How to Draw - For Extreme Beginners - Hand Control

1. Intro: How's it going? I'm Enrique, and today we're gonna go over how to draw. And by that I mean how you gain control. So this is for someone who has never drawn in their life. I keep getting the question. Where do I start if I've never drawn anything, ever? Like you've drawn nothing or near nothing. Where do you start? This is where you start. This is for you. Okay. You stay here. If you've never drawn anything or hardly anything or you don't know what to do. This is we're going to do. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go over the mechanics of how you pull a stroke. That's going to be the first video. Then I'm gonna go over a simple exercise that I do every day to warm up for drawing. Then I'm gonna go over another one, another exercise that I absolutely love. Then after that, there are two other exercises. One is for detail, like how do you kind of get into the detail? And then the last one is how you think in 3D essentially. And that's the last my favorite exercise. So this is again for complete, complete beginners. So this is my gift to you, that community. I understand how frustrating it can be, especially at the beginning where you feel like you can't get anywhere. And I think this is for all the, so there's two parts of drawing. There is the control and then there's the knowledge. So what I wanna do here is give you the control like how you can pull the stroke and how you can get to that point very easily. And that's what you're gonna do by the end of this lesson. If you do all these things, you will have the control you want. All right, then, so let's jump right into it really quick. It's gonna be pretty short lesson, let's do it. So if that sounds good to you, let's jump right into it. 2. How to Move Your Arm While Drawing: Okay, so let's jump in and talk about the shoulder rotation area. So when you write your anchoring, the palm, right? You're anchoring that kind of wrist. And we're just kind of writing, kinda moving it slowly. So this range of motion right here is very small. And so doing with just the wrist, it, it kinda, it does the job when you write. Usually when you're drawing. It's a completely different thing. It's a much larger range of motion. And so what you really need to do is you need to start learning to be able to move from your shoulder and elbow. So for example, right now, notice I'm really, I'm not even hardly moving my wrist actually almost at all. I am really it's all coming from the shoulder and elbow. Shoulder, elbow. All of us. Shoulder and elbow because the range is so large and you will get used to it. I understand for me it was almost impossible to even like do that, but it's kind of a habit you built in and I use it all the way through my art career and I've been driving for like 15 years. You just use it throughout your career. And I'm not saying draw everything all huge like that or everything like that. And you're saying you want that ability because a lot of it is going to come from that shoulder. Right? We had drawn like a body. A lot of it is coming from a combination of shoulder, elbow and of course the risk. But really you gotta put that shoulder and elbow and kind of allow yourself to move and have those joints moving as well. And you gotta be able to control them. So there are exercises to do that and we're gonna go into some of my favorite exercises that I always do in the next video. We're gonna go one-by-one. So also one last thing when we're talking about this, I'm right-handed, right? So doing a curve, let's say I make a curved line like so. That's going to be a lot easier for me to make a curve that direction, that it is this direction. Right? Because like right here I'm fighting my own anatomy a little bit. I could still do it, but it's a lot easier if I'm just move at the elbow. So don't be afraid to kinda turn the paper. And I see this a lot if you're able to just turn the paper and go with don't, don't fight your risk, don't fight your anatomy, you know? And obviously this is all opposite if you're left-handed. So don't fight your anatomy. And it's gonna make things much easier. And you're gonna find that just doing this one video, just this one thing. Start to move from your shoulder. It's going to open you up and you're going to realize there's a lot, there's a huge world out there as far as drawing goes. Ok, let's go on. So let's get that exercise into you. So let's go over the first exercise. 3. Daily Circle Exercise: Okay, so let's go over exercise one. This exercise I do every single day, like every day before I draw, I do a page of these and that is simple. Circle like C. Hm. Keep in mind what we're doing in the last video right there. So I'm moving at the shoulder and elbow. That's all. Shoulder and elbow. If you can if you really want to drill this a and this is the best thing to wake up your muscles in that, in that area for drawing. And if you really, really wanna drill into it, just keep, keep doing that. If you're like Man and doing both directions clockwise and counterclockwise, See if you can kind of do them over as close as you can. So clockwise counterclockwise, this really wakes up. This really wakes you up. It's like the equivalent of me like the firework out. Like maybe warming