Hens ask..' I've never drawn a person - where on earth do I start?? '
Firstly, you shouldn’t worry. We can all draw because we can all make marks on a piece of paper with a pen/pencil/charcoal. I used to tell my kids “mummy loves scribble”, and amazingly you can start scribbling and simply form it into the shape of something - a ball, a jug, a cat etc.
Secondly, look. People often make the mistake of concentrating too much on their paper and not on the subject. Most of the time should be spent looking, scrutinising and enjoying the subject that you are drawing. The more you look the more you see - more detail, more angles, more shapes etc.
The major thing that holds people back from drawing is having a preconceived idea of what you want your drawing to look like, and if it doesn’t look like that within 5-10 minutes, or even less time, then you self criticise and give up. Visual art can also be judged in an instant, at a glance, where other art forms - a book, a play etc. - takes time to judge, so we worry about others judging it, and that can put us off doing it. No one judges within a small art group, we only encourage and praise. So you should draw and keep drawing, over and over, on top of drawings, and build up marks, in many different ways, without worry and without an idea of what you will produce because it will never turn out how you expect, and this is not wrong.
Sound advice from Catherine M.
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