I recently spent 50 days learning to draw… again. I read all the “How to draw” books, took drawing courses, watched a bunch of videos on drawing fundamentals, and even spoke to some professional artists.
You might be wondering, didn’t I already know how to draw? Well… sort of.
As I grew up, I pursued a lot of creative outlets, but somewhere along the way, I left drawing behind. Even as I began designing colouring pages, I kept the art simple and focused closely on patterns rather than on people or animals.
People tend to think that if you can draw, then you can draw anything. I can draw objects and flowers, but I am not confident in drawing things like animals or people with correct proportions – especially from my imagination.
But I want to be able to draw what I see in my mind. I want to be more confident with my drawing in general, and I want to build a better habit of drawing more regularly.
That’s why I took on this challenge, it was time to learn how to draw. Again.
In doing so, I decided to try a little bit of everything – I went back to the drawing fundamentals like how to draw a face and how to draw hands (because everyone needs to re-learn this one regularly!), I studied proportions, I tried drawing some cartoon faces and cartoon characters, I tried some new botanical illustration styles and talked with Jazza about how I could start to draw from my imagination.
And now I want to share my experiences and resources with you!
The Challenge of Re-learning to Draw
Drawing is a fantastic way to express yourself, relax, and develop a new skill. It’s something many of us wish we could do better, but we forget that we have to start as beginners and build up from the basics before we can expect to sketch like a pro.
There are so many tutorials, techniques, and tools out there… so even learning to draw for the second time feels overwhelming.
When I started this challenge, I had endless questions. Where do I start? What should I draw? How much practice does it really take? How do I build the right drawing habits?
As I progressed, I realised that re-learning to draw wasn’t just about the drawing process and the sketching lessons. It was about unlearning old habits, confronting insecurities, and embracing the discomfort of being a ‘beginner’ again. I had to accept that mistakes were part of the process.
I had to remind myself to focus on growth rather than perfection. And I had to remind myself of this again and again.
Learning to Draw Faces and Heads
On the first day of this challenge, I was feeling quite excited. The starter gun had been fired, and I was off to practise the very first thing I wanted to focus on: learning to draw faces.
I find eyes are easy and fun to draw, but the rest of the head makes me nervous. Especially the nose! They just never look right… right?
Here are some of the videos, books and resources I found the most useful in learning to draw faces and heads.
This video was very useful for me. It introduces the ‘Loomis Method’, a classic and versatile approach to drawing heads with accurate proportions. Proko walks through the process step by step, breaking down the structure of a head into simple, manageable shapes.
Everyone has a different learning style, and for me this approach works really well for my analytical brain.
Proko also offers a variety of premium courses on his website, covering everything from anatomy to figure drawing. While many of these are paid, there are also some free resources available to help you get started. You can explore his courses here: Proko Courses.
How to Draw a Basic Face Shape
This video focuses on helping beginners practice drawing faces. The goal is to develop a natural sense of proportions rather than relying solely on guidelines or aiming for realistic portraits. Chommang encourages consistent practice, guiding you through the process of understanding face shapes in a more intuitive way. It’s a great starting point for anyone looking to get comfortable with drawing faces.
How to Draw Faces (Beginner Friendly)
by SamDoesArts
SamDoesArts shows how to draw a face from scratch using simple shapes, guiding lines, and basic measurements. He keeps it beginner-friendly and avoids any technical jargon, making this an easy-to-follow resource. He also offers extra monthly drawing classes on his Patreon.
How I Practice Drawing FACES (Beginner Friendly)
by SamDoesArts
In this video, SamDoesArts shares how he practises drawing faces, focusing on tackling challenging situations, repetition, pacing, and addressing issues as they come up. Ever tried drawing a portrait without lifting your pencil? It’s a tough but rewarding challenge that may just help loosen up your lines.
Stephan Bauman explains the significance of the “block-in” step for drawing portraits, which often isn’t given the focus it should. He emphasises how getting this step right provides a strong foundation for every drawing, setting you up for more detailed work later.
You Will be Able to Draw Faces by the End of This Book
by Jake Spicer
This book teaches how to draw faces through basic concepts and practices. With clear instructions, Jake Spicer helps build the skills and confidence needed to capture facial features with accuracy.
Draw Faces In 15 Minutes
by Jake Spicer
Another book by Jake Spicer, this book teaches how to draw faces quickly, focusing on capturing the essence of a face in just 15 minutes. Jake’s approachable method helps improve facial drawing skills in a short amount of time.
How to Draw Lips
Drawing lips can be tricky, but once you understand their structure and proportions, it becomes much easier. Here are some resources that helped me improve my lip-drawing skills.
