Artist insight
Illustrator and art teacher Rodgon shares a range of advice to up your drawing skills while maintaining the pure, simple joy
Over the last 20 years of being a professional illustrator, I’ve learned a thing or two about sketching and good drawing habits. Let me teach you a few fun methods to help improve your artwork at lightning speed!
Sketching isn’t just something we do for fun. We sketch to improve, conceptualise ideas, and sketch for pretty much every project we do.
Even though there’s no wrong way to sketch, there are highly effective habits you can develop to become much better, much quicker.
However, please remember that finding quick ways to complete a task through tips and tricks is fun, but not always the best way to learn. Instead, the goal should be learning through understanding rather than merely developing through the use of copying or imitation.
Oddly enough, I figured out early on that my sketchbook was the key to everything in my artwork; the way I used it and my relationship with it. In this set of tips I’ll demonstrate the techniques and exercises that you want to keep in mind while you’re sketching. By doing so, you’ll train your brain, your hands, and your imagination to draw increasingly better art without the need for any outside instruction.
1 SIZE DOES MATTER
Choose a sketchbook that you can easily carry with you anywhere, any time. Big sketchbooks are awesome and they have their purpose, but if you want to improve quickly, you’ll need to be able to draw as much as you possibly can. Having a sketchbook that you can only use at home, or that requires more effort to take with you, will hinder that goal, so make sure to get a book you can carry anywhere. Extra bonus points if it opens flat for more drawing space on each page.
2 USE IT OR LOSE IT
Now you have a sketchbook, we need to make sure you use it. This is where people normally struggle the most due to life being life; things come up and don’t always go as planned, so we have to make the most of the time we do have. I’d recommend starting with 15 minutes a day at least, as dedicated time for drawing has no substitute or trick. As this is how we build our muscle memory, it’s needed to improve. Draw more, improve more.
3 THE BEST LEARNING TOOL FOR AN ARTIST
Your sketchbook is something really cool. It might look like a simple, white-paged book with nothing in it, but when you use it right, you can have it be your best learning tool.
