Drawing Tips and Tricks for Improving Your Skills
If you want to get better at drawing, you've got to be dedicated. “Make sure that learning is always your priority,” Sánchez instructs. There are many ways to do this, whether it's branching out from your typical subject matter or consistent practice.
“Repetition is key,” Catimbang tells My Modern Met. “Always keep drawing whenever you have time as much you can. As a self-taught artist like myself, I might have drawn some of my illustrations a hundred times over before. It helped familiarize my hand with how I create my textures, strokes, and shadings. And if you draw constantly, you are bound to improve sooner or later. Do not focus on how your art/illustrations look now, just keep drawing and you will see improvements, I assure you.”
Be open to trying something new, no matter how apprehensive you are. Artist Ramon Bruin is known for his incredible 3D-looking drawings that are sketched on a 2D surface. But if he had let his doubt get the best of him, he would've never tried it. “In a 3D drawing, perspective is key,” he explains to My Modern Met. “Don't be afraid to try out new techniques as I did by drawing on more than one sheet of paper. Also never fear to make mistakes. Mistakes are your best friends! From every mistake, you learn and every mistake directs you to the point you want to go.”
Watch how he created the black ship, below:
Bruin has more advice for creating hand-drawn optical illusions. “In a 3D drawing, two other things are very important,” he says. “[They are the] angle of the photo and shadows. A 3D drawing is always flat when seen with your own eyes, but when you take a photo it suddenly comes to life. Therefore make sure you know from which angle you take a photograph when the drawing is finished.”
“Shadows are also important,” he continues. “To really fool someone's mind you have to make sure the drawn shadow lines up with the shadows of the surrounding objects (like a pencil of my own hand).”
This video by Bruin is a primer on how to draw a 3D house:
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