Drawing textures using pencil: What You Need To Know

The smoothness or roughness of a surface is called texture. The type and amount of texture determine how much light reflects off it.

A hard and smooth surface like metal or glass reflects all the light. As a result, it creates sharp, crisp edges and contrasting highlights and shadows.

A soft surface like cloth, absorb the light, and create smooth transitions between light and dark values.

On a rough surface, the light hits only less area, which creates a softer range of highlights and shadows. Ridges on the surface catch all the light creating dark shadows.

Here are some tips to draw common textures.

Clouds appear in the smooth sky. First, lightly crosshatch with a pencil. Blend smooth with the cotton to create the sky. Erase out the sky with the white eraser to form clouds.

The water surface is reflective with ripples on it. Use a side-to-side rocking motion to draw this. Small parallel gaps between the lines act as the reflection in the water.

To draw foliage, work in layers. Scribble random lines to create the leaves. Draw the branches that are not hidden. Then add more layers. Use an eraser to lift off highlights.

Keep these tips in mind before you draw your next picture.

How to paint an abstract art?

how to paint and abstract art

Art is perspective. It depends on the point of view of people that enjoy and create it. Abstract painting is probably the epitome of the case. There are however, some tips you can make use before starting with your abstract art.

Use reference image: Using a reference image can give you a rough idea to start working on. You can abandon the reference as your painting takes shape.

Find focal point: Fix a place for your eye to begin and end. It is best to have it off-center to reduce the definitive nature of the paintings.

Consider the values: Limited range of values often makes a painting look shallow and meaningless. It is better to add dark values and complement it with lighter values accordingly.

Turn the picture upside down: This is an effective way to analyze the painting. This will help you to find out odd-looking areas of the painting.

Fill the edges: Don’t leave the edges unpainted. It could give a ‘central’ feel to your painting, which is something you don’t want in your abstract.

Use your feelings: Make your emotions the subject of your painting.

Have a concept: Try to express an idea through your abstract. Anything as simple as weather to current global scenarios can become its theme.

Start painting your heart out now!

Drawing: How to find time everyday?

Draw everyday

If you wish to improve your drawing skills, daily practice is a must. Let’s see ways to squeeze in some drawing exercise in your day to day life.

Reduce your TV Time: Stop binging on TV and start using that time for drawing. An even better option would be to try to merge both the activity by expressing what you see on TV in your drawing.

Keep doodling: Make 5-minute or even 1-minute drawings to continuously involve in the process of drawing. This way, you will be able to draw readily whenever you want.

Doodle while listening to something: It can help you to draw as well as retain more of what you have just heard or read.

Get up earlier: Wake up 30 minutes before your usual wake up time and squeeze in a drawing warm-up. If you’re not a morning person, try to do the same at night instead of morning.

Stop procrastinating: Do it now. No matter how small your drawings are, these small contribute to improving your skill can help a lot in the end.

Get better at drawing by finding time for daily practice with these easy steps.

Surrealism: Basics You Should Know

Surrealism has been one of the most popular branches of art, and it is so because of the sheer strangeness of this style. In surrealist art, nothing is bound by the laws of reality, even though the images are realistic. Here are some ways to help you get your way through surrealism.

Find objects that interest you and connect them: The connection has to be so irrational that it should shake anyone who stumbles upon it.

Get inspired: Inspect works of great masters like Dalì and Magritte to understand how to blend all your ideas. These pioneers of the style have created innumerable surrealistic masterpieces.

Keep the initial sketch as simple as possible: Work in layers and add more layers as you start adding more details.

Lighting: Lighting and composition are just as crucial in surrealism as it is realism. Identify the light source and adjust the shadows and highlights and mid-tones accordingly.

Ultimately, all you need to draw surrealism is the ideas in your head. Give life to absurd ideas and ditch all the rules of art with this style.

Get Inspired for Art: Tips You Should Know

Sometimes even though you’re in your workspace surrounded by your favorite art supplies, you might find it hard to draw because of a lack of inspiration. Let’s go through some ways to get inspired to make art every day.

Create something every day: Spend some time every day to give life to a new idea, and it will, in turn, stimulate another new idea.

Clean your workspace: When your mind feels empty, get rid of a few things from your work desk, and start fresh. Make sure that your workspace has only things that you work with.

Don’t always rely on the internet: Sometimes, it can be overburdening to see other artists’ work. Try to draw inspiration from nature or other things you love rather than something you see online.

Write down your ideas in a journal: Fill it up with whatever incites emotions in you. You can later use this list to get ideas for your artwork. This can also be therapeutic for you.

Embrace your mistakes: Be brave enough to make mistakes and learn from them. Don’t let the hesitation hold you back.

Follow these easy steps to be infinitely inspired by yourself for your art.

