Freehand Sketching - Tips & Advice to Improve Your Drawing Skills

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog. Today I'm going to give you some tips and advice on things that I think might be helpful for you if you're going to be creating some drawings freehand yourself.

So drawing freehand, what this means is drawing by hand using no guiding instruments, measurements or other aids. To be able to draw accurately relies a lot on your observational skills and how you can in some way estimate the outline measurements proportions and then draw them in freehand. It's quite challenging because without any construction or preliminary measurements it means there is more of a chance that the drawing will not look like what it is you are drawing. Since I've been doing it a lot and I've been enjoying it, I thought I could go ahead and talk about some things I've learned and what I found helpful. Here are some tips and advice on a freehand sketch.

The first piece of advice that I want to give and that's to be patient with your drawing the more time it takes to finish the better the drawing will look. This is because you are spending more time judging where you are placing each mark with the pencil. I really want to emphasize the point of observing the reference image or you may even be drawing from life in which case it's pretty much the same. But take as much time as you can to study what it is you are drawing before putting your pencil down on the paper. Even if you have to double-check a few times, just look at where you are creating the pencil lines and look at it in relation to the other parts of the drawing. This can be tricky because you are almost trying to accurately guess and a lot of the time it might not be 100% accurate, it's especially hard when it comes to things like eyes and facial features and trying to guess where to place them in relation to each other. If something is slightly out then it can make the character you a drawing not look like the character you are drawing at all. Be patient and try to take your time with choosing where to draw and how you are drawing.

What is also involved in a freehand drawing is a reference image, at least this is the case when you are working from a photograph but this can also relate to when you are drawing from life. It all just involves studying something and looking at how everything relates to each other. The best way to try and estimate measurements when sketching is to look at the image overall. For instance, if we take a look at this drawing. In beginning, I started this drawing from the hair and then from that point I used the hair I had drawn as a way for me to estimate the size of everything. The eye here, when compared to the hair, is something I take into consideration before drawing it in. I look at where it is in comparison to the eye and stuff like that. So building the drawing from one point always using the starting point and overpass I draw as a way of guiding me.

In the beginning, why did I start this drawing from the hair, there isn't an exact reason I probably looked at the image at the start and tried to work out the best starting point and place where I could build the rest of the drawing from usually the eyes is a good starting point because it's in the center of the face and so it's easy to draw in and locate at the nose and the mouth and all the rest. With this image, I started with the hair because I thought I'd go ahead and get a lot of this hair drawn in and get the shape of the head done.

Use the reference image as your main source of information or if you are drawing from life then use what it is you are drawing. For example, if you are looking at something in life then it's going to be pretty similar, the lighting and shadows could potentially change as you are drawing and looking at the subject. But the form, the texture and the scale of it will remain the same. If you want to practice then working from photos might be easier as all of the information you need to draw will be there to look at.

So I've been drawing using a charcoal 59-3B pencil. This is great for being able to create a variety of different pencil shades and turns just by changing the pressure you apply to the paper. Another thing that I want to talk about is making mistakes and trying again because freehand drawing is quite challenging to get accurate results. You might find yourself having to erase areas and redraw them. I do this quite a lot if it's not looking right and it can be frustrating sometimes especially if you can't seem to get it right.

What I tend to do is to start in the part of the drawing that I am struggling with from a different point. For example, if I'm struggling with the eye, then I'd start drawing the parts around the eye and then naturally that will form the shape of the eye.

That's just a few tips and a bit of advice I can give you on freehand drawing. That's pretty much everything from me today. Thank you, everyone! I really appreciate it!