things to remember is to keep working at it, keep practicing you will get there eventually!

Start with small objects, overall easy... then move to larger objects that are more complex you'll be surprised how fast you can learn if you just put in a little effort.

That reminds me, you want to sign and date all your drawings, lame right? No, if you sign and date your drawings well first off you'll know it's yours!! ^_^ Ok, but really you'll be able to pull out an old drawing and compare your progress by dates with a newer one. This makes it easy to see your progress, once your in it.. it's so hard to see your own progress you just want to keep improving and never stop to think, oh wait, I have improved.. my drawing skills have improved. Being able to realize that and see it.. ponder upon it for the next five to ten minutes is golden. It helps you settle down even only for moments about your need to improve... and puts your mind at ease just a little more.

Just try to sketch a little bit each day.. if something inspires you by all means sketch more! But if you can sit down and sketch something basic for 10 minutes a day even only a couple times a week your doing great! A lot of people start ad can't committ to anything more then the drawing once every couple months then get furstrated to why they are not quickly improving! Keep working at it, keep trying and by all means have fun! It's your drawing, your work.. your choice!

Embrace it, love it and learn from every line you make.. use old drawing as reference to what you need to fix next time what you need to change or work on... go all out with it! You'll be amazed how quickly you learn to draw what's in your head.. how to actually get ideas down to paper, it's amazing!

Keep Sketching... Keep Learning.. Keep Living! My best to you, -Cammi