Do you long to be the best? I mean seriously better than anybody else? Are you ready to go down in the history books? Are you AMPED UP AND READY TO DOMINATE? Good. Because I’m going to let you in on a secret. What do Donald Trump, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller and Genghis Khan all have in common? They were MASTERS of Blind Contour Drawing. How do you think Napoleon was able to take over most of Europe? Blind contour drawing. BOOM! Did I just BLOW YOUR MIND?

Yes. Yes, I did.

So now that you know what you need to do all you gotta do is get a piece of paper, a pen, and your hand. Both of them. Hold pen in your writing hand. Look at your not writing hand. And then, without picking up your pen or looking at the paper, proceed to draw your hand on the paper. It’s tough, but you want to be the BEST right? You want to ravage Europe and become emperor, don’t you? Well you gotta master this first!

Get to it soldier!

Most of us, since we were little, have been taught how to draw with symbols. Numbers, letters, simple diagrams, cartoons, etc. That’s why when an untrained person sets out to draw a hand, they end up usually with a ball with five sausages glued to it. Because a hand is a blob and fingers are like ovals right? Nope. Those are symbols, real hands don’t be looking like that yo. Get it together! You gotta draw for REAL.

This next technique is all about training your hand and your eyes to see what’s there, and be faithful to it. And what you’re going to be drawing is something you know like the back of your hand. That’s because it is in fact the back of your hand that you’ll be drawing. Like the last technique, this is probably going to come out looking awful. Buck up, this is practice, not art. Stop expecting that everything that comes out of your pen is gonna end up in the Gugenheim. It’ll look like crap, and that’s GOOD.

So here’s the drill: Get your sketchbook ready and put a pen in your hand. Touch the pen to the sketchbook. There are two rules from here on out. Rule 1, don’t pick up your pen. Rule 2, don’t look at what you’re drawing! Seriously.

OK. Now, hold your other (non-drawing) hand up, and pick a spot on it. I usually start from one side of my wrist. What you’re doing, without ever picking up your pen, is drawing the contour of your hand. That’s the line that forms the edge of it. Basically you want to draw every line you see on your hand, including the wrinkles in the knuckles, your fingernails, etc. without ever picking up the pen or looking at what you’re drawing. I mean it. No peeking! I saw that! Don’t! Seriously! Just trace your hand with your eyes, and then let your pen follow those lines on the paper. Once you reach the other side of your wrist, you’re done. Now, take a look.

If you’re like most people (even accomplished artists!) it’ll probably look like a bunch of tangled lines that vaguely resemble fingers (if you’re lucky.) That’s great! Because what it doesn’t look like? A ball with five sausages glued to it. And that’s progress.

Do one! Right now!!!! What’s that? Is it something shiny? NO! FOCUS! Find a picture. Draw it upside down. GO. NOW! Do it!

1. Find an image of something that is neutral to you, but that is interesting enough that you’ll want to sketch it.
2. Tape it to a table, wall, or easel. Wherever it can be right in front of you when you’re sketching it.
3. Get a blank piece of paper and a pen. It’s better to use a pen than a pencil. Don’t worry about mistakes, just keep going. If you stop to erase your image you’ll get into the wrong state.
4. Start drawing! Focus on a small part of the image, and just follow the line with your pen. Make sure to glance between the paper and your image frequently so you keep track of where you are.
5. When you’re done, turn your image right-side-up. It’ll probably look nothing like what you were drawing, or at least look pretty odd. Never fear – this is an exercise, it’s not meant to be great art – you’ll get there if you keep going with these exercises!

Don’t you just want to be able to draw cute little kittehs? Doesn’t everyone? Well the way to make their widdle fuzzy wuzzy bitty faces look just as cute as in real life is to practice seeing things as they really are. And that means drawing pictures upside down. I’d recommend not starting with an image of someone you know or care about – if you identify too much with the image it’ll be harder to draw. Once you’ve gotten good at this stuff you’ll be able to draw great pictures of all your favorite people. Until then, pick pictures from magazines, or places you’ve never been. The idea is to keep the pictures abstract. That way your right brain will have an easier time taking over from your left brain and drawing what you’re actually seeing.

Here’s the secret – when you draw upside-down, you’re tricking your left brain into shutting down. Like I said in an earlier post, your left brain sees the world in symbols. When you look at a picture upside down, your left brain is unable to make symbols out of it as easily. Meanwhile, your right brain takes over. NOW you’re really looking at something! This is the thing that separates successful artists from most people – the ability to see. So if you want to get good at sketching go draw a picture of something that is upside-down. When you’re a famous artist you’ll thank me.

The purpose of these exercises is to free your mind from thinking of things in the form of symbols. One really excellent way to do that is to take a picture from a magazine, or a photo or some thing like that and draw a picture of it upside-down. It sounds silly, but this is one of the greatest ways you can learn to see the lines and structure of an object rather than what your mind thinks it’s supposed to look like.

Set the picture down (even better, tape it down so you’re not tempted to turn it right side up 🙂 Get a blank piece of paper, or your sketchbook, and just start following a line in the image. Draw the outlines of everything in the picture. The result won’t be pretty, even experienced artists tend to make stuff look funky when they draw it upside-down. But right now all we’re concerned with is giving you a new way of seeing things. This is all groundwork for the fun stuff later.

Obviously a lot has happened in my life between the age of four and now. I didn’t immediately become an amazing artist who could draw someone’s portrait in thirty seconds. For many years I couldn’t draw from life at all. In third grade I decided I wanted to be a cartoonist, and I drew a great many cartoons from then until Junior High school. It was my seventh grade art teacher, in fact, who introduced me to a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” which I highly recommend. See, I’d been drawing using my left brain – converting everything I saw into symbols. Eyes are round, I thought, pupils are little black dots or circles with dots in them. The mouth is a crescent shape. Doing the exercises in that book, and many more in art class, taught me for the first time how to actually see what was around me and draw it out myself! More on that soon…

As I mentioned in my previous post, I decided I wanted to be an artist at the ripe old age of four. I knew with conviction and complete belief that I was going to be an artist. And I still know that today. That’s why I’m able to do what I do – because my conviction is so strong – I truly and completely enjoy doing art – it feels like what I’m meant to do. So right now I want you to look inside yourself and examine your motives for wanting to learn to sketch. You need to have a drive inside you, a determination to succeed. It has to be something that fulfills you to do. If not you might have a hard time continuing! If you can’t find that drive inside you, ask yourself why you want to learn to sketch to begin with. It could be any reason – it’s a skill you need for your job – you enjoy it and want to get better at it. Something that really motivates you. Focus on that reason and let everything drop away. Stoke a fire under that reason until you’re raring to go and all you can think about is making beautiful drawings! OK now you’re ready to learn how to sketch.