Tag: Drawing Tips

Tips for painting watercolor portraits that you should know

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watercolor portrait tips

Some super easy but not so popular tips can save your time when painting watercolor portraits. We will be listing down some of them below.

Start with the face: Sketch the eyes, nose, and mouth and details like shadows and highlights with a pencil.

Use a kneadable eraser to lift the dark pencil strokes: Make it as light as possible. The excess graphite can make the painting look dirty.

Mix your paints before you start painting: Decide all tones and values you need before you start painting.

Use wet on wet technique to paint the skin: Wet the paper before painting and add darker values following lighter values. 

Leave the highlights unpainted: In case you paint over it, don’t use white watercolor to paint highlights. Instead, use gouache or white color pencil or pen for adding highlights if needed.

If the paint dries off while painting the skin, wait till it is completely dried before adding darker values. Once it’s dry, wet the portions you want to paint and add the layers of darker values on it.

Paint the skin first and then add finer details like eyes and lips. In short, work from whole to part. Follow these tips for painting watercolor portraits easily.

6 Tips to Improve your Drawing Skills

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tips of drawing

Drawing is a technique of sketching images on the surface with the help of ink, graphite, or charcoal among others. Follow these simple tips for improving your drawing skills.

Keep it simple: Start sketching with natural forms like flowers and plants.

Mind your Hs & Bs: For better drawing try using paper of 80 gsm and 125 gsm weight. The use of pencils can range from light marking (2H) pencils to dark marking (8B) pencils.

Go lightly: Try to sketch with a light, hard pencil. Avoid pressing too hard so that you can easily erase errors. Try to relax your hands and breathing as you sketch. Try to give a light outline to your drawing.

Throw some shade: Try to practice hatching and cross-hatching techniques in your drawing. Hatching is shading using closely spaced lines. Cross-hatching is shading using layers of hatching at different angles. 

Step on the scale: Look at the object you are drawing, close one eye, and hold your pencil while drawing to make correct dimensions.

Practice and practice: To get better, practice drawing basic geometric shapes every day.

Keep the tips in mind and improve your drawing skills.

4 Habits to become a better artist

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become a better artist

If you’re an aspiring artist, you would have met your worst enemy of all time: the art block. The worst thing about an art block is that many times, it is self-inflicted.

Here are some habits you must build to say goodbye to art blocks for good.

Bye-bye takers: Next time someone asks you for free artwork, say no. They do nothing but drag you down. Anything is more appreciable when it comes with a reward or a price.

Stop scrolling: The internet is the best thing when it comes to both amplifying or sabotaging your creativity. Try to choose your sources of inspiration from outside the screen.

Don’t try to be original: Instead of trying to draw something that is a hundred percent original (which is almost close to impossible), observe existing ideas from a unique perspective and express them authentically in your drawing.

Be grateful: In other words, stop being narcissistic, which is a complex that develops over time. The world doesn’t owe you anything just because you’re an artist. Be grateful for whatever gifts you have in life instead of expecting more of it.

Start enjoying your art life more with these habits.

Drawing Tips To Improve Your Line Works

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tips to improve

Learning to draw the basic shapes should be the first step to mastering the art. Below are some tips that can help you in drawing the same.

  • Try drawing or painting repeating patterns. It can be like watercolor paintings or gouache.
  • Try doodle without a ruler, free-hand. Try experimenting with lines and patterns. Try to start drawing anywhere and then keep adding details.
  • Try drawing one shape, over and over again. 
  • Start drawing circles. Try drawing one circle over another circle.
  • Try different groovy doodle letter drawing.
  • Try drawing knots. A simple tip is to draw your everyday adventures.
  • Try drawing mandalas with different watercolor paints, pens, pencils, and gouaches.
  • Drawing with different tools help you gain experience. Try drawing with charcoal, pastels, and neocolors. Start drawing with all sorts of brushes.
  • Start drawing faces. Try experimenting with hairstyles and expressions.
  • Avoid smudging and control your edges.
  • Try using a blending stick for smooth shading.

Follow these simple tips to improve your art when you are at a beginning stage.

How To Choose the Best Materials For Your Toolkits

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Toolkits

Choosing the right tools can help you become more confident in creating the best artwork. Some tool options best suited for drawing are listed below:

  • Graphite pencils: Pencils ranging from 9H to 9B are best suited for the drawing. It also provides the smoothest strokes. Try solid graphite pencils after you gain experience.
  • Charcoal pencils: It tends to smudge easily and is more abrasive compared to graphite pencils.
  • Ink: Ink drawing is also a popular medium and used for drawing thick and thin lines.
  • Pastels: Pastels provide colorful artworks and there is no need for brushes, palettes, and water. Commonly used pastels are oil pastels, water-soluble pastels, and pastel pencils.
  • Carbon and watercolor pencils: These are blacker and smoother pencils which are suitable for drawing on any surface like metal, plastic, and glass.
  • Blending and sharpening tools: Helps to add texture to your graphite marks.
  • Kneaded eraser: Also known as putty rubbers. They are dry and do not smudge.

Having the right tool is important to create art and understanding them is the first step before you make the leap of choosing them.

How To Create Your Own Personal Style Of Drawings

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personal style

To start creating a personal style, start looking for everything with a fun and creative mind. Some simple ideas for adding personal styles for everything you draw are given below.

  • Go on an art-viewing binge: Check out everything, not just drawings. Explore different kinds of books, websites related to arts, and cartoon strips.
  • Get the basics down: Try learning the basics and start breaking the rules. Try exploring different techniques like pen-stroke techniques, shading, and drawing with perspectives. Start learning the basics of drawing and set your paths.
  • Bite the expert’s style: Refer to sketches of other artists and explore different ways of representing it in your way.
  • Hit the art gym: Practice daily drawing like you are exercising regularly.
  • Step outside of your comfort zone: Start challenging yourselves for drawing realistically.
  • Doodle: It is best for your hand-eye coordination. 
  • Rinse and repeat: Start drawing the same thing again and again to find your style.

For some people, they can easily create a personal style others require time. But the key is to practice continuously and create your styles.

Get Inspired for Art: Tips You Should Know

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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

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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.

All you need to know about Pastels

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Pastel drawings

If you like to experiment with mediums, you must try using pastels. The best advantage of painting with pastels is that they are cleaner and easier to use when compared to paint.

The different types of pastels are oil pastels, soft pastels, pan pastels, and pastel pencils.

Soft pastels are the most commonly used form of pastels. They are finely powdered pigments held together by binders. With a fragile consistency and intense colors, they are well suited for blending but not quite so for adding details.

Oil pastels, on the other hand, are pigments held together by oil. They are waxy but smooth in texture and allows a considerable amount of blending when compared to crayons. They produce bright and intense colors. They are available in several shades and can be used for paintings that closely resemble oil paintings.

Pan pastels are compacted soft pastels in a pan. They are applied to the canvas using soft tools. It reduces wastage of pigment powder.

Lastly, Pastel pencils are used to add details to your pastel paintings. Hard pastels contain more binder and less pigment and hence, are not fragile. They are easier to transport when compared to soft pastels.

Explore the world of pastels now and let your creativity run wild.

5 Basics Skills for Drawing Realistically

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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.