Digital Art: What You Need to Know

digital art

The never-ending debate that digital art is not “art” has been on the rise recently.

Just like traditional art, there are different types of digital art. There is vector art, 2D digital art, 3D digital art, pixel art, and much more. The difficulty in both art essentially depends on the type of drawing.

One major difference is the presence of the undo button in digital art, which makes clearing your mistakes in the digital medium a lot easier than the traditional medium. You can go back and forth without making your work a mess.

The flexibility of working in layers in the digital medium gives you the liberty to actively make mistakes and correct them. This freedom, however, is limited in traditional art which makes it a lot more rigid when compared to digital art.

However, the textures in traditional art are almost too hard to achieve with digital art. Also, the hand control required for digital art is much more when compared to traditional art. 

Degrading a form of art just because it looks easier is pointless. It’s always advisable to be open to experiments and suggestions before choosing mediums that work the best for you.

5 Basics Skills for Drawing Realistically

realism

Drawing realistically is easier said than done. But at the same time, realism is something that can bring life to your creations. There are five basic skills that you need to master drawing realism. They are:

Identify the edges: One should be able to identify and differentiate two objects when they see their reference image. For this, they have to recognize the edge of these objects.

Identify shapes and spaces: While observing an object, one should be able to differentiate between object and space. For example, in a chair, the wood forming the body of the chair is a part of its shape, and the intentional voids in its design are spaces. 

Understand proportions, perceptions: To understand proportions, use your thumb or your pencil as a ruler.  Perception occurs when you view an object from different angles. For example, a wheel appears elliptical as we view it at an angle and a long straight road appears to merge at a distance.

Identify lights and shadows on your object: Study the basic tone, the dark tones, the darkest tones or shadows, and the lightest tones or highlights.

The last skill is the ability to use and practice all the above steps to enhance your skill and draw one final picture. Observe keenly and Practice these skills to draw realistically.

How to draw landscapes: Tips You Should Know

The major challenge while drawing landscapes is that you have to illustrate several different textures and compositions in your drawing. 

Today, let’s see the different steps to draw a perfect landscape composition.

To begin with, observe your references closely. Draw and practice different textures you see in it. As a second step, plan your drawing. Choose an angle that will give depth to it.

Use basic shapes like ellipses and polygons to make a rough sketch first. Arrange the lighting and shadows in your rough sketch to have a clear idea about the same in your final work.

Recreate your rough sketch on a canvas. Start with rough linework using lighter pencils when you do this. 

Then add details with textures. If you’re using pencils, cut the lead at an angle to get the perfect tool for texturing. If you’re using paints, using a variety of brushes at different angles can do the trick.

If you’re using pencils, pens, or watercolors, build the drawing from lighter shades to darker shades. However, if you’re using a bit more opaque medium, feel free to accentuate the highlights at last.

Drawing Pen Art: Tips That You Should Know

pen sketches

While drawing with a pen, even a small wrong stroke can create undesirable blobs and marks that could ruin the whole drawing.

The common mistakes committed while working with pen and ink are detailed below.

Lack of control over the medium when compared to other mediums: Instead of anticipating an error in each step, learn to convert that error into a unique feature. When drawing realistically, the wrong values can make the picture look unpleasant. To solve it, practice consistently. Draw from observation and train your eyes to absorb each detail.

Prevent mistakes at all costs: It’s hard to correct mistakes and even harder to maintain workflow when errors happen. Prevent possible mistakes using a pencil underlining. 

Smearing is never a happy accident: Make sure your ink is dry before moving your drawing around. Using waterproof ink is also ideal for preserving the work.

In case any of the said mistakes happen, it can be corrected in the following ways:

  • Try to make the mistakes a part of your drawing.
  • Use inks, gouache, or acrylics to cover your mistakes.
  • Use gel pens for correcting smaller mistakes.
  • Remove the mistakes with a blade.
  • Avoid this mistakes to master pen art.

Keep these tips in mind before you start with your work.

Here are 3 Tips you can use to improve creativity

Having a wild imagination and high creativity are keys to becoming a good artist. And unlike many of us believe, these things can be actually developed through practice and constant efforts.

There are some tips with which you can improve your creativity and we will be listing down three of them below.

  • Unplug: Disconnecting yourself from the social media and giving your brain some rest can do wonders to your creativity. Your mind will be allowed to wander in such scenarios which in turn can result in great ideas.
  • Have a walk: A recent study have found out that people who take part in walking meetings are more creative and productive. Considering that an average person sits for 7 to 15 hours, it is highly recommended that you take a walk to improve your brain activity.
  • Collaborate: Collaboration is often underrated. It can bombard you with many ideas and thought processes that you might not even imagine in your wildest dreams.

Try these tips and understand the differences yourselves.