I liked this approach by Chommang. It provided me with a clear and detailed guide to drawing lips using simple shapes. With step-by-step instructions, Chommang demonstrates how to construct the lips using a circle as the base. She shows me how to add shading and create a natural look, simplifying the process and helping me tackle this challenging feature. After watching this, I felt pretty confident in what I was doing so didn’t need too many other resources.
SamDoesArts takes a simple approach to drawing lips, using the shape of a seagull as a fun and unexpected guide. (It’ll make sense when you watch it)
Learning to Draw Eyes
While I’ve been comfortable drawing eyes for a while now, I wanted to keep my skills sharp through regular practice. These resources helped me stay consistent and maintain the level of detail and expression I aim for in my eye drawings.
Stephen Bauman delves into the anatomy and structure of the eye, focusing on both the theory and practical application of drawing it. He emphasises the importance of taking the theoretical knowledge and applying it directly to your artwork, ensuring you can draw the eye with confidence and accuracy – with practice, of course. This personally helped me to more easily draw eyes from different angles instead of always from the front.
Scott Christian Sava teaches how to draw a realistic eye in a simple, quick way without using any technical jargon at all. He does a great job of making the process feel less intimidating, breaking it down into very quick, small, manageable steps. Scott has a huge collection of other helpful videos worth watching too!
Aaron Blaise highlights the importance of the eyes and eyebrows in creating expressive characters. He focuses on positioning the eye correctly within the skull, under the brow, to capture the right emotion and expression. This is more of an advanced lesson, but still useful for beginners!
In this video, Proko covers the basic anatomy of the eye, including the eyeball, eyelids, and other key features. This tutorial focuses on understanding structure to help you draw more accurate and realistic eyes. I think these kind of foundational anatomy tips are crucial if you want to learn to draw accurately.
Darlene Nguyen takes you through her unique step-by-step method for drawing a hyper-realistic eye from scratch, guiding you through each detail to create a lifelike result. This is more about the details than “learning to draw” like some of the other videos, but I really enjoyed it.
David Finch teaches how to draw eyes at various angles and positions within the head. He also covers how eyes change when we look in different directions, helping you capture more dynamic and expressive characters. It’s a very useful exercise to try!
Mima’s Artwork provides a beginner-friendly tutorial on drawing an eye, focusing on shading, eyelashes, and the folds of skin around the eye. With a strong emphasis on lighting, this tutorial helps you add depth and realism to your eye drawings.
In this short, Proko highlights common mistakes when drawing eyes, such as forgetting the spherical shape of the sclera (the white of the eye) and the importance of shading. He explains how the eyelids wrap around the eyeball and how to use planes to create more realistic eye shapes, helping you avoid flat or unnatural eyes.
Learning to Draw a Nose
I’ve always hated drawing noses, but once I started understanding their structure and how light and shadow shape them, it became a lot more manageable. Here are some resources that helped me overcome my frustration and improve my nose-drawing skills.
Proko breaks down the anatomy of the nose into three main sections: the bridge, ball, and wings. This tutorial explains these key structures for more accurate nose drawings… which is good because my noses always end up looking strange!
In this short, Scott Christian Sava simplifies nose drawing by breaking it down into basic shapes. He explains how to start with a circle and parentheses to shape the nose, and how to adjust for different angles like side and three-quarter views. With practice, he shows how to create various nose types while keeping the process approachable and fun.
Learning to Draw Flowers and Leaves
Drawing leaves and flowers is in my comfort zone, but I wanted to take this opportunity to learn some different approaches, and increase my ability to draw from my imagination and from observation.
Shayda Campbell & Kristy Rice do an excellent job of breaking plants down into simple shapes that make drawing them fun and reasonably easy, especially with some practice. Their videos were some of my favourites in this whole experience! These step-by-step instructions simplify the process, making these shapes more approachable, especially for beginners. Take a look!
Part tutorial, part relaxation, Shayda Campbell walks us through everything a beginner needs to know about drawing leaves and botanicals, making it both informative and soothing.
Kristy Rice teaches how to draw flowers with a focus on basic shapes and direction, helping you capture a more realistic look while keeping things simple. I was so proud of what I drew with Kristy’s guidance!
Learning to Draw Hands
It’s time to finally stop putting my character’s hands behind their back and finally give this a go.
If you’ve spent any time learning to draw, you’ll know that hands are notoriously tricky to master. In these videos, Marco Bucci & HadesPSD break down the complexity of hands into understandable steps, making this challenging subject far less intimidating. With a focus on structure, proportion, and flow, These artists provide clear guidance that helped me draw hands more confidently and effectively.
