By definition, free-hand drawing is a style of drawing that does not use any guiding or measuring instruments; just your senses and your imagination.
If you want to enjoy more freedom whenever you draw, free-hand drawing might be the technique that you should start to learn now. Enjoy loosening up your lines, have fun doodling more and practice your sketching skills!
In this article, we'll share with you some practical tips that we hope will give you a great start at free-hand drawing. Let's begin!
Tip 1: Loosen up your mind and imagination
Since there are no rulers or protractors that you can use to assist you in your drawings, make sure that your senses will help in your drawings. And that always begins when you keep a blank mind and start loosening up your drawing motions.
We encourage you to try this!
On a blank piece of paper, draw circles in a single smooth motion. Try not to rest your palm on your paper. Simply hold your pencil with your fingers when making your circles.
On the same paper, create lines in every direction - horizontal, vertical or diagonal.
The objective of this simple activity is to help clear your mind and loosen up your drawing motions.
Our advice is before you start with your free-hand drawing, treat this activity as an exercise. This way, you will be more confident with the motions you create.
Tip 2: Make your observations your biggest inspirations
Your observation power is what will make you an expert in free-hand drawing.
Remember: In as much as you get inspiration for your drawings from your imagination, how you observe the people around you, your environment, the buildings, the trees, and the cityscape is what will fuel your drawings using the free-hand technique.
Tip 3: Always have your sketchbook and pencil with you
Since inspiration can strike at any time, make it a habit to bring your sketchbook and pencil so you can practice at any given time during the day.
In the middle of watching passengers in a train, you might have a sudden knack to draw them, sketch how they look and how the creases in their clothing look like and so much more!
As a total beginner, do not worry if your drawings aren't as neat as you wish it should be. Start scribbling your subjects and later on, you can boost your skills for the better.
Here's a quick advice:
Start with non-moving subjects if you are having a hard time observing mobile subjects. You can take a picture of your subject and once you are at home, start observing the subject from your photo and then start drawing it on you sketchbook.
Tip 4: Concentrate and always improve on your proportions
Don't fret if after a series of free-hand drawing sessions you still find that your drawings look weird. It's natural to mix up your proportions in the beginning and the only way you can improve it is through constant practice!
To have a better understanding of the human anatomy, read up on books or watch videos that will tell you the important rules on human proportions. We found this video below extremely helpful and we hope you get to watch it too.
And just for fun, here are some quick trivia on human body proportions:
Did you know that the distance between our eyes is equivalent to that of one eye?
Did you know that the height of a human totals up to 8 heads?
Did you know that the legs have the same length as the torso and the head combined?
Checkthisout too for a fun and helpful guide on human body proportions.
Tip 5: Make your drawings more realistic with depth
As you get better with free-hand drawing, add shading to your work. The treatment of light and the addition of shadows to your work will definitely help make your free-hand drawings more realistic.
As a quick tutorial on shading, observe where your source of light is coming from and where the shadows of the subject will fall on.
From there, sketch the shadows, highlight, and add other tones on the subject for more depth.
Your turn!
As you will notice, free-hand drawing entails proper hand and eye coordination. Having a good sense of proportions, smooth hand motions and shading are artistic feats beneficial to your success in this drawing technique.
Here at Art Smart, we can help you improve your free-hand drawing skills! And aside from that, we'll also teach you other fun art techniques, such as painting, grid drawing, finger painting, canvas painting, oil pastel painting, tile mosaics and so much more!
Here at Art Smart, we accept students as young as 4.5 years old and above. Kindly see our schedule below of art classes for your reference.
Rates are available at thispageso we hope you can check that out! And once you are ready to book an art class with us please do call us at these numbers: 0915-5948191, 0917-8784766 or (02)7886766.
Thank you and we hope to see you all in any of our studios!