up. Like I said, like maybe it's stretching or something like that. It really is like whoa, like wakes up. My body is very similar. This wakes up a lot of the muscles I use in my arm for drawing. And so another thing you can do so other than counterclockwise and clockwise, do different sizes. They like small ones here. Oops. And then what you wanna do is we want to do different angles, different degrees of ellipses. So I wanna make it more like a coin on its side, right? Maybe make a little bit bigger on that and see how this one's bigger. I think has a wider range and this one right here. And you kinda want to start doing those in different directions as well. So I would do a page of these page of these. What I was doing in the beginning before I had this down is I would do like, I mean, I would do like 20 pages a day of just this because I really wanted my, the dexterity, they call it dexterity is basically a fancy word of saying, a fancy way of saying control. I wanted my control to be really high. Because there's two things that usually stop you when you're trying to draw. And that is your knowledge, right? That's your knowledge, what you know. And then there's also the dexterity, your ability to make your hand do it. And the easy part and the good news is being able to make your hand do stuff is really easy. I think once you just put in the time, it honestly, you'll be good at this. Like if if you were really hard core, if you did like ten pages of this, I don't know for like two weeks, you'll probably be light years ahead of most most people when they start for maybe like in six months or something, you'll be way ahead of people just as far as being able to control what you're doing. So then at that point, the knowledge comes in and that's, you know, it's other courses here. So let's move on to the next exercise that I do for this as well. 4. Line Exercise: Okay, so another exercise I do for dexterity, and this is pretty good at. It covers a different thing is I put down a dot somewhere, let make it big so the camera can see it. And then put a dot over here. And what I do is I try to hit that point in one shot. Oh man, I came in C It's my hands blocking it. Flimsy. Say I was kinda off their due one more time that when I hit it. And I'll put dots over here, over here, and I'll do the same thing, maybe different direction. So I'm going to practice and I do that a lot of kind of hover over the paper a little bit to kind of like line my shot. And I hit it one shot right there. I'm going to do the other direction. Direction now can see Horner. See I went way over on that one. But just kinda do this with a page and it'll help you stop your hand. And that's another part of kind of controlling. So I got put that put that dot over here and then try to hit it one shot. It's a little off, little bit offered there. More time back. See, it's a little bit off on the other side. While more time banks he didn't want to wait over. But you understand how that would really help, right? It helps you an, an another part of your dexterity to kind of control what's going on. This is a really short one. I would also I also do these once in awhile. I still do them maybe like once a week. I don't do them every time I draw it, how to do the circles more. But this is also an important when I kinda run through. If you're obsessive about this, do maybe like five pages of this, like just kinda put dot here and dot here. They put dots everywhere initially and just kinda start off and see how many you can hit right there. Okay. That's a lot closer but not quite here. Thanks. You sounds way off. Let me try it again. Okay. Now it's closer, but it's a little off, not gonna do it back. I did do it back and then I did make it. And this one I would fight your anatomy. I wouldn't turn the paper for this one because the whole point is you do want more control. So I wouldn't turn the paper for, for that one here. But anyways, that one invaluable exercise, just amazing to do. Let me move on to the next one. 5. Exercise for Better Details: Okay, so here's the next exercise I do. I do this also once in a while as well. But you're also going to find that you do this during regular drawing. But I do love this exercise. So, for example, and I would prefer you do this with the pen as well. I guess you can also do with a marker or pencil for short pencil, I'm going to draw just kinda abstract. The it's kind of an abstract shape, doesn't matter. It could be anything, right? Just doesn't matter. Same thing here. