How to Draw for Beginners: A Step-By-Step Guide

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Make art and have fun crafting unique and interesting illustrations

Co-authored by Kelly Medford and Eric McClure

Last Updated: July 31, 2023 References

General Drawing Techniques

People and Faces

Landscapes

Fun Drawing Activities

Video

Q&A

Tips

Learning how to draw can seem hard, especially when you look at the cool masterpieces made by professional artists. It's important to remember that even the greatest artists of all time started as beginners. Start by practicing some basic drawing techniques. Then, move on to tougher drawings to capture people, nature, animals, and more. If you keep at it, you'll be surprised at how quickly your drawing skills improve!

Things You Should Know

Practice drawing basic lines before learning to shade a shape and create depth.Add dimension to your drawings by including shadows and using perspective.
Use reference photos. It’s a lot easier to draw something you can refer to than it is to make something up from scratch.
Try drawing objects you can see around you to test your talent and practice your skills.
Always feel free to ask for help.

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General Drawing Techniques

1
Practice drawing basic lines and curves. If you're just learning to draw, start by dragging the pencil over the page in a straight line. It’s harder than it looks! Practice holding your hand at different angles to see what feels best. Normally, it is easier to draw a straight line when you use your whole arm, not just the wrist. Once you feel comfortable drawing a straight line, practice rotating your wrist as you draw to create a curve.^[1]
- Try making a series of big loops on the paper, then draw tiny swirls below that. This will help you build up your coordination on the page.
- Practice drawing lines of different lengths, thicknesses, and textures. Try wavy lines, zig-zag lines, and tangled, scribbly lines.
- After you get comfortable with lines and curves, try drawing shapes. For instance, you might try filling a page with two-dimensional shapes such as circles, squares, or triangles.
- If you’d like, get a set of graphite pencils with different hardnesses so you can experiment.
2
Create a sense of depth by shading in a shape. Draw a simple shape, like a circle, and add an imaginary light source to your page. Use a pencil to lightly shade in the areas farthest from your light source, while leaving the area closest to the light source unshaded. Keep building up the shading until you have a gentle fade running from the darkest parts of the object to the lightest area which is closest to the light source.^[2]
- You might imagine that there's a lamp shining down from the top left corner of the page. In that case, the top-left area of any shape you draw wouldn't have any shading.
- Try blending your shadows with your finger, an eraser, or a cloth to soften them.
- When you’re ready for more advanced shading techniques, try to learn cross-hatching and stippling.
3
Make an object seem grounded in reality by adding cast shadows. Picture your light source, then draw a shadow on the opposite side of the object from the light. Keep the shadow the same shape as the object, although it may be longer or shorter than the object itself depending on how far away the light source is.^[3]
- For instance, if you have a bowl of fruit on a table, the table will cast a shadow on the floor, the bowl will cast a shadow on the table, and the fruit will cast a shadow inside the bowl.
- Use your finger or an eraser to blur the edges of the shadow so it looks more realistic.
4
Create a grid on the paper if you need help with proportions. If you're drawing something from a source image, draw several evenly-spaced vertical and horizontal lines on your paper to make a grid. Then, draw the same lines on your source image. Look at each square on the image and copy it into the same square on your paper. Your finished picture will be proportionate to the original!^[4]
- For instance, you might draw 3 vertical lines and 2 horizontal lines to make a 4 by 3 grid.
- It's okay if the squares aren't the same size on your source image as they are on your paper. You'll naturally adjust the size as you copy the picture you see in each grid.
5
Show an object's dimension by learning perspective. To start practicing perspective, draw a horizontal line across your paper to represent the horizon. Make a small dot on the line. This will be your vanishing point. Next, draw two lines that meet at the vanishing point and stretch down toward the bottom of your paper. This can represent a road or a stream. The widest part of the path, near the bottom of the page, will seem closest to you, while the vanishing point will seem to be very far away.^[5]
- Perspective means that objects that are up close seem to be larger than objects that are far away.
- Simple drawings only have one vanishing point, although more complex drawings might have two or even three.
- Understanding perspective will also help your shading and cast shadows look more realistic.
- Practice drawing 3D boxes from different locations to get a sense for how this works with other objects.
6
Build up more complex objects using multiple shapes. When you’ve mastered the art of drawing and shading basic shapes, you can draw much more complex objects by breaking them up into simpler shapes. Look at something you’d like to draw—such as a person, a car, or your hand—and sketch out the basic shapes that make it up.^[6]
- You can practice by taking an any image and outlining the different shapes directly on the image.
- For example, take a picture of a car and outline the rectangular shape of the windshield, the circular shapes of the tires, and so on.^[7]
- Once you’ve sketched out the shapes that make up your image, shade them in to create depth.
- To create a more finished drawing, connect the different shapes with lines to build a coherent whole. Erase the outlines when you’re done.
EXPERT TIP
KELLY MEDFORD
Professional Artist
Use a mirror to practice drawing objects. Hold a mirror in front of whatever you're drawing and look at its reflection. The reversed image will make it look fresh and give you a new perspective, which can help you figure out how to draw more imaginatively overall.
7
Try contour drawing to practice internalizing shapes. Contour drawing is an exercise that helps you learn to create complex, realistic outlines. Pick an object to draw and follow the outlines of the image with your eye while drawing them at the same time. Try to keep your eye on the object you’re drawing as much as possible, instead of concentrating on the hand that’s drawing.^[8]
- Don't worry if the drawing isn't perfect! Just try to get the basic shape of whatever you're looking at onto the paper.
- Make a game of it by trying a continuous contour drawing—try to connect all the outlines of what you see without lifting your hand from the page or going back over what you’ve already drawn.
8
Outline every sketch first, then add details at the end. Don’t worry about the small details right away. Start by filling in basic shapes and values, then clean up your drawing and add details as you go. If you focus on intricate details too soon, you might make one part of your drawing too big or too small, and the work will feel out of balance when you're finished.^[9]
- For instance, if you're drawing a flower, you might start by sketching out the lines of the petals and stem.
- Once you've done that, you might start adding details like the center of the flower and the curves of the leaves and petals. Finally, you would add shading and any intricate details that are left.