Honestly, I was surprised at how quickly my hands started to actually look like hands. I enjoyed this more than I expected, so I kept drawing more. I hope you find these as ‘handy’ as I did.
Marco Bucci teaches how to draw hands with more realism, style, and depth. This tutorial is perfect for artists working in 2D/3D animation, illustration, sculpting, and beyond.
In this detailed tutorial, HadesPsd teaches a shape-based approach to drawing hands. He covers the basics of hand anatomy, how to group fingers, and how to simplify forms using basic shapes. The video also includes tips on finger spacing and how to stylise joints. With helpful examples and easy-to-follow sketches, this tutorial offers guidance for drawing hands with more confidence and detail.
Learning to Draw People
Drawing people has always felt like one of the biggest challenges for me. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by details and proportions, especially when trying to keep my characters from looking flat and lifeless. From the structure of the body to capturing emotions through ‘movement’, it’s a lot to juggle. But the more I practise, the more I realise that learning to draw people and poses is less about perfecting every detail and more about understanding the basics. Here are some of the resources that helped me tackle this complex subject.
This is an area of drawing where you’ll notice an improvement with practise more than any other. Getting the flow is key, and repetition goes a long way in building the skill.
How to Draw Poses
In this video, Marcel breaks down the basics of gesture drawing, showing you how to capture the movement, balance, and energy of a pose. With clear examples and beginner-friendly explanations, this tutorial helped me bring life and expression to my characters and figures.
This book offers a fun guide to creating characters for cartoons and comics. Jazza breaks down the character design process, making it accessible for beginners while also offering tips for more advanced artists to improve their character creation skills.
Stephen Silver shares techniques, tips, and tutorials to help you design unique and memorable characters. It’s an excellent resource for those looking to improve their character design skills, with practical advice on proportions, shapes, and expression.
Morpho: Simplified Forms: Anatomy for Artists: 2
by Michel Lauricella
This book focuses on simplifying the complex structure of the human body for artists. It provides clear guidance on understanding the anatomy of the body using basic shapes, helping artists of all levels improve their figure drawing and proportions. I found it helpful even to just try replicating the reference images throughout.
This book offers 75 fun and practical exercises designed to help you create compelling characters (and creatures) for comics and animation. Beverly Johnson provides valuable insight into building memorable designs, focusing on structure, proportion, and expression. This was a fun break from all the anatomy and realism I’d been focusing on earlier!
Learning to Draw Clothing
Drawing clothing has always felt like a daunting task, especially when trying to capture the way fabric folds and moves with the body. It’s all about understanding how clothing interacts with the form of the body to create texture and flow. The more time I spend on this, the more I realise that learning to draw clothing is about paying attention to the details, like creases and seams. And these same skills apply to colouring too! Here are some of the resources that helped me iron out the wrinkles… I mean, learn to draw clothes.
When it comes to drawing clothing, understanding folds is essential. In this tutorial, Marco Bucci covers 7 different types of folds, each adding realism to your clothing drawings. The video explores how to draw folds like the zigzag fold, half-lock fold, and compression fold, helping you master this crucial aspect of clothing design.
This video also shows how to draw fabric folds, focusing on the importance of value and using the right strokes to create texture. It’s a great way to add depth and realism to your drawings, with a reminder to be patient and take breaks along the way.
This video covers the basics of drawing clothing folds, focusing on how different fabrics fold in unique ways. The instructor explains the three main types of folds – bunching, gathering, and tension – and how to apply them to various fabrics. It also highlights the importance of using references and not getting caught up in too much detail.
Scott shows how to draw folds by understanding the points where fabric is pulled, like seams or tension points. He uses a simple fabric example and shares insights from J.C. Leyendecker to demonstrate how folds form naturally.
Building Good Drawing Habits
One of the most important things I learned during this challenge was the significance of building good drawing habits. It’s not just about drawing often (though that is important!) but about drawing effectively – with intention and consistency. While technical skills are essential, developing the right mindset and routine is key to making lasting progress. Part of this involves letting go of perfectionism and embracing failure as a necessary part of the learning process. In this section, I’m sharing the resources that helped me build better habits, stay focused on continuous improvement, and move past the fear of getting things wrong.
I also talked about this a lot in my video, because it mindset was something that came up over and over again during my learning.
Zephyer discusses how stepping outside your comfort zone, making mistakes, and being okay with failure is what ultimately leads to improvement. It’s a much-needed reminder to embrace the struggle, keep pushing forward, and trust the process, even when progress feels slow.
It’s an encouraging watch for both seasoned artists as well as beginners, and it helped me deal with my personal insecurities around drawing. I’ve approached my drawings with a bit more patience and acceptance, understanding that each mistake is a part of my progress. It helped me move forward with less fear of failure, allowing me to experiment more freely and focus on improvement rather than achieving perfection.