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to thick in this line. So what I have to do to thicken this line, especially in pen, I guess the do have to do this in pen or pencil. I'm going to just thicken it and I'm going to try to make it as even as possible. And this one, you can totally turn the paper. I'm just not gonna do that right now because a camera, but thinking about the same thickness everywhere, ci habit forces me to kinda go in here and finesse the line a little bit. I can't just kind of blunt force it to go in here. And really just kinda Eve tried to even that line out as much as I can all the way around. And we're going to slowly do this throughout the entire shape. And yeah, like I said, this one you can definitely turn, let's say, oh, I guess I will turn it just for the heck of it. Just to show you over here, make it a thicker all around. So like I said, this is great for your dexterity within detail. So if you're, if you're like going into more detail, this is so such a getx and I see it's a little furry right there. I would normally not do that. I would not allow that. But like I said, this is so good for for a year. It's kind of what you're doing. Yeah. Just anything. He said small details when you want to get in there, sometimes you do a drawing and you want to go in there into small stuff and you want to make them neater in tighter. This is kind of what that exercise is good for. And again, it also, it'll kinda work on those digit muscles as well. Like these will actually work on some of the muscles in your head that you never really used for for writing. So I don't know if I'm gonna finish that, but that's the general exercise. I haven't finished always see I did this. And so if I take a quick look at that, obviously I haven't done this side, but I would probably make it a little bit more even right there. This also pushes you to look in more like, okay, it's a little thin here. I want to fix that up. This one's a little, it would take you a little bit longer, of course. Then the circles are the lines I would actually ask you to do. Maybe one page like where you just fill the page up with these abstract shapes, right? You can make them as complicated as you want. And then try to thicken the line everywhere. Really, really amazing. And I think if you, if you do the exercises, I told you the last two with this and you kind of make this a priority and you do as many as I tell you. You're gonna see your control explode and you're going to be like, wow, like at that point, you know, you'd really have to be working on your knowledge. Really, really great exercise. This one. I'm gonna show you the, my favorite one next. So I do have one that is my absolute favorite. And I think it kind of brings everything together. So we're gonna do that in the next video. So let's get started. They go, that's good enough to fix a demonstration, but like I said, do that everywhere. Next, let's do out this call to my favorite one. 6. Box Exercise: So this is my favorite exercise and I think it's by far the most beneficial once you get the hang of it. So I want you to draw a cube. It is going to involve some basic perspective. You don't really, honestly, you don't, you know, like so with perspective for example. So let's go over real quick. So let's say we have this box here and we're looking right at it. There's gonna be some very minor, minor perspective, but this is all you have to remember. It's not fully perspective. So this is a box. Let's just say there's an ice cube. We see we're looking at it right from its sideview, correct? Let's say what would you say if we are looking at this ice cube a little bit from like like we're looking up at this ice cube. How would it look? It would look. You'd be able to see the bottom of it, correct? You'd be able to see the bottom of the ice cube if you know you're looking up at it. Conversely, if you're looking down, let's just say here's another ice cube. Let's say we're looking down on that ice cube. How would you know that? You would know that? Because you see the top of it. And so that's how that works with any object, right? And like that, if you see the top of it, you're looking down on it. And if you're looking, you can see the bottom of it. You're looking up at it. That means you're below their eyesight, and then this is above their eyesight. So let's draw another one just on its own independently. So let's say this one we're looking, you can see the bottom of it. Let's say let's say we're looking up at it, right? You can see the bottom of it. We're going to draw it in, but then we're also a little bit to the left of it. What would we see? You would see that we're little bit left to this cube and we're little bit below it. So we can look up, you look up on the bottom side, and we can see the side right here. Keeping it in the same range. Let's just say, how would I add on to this cube? Let's add another cube on it. So I'm gonna go over here. Still, we're looking up at these. I'm going to add another cube over here, but then other ice cubes, so it's butting up right against it. I'm going to extend that line. And we can still see that the bottom, they call these planes the bottom part of that. So we're looking up at these two ice cubes now and they're next to each other. So imagine what would the back of these look like? Okay, so I'm finding the corner here and the back. Putting a lineup just kinda faintly going, pulling a line across the top here. So it's gonna look something like that. If that was see-through, right, we would see the back inside of that box. Same thing over here. We would see the inside of that box as well. Hopefully this is making sense if it doesn't let me know in the comments. And, but, so I made two cubes and I'm imagining the other side of them. Let's go over here. Same thing. What would what would the inside of that look like if it was see-through? So something like that. See that's the back corner of it that has Ice Cube pulling down and you have this corner as well. So let me darken the front here just