David learns the Natural Way to Draw.

[Ian Mack]

He's got a book by Nicolaides and he's going to work from the exercises which can be found within it. I'm going to observe and keep him on track as he learns.

[Mark Heng]

....because it really doesn't cover the fundamentals of form. Essentially, you can boil this book down to "draw lots of woolly figures and eventually you'll get to the actual form".

A far superior beginner's drawing book would be Betty Edward's "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".

[David27]

OH, great!

I'll probably give this one a go first, then take that one on board and maybe alternate, or something :)

Ian are you still on board for this? I'm sorry for the slow start to this, I'm having endless amounts of problems right now of untold amounts of crapage. I'll give something a go within next few hours.

[David27]

I finally started the first exersize, but I think I'll put these down to warm ups, as I haven't drawn anything for maybe 5 months!

That, and they took 5 minutes each when the book says I should be doing one drawing in half an hour - how?! Blind contour doesn't allow for that level of detail?

I have never done these kind of drawings before, it was liberating to make mistakes! These pics make for interesting pieces, and made me appreciate looking at the paper when I did a quick doodle afterwards, taking care on where my lines should be by feel, not merely by seeing :)

[Ian Mack]

Glad to see you've begun David!

For your blind contours...you're looking for two things. Lots of line variety which means change your hand position alot(holding from the underside, etc). And a sense of contact with whatever you're drawing.

My teacher said not to draw until you FELT like your pencil was touching the object that you're drawing. However, this works only for 3d things so I suggest you start with some simple objects like veggies/fruits, etc.