I gave this ‘Iterative Drawing’ approach a try, and I think you should too.
It’s the idea of drawing the same thing over and over again and making small adjustments as you go. By repeating the process, you develop a deeper understanding of the subject, and each iteration helps you notice new things that you might have missed before. This method encourages constant refinement rather than focusing on perfection right from the start.
In this video, Alphonso Dunn shares three essential tips to help you draw like the pros. He focuses on the importance of grip and breaks down the habits you need to let go of, including learning to relax your brain and muscles in order to draw more confidently and comfortably.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
by Betty Edwards
Betty Edwards’ classic book teaches you how to tap into your brain’s right hemisphere to improve your drawing skills. It’s focused on helping beginners develop observation skills and enhance their ability to draw from life by focusing on perception and proportions.
DRAW: A Fast, Fun & Effective Way to Learn
by Jake Spicer
Jake Spicer’s book is designed to make drawing accessible and fun. It provides quick, easy-to-follow exercises that help you grasp the basics of drawing.
Learning to Draw a Cat
I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave you without a tutorial on how to draw a cat, could I?
Cats have such a distinct shape and personality (cute and cuuuuute), making them both fun and very challenging to draw. Whether it’s the curve of their back, the flick of their tail, or the detail in their eyes, there’s a lot to capture. Without further adieu, here are the resources that helped me tackle drawing cats.
In this advanced tutorial, Aaron Blaise demonstrates how to draw a cat using real-life cats as a reference, focusing on anatomy and bone structure. He guides you through the key aspects of capturing the cat’s form, helping you develop a deeper understanding of feline structure for more realistic drawings.
Jake Spicer offers a step-by-step guide to drawing cats, with an emphasis on quick sketches that capture the character and likeness of our cats. This book teaches you how to create simple yet expressive cat pawtraits.
Ken Hultgren’s book focuses on understanding animal anatomy and creating dynamic action poses. It’s an essential resource for anyone looking to improve their ability to draw animals, with a focus on construction, movement, and characterisation.
Extra Drawing Resources
These resources didn’t quite fit into a specific category, but they were helpful along the way. Whether it was refining my drawing habits, learning new techniques, or tackling different drawing challenges, these books and tutorials added valuable insights to my journey.
Jazza’s Character Design Masterclass is a comprehensive 4+ hour course that walks beginners and intermediate artists through the professional process of character design. With modules covering everything from brainstorming to refining and final presentation, this course provides clear guidance, along with a downloadable exercise book to help you create your own memorable characters.
Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study
by Kimon Nicolaides
Kimon Nicolaides’ approach focuses on observational drawing and building a strong foundation in gesture and structure. It’s perfect for artists looking to develop a well-rounded skill set, with exercises that encourage study through practice and observation.
The Master Guide to Drawing Anime: How to Draw Original Characters from Simple Templates: 1
by Christopher Hart
If you’re excited about drawing anime, this book provides a step-by-step guide to drawing original anime characters. Christopher Hart focuses on teaching artists how to use templates and build characters from basic shapes, making it great for beginners and those looking to improve their anime drawing skills.
Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes: Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures
by Walt Stanchfield (Author), & Don Hahn (Editor)
This book is a compilation of master classes from Walt Stanchfield, a key Disney animator, covering essential concepts like gesture drawing, body language, and storytelling through animation. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone interested in animation or learning to convey motion in drawings.
Perspective Made Easy
by Ernest R. Norling
Ernest Norling breaks down perspective in a simple, easy-to-understand manner. This book helps artists develop a solid grasp of perspective for more accurate and dynamic drawings.
Pinterest Board: How to Draw – Curated by Sarah Renae Clark
This board is packed with tips, tricks, and tutorials to help you learn how to draw your own artwork or cartoons. It includes drawing techniques, character expressions, step-by-step guides for faces, animals, flowers, and much more.
The Journey Continues
Re-learning to draw in 50 days has been an eye-opening experience. It wasn’t just about picking up new techniques – it was about embracing the process, accepting mistakes, and pushing through the discomfort of learning something new. Every tutorial, every exercise, and every frustrated sketch brought me one step closer to where I want to be as an artist. And while I’m still far from perfect, I’m proud of the progress I’ve made. The process itself has been full of valuable lessons that will stay with me as I continue to improve.
So, if you’re thinking of picking up your own pencil again, or giving it a go for the first time, remember that growth takes time, and that every misstep is part of the art of getting better.
I’d love to hear about your own drawing journey – what challenges have you faced, and what’s helped you overcome them? Please comment below, I love hearing about your artistic experiences!
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