a bit. So if I was to dark in the front, so I'm doing this pretty quickly, so I'm not that neat with it. And now what I'm doing is I'm thinking in 3D. Same thing. Let's go this last one. We're looking up at this, right? I draw a line here. Draw a line here for that back wall. It's gonna pull downward at some point these lines are gonna meet. Same thing over here. These lines are gonna meet. Pulling across. It's gonna look something like that. You're, you're imagining the inside of this cube. And I'm only gonna do it with cubes. You can do this with a lot of other stuff. You can do this with the, I guess you can just with certain spheres, but I always do it with cubes. And this also gets my mind. It's starting to think in 3D. Because when you think in 3D, you start to kind of understand how the backside of stuff looks like the far side, if you draw it like a portrait. And you'd run the far side eyeball or the eye socket. You'll, you'll understand you like you're kinda looking through it. And this exercise trains you to do that. So what I would do is, like I said, draw a cube. And then think about what direction you're going to see it from. Again, let's try the other side. So let's say I'm looking, I'm looking up at it, was keeps floating. And then this line here is going to let a match. And this line here is going to match. This is a little bit more advanced than the other ones. I really hope this makes sense though you can kind of wrap your mind around it is what? This is unbelievably, unbelievably valuable. This, I've seen people go from like drawing other stuff for awhile. And I've seen them go from link kinda beginner to really advance really quick, just kind of thinking this way. This trains your mind again to see through objects. Ok, so now you're like, What's the backend of that look like? Okay, I see a corner down here. I'm going to pull up. How far up would it go? I don't know. So this line right here going that direction, it's going to be going the same direction here. But on the inside, I'm gonna angle that similar to that one. And I'm going to catch this line over here, this corner right here. Oops. Miss that there. And I'll try to adjust it as I see it now I'm calling ok, the back is a little bit bigger than I can adjust it. And so what that starts to do is you start auto correcting yourself. So just draw cubes if you're inclined to, like, if you're really like, oh, I got this cute thing down. And to see that everything, just start doing what I did here. Start building on them. Maybe like let's say this another cube stacked on this one. Right? And then maybe try to find that the inside of that C that's a little now would even fix this right here. I pulled this up. My mind wants to fix it and just start like kind of repairing these cubes, honestly. And then you kind of keep going with that. I have seen people for like ten cubes, like in a row, like this direction out here. That's if you get really get the hang of it. But right now, I would stick to one cube and find and really kind of doing that over and over. I draw, I would say draw four cubes. You can do them pretty large. Do for right? And kind of really think about what's going on in the inside. I know there's a cheat to draw the cube, right? That everybody does a kid. One q one cube here. And then you stick them all together. If you need to do that, do that. Right? But that is my favorite exercise. I, whenever I'm really, really in a rut, I just started doing that. And it starts to kinda like that helps my brain process stuff a lot faster. That is it. At the very end of these, like I said, if you want to sheets of that two xi, two sheets event, and that is it. So you do all these for like a few weeks. Honestly, your dexterity in your hand and in your mind is getting in a mindset to start learning drawing is going to be through the roof. I think some people never do this. Some people will go their entire careers and we'll still have beginner mistakes because they don't do this or that, or that they'll still have a messy hand. Even all the way into their career is kinda weird because no one starts out the correct way. But that is, it's hopefully you enjoyed it. Check out the next video, I'm going to say see later in the next video. And these are my parting thoughts. 7. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much you reached the end of the lesson. Hopefully, that was quick and easy for you. If you do those exercises I talked about post them here, just is more or less proof that you did it. There's not a whole lot of kind of critique. A lot of that is, you know, it's kind of proving that you did it, actually being accountable. So definitely post and I will comment on every single post that you put up. That is pretty much it. I hope to see you in the future. Check out some of my programs here. There's a lot of different things. There's how to draw the head and the anatomy. I believe started go into drawing anime. I'm gonna start putting dinosaur soon, but for now we just have a dragon, a drawing lesson, and there's a lot more, so thank you so much. I appreciate you being here. If you made it to this point, you are amazing. If you made it here, say hi to me in the comments section or something and I'll know that you got to this point, Talk to you soon.