How I learned Drawing in a Year

On 25 October 2020, exactly a year ago, I decided I want to start learning drawing and painting. I realized only too late that my friends had arts and drawing teachers in school. I somehow never had a drawing class growing up.

I was so bad that my teachers told me NOT to draw any diagrams in biology board exams. They believed I have a better chance of scoring good marks without any of my atrocious diagrams. Fast forward many years, I wanted to fix this.

First 25 days

I started with beginner courses on Udemy. 25 Days to Better Drawing by Matthew Fussell had the same ring as "Learn English In 30 Days" type of super popular books. I paired this with a daily habits bootcamp by Lesile Scott.

I followed all the instructions in these courses, did all the assignments. In some cases tried to draw and shade stuff even before following instructions. Neha (my wife) and friends continuously encouraged me and I was pleasantly surprised at how effective these courses were.

I went through a couple of more courses and practiced almost every day. Some course links that I went through (and recommend):

• https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-draw-animals/
• https://www.udemy.com/course/the-ultimate-face-head-drawing-course-for-beginners/
• https://www.udemy.com/course/fundamental-drawing-skills-and-exercises/
• https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-draw-birds/

Love for Charcoal

I started sharing some of my drawings on Instagram and Facebook and my friends gave a lot of love to these attempts.

This is when I picked up a new drawing course from Chad Newman and realized how powerful Charcoal could be. I had skipped the charcoal chapters in earlier courses. I wanted to learn more about charcoal and Rashmi Musale's Landscapes in Charcoal course was simply perfect for this.

I keep going back to these courses and I also keep buying specific courses for the head, gesture, portrait on Udemy even now. I have gone through some of the popular drawing books.

Pen & Ink

This is when I started looking at pen & ink drawing seriously. I had some practice with the medium from Matthew and Leslie's course but then I bought two more courses and my first drawing books. You can probably tell I like Matthew's courses.

• https://www.udemy.com/course/the-pen-and-ink-experience/
• https://www.udemy.com/course/subjects-with-pen-and-ink/

The books from Alphonso Dunn are simple to follow and very useful for beginners. I bought both Pen & Ink Guide and the workbook.

More Charcoal

I wanted to learn more Charcoal drawing and found the perfect channel from Miroslav on YouTube. This is one great artist on YouTube who I have been inspired by a lot. I saw his videos, looked at his finished artwork and tried to replicate the same strokes and many attempts have turned out to be great for my standards.

I am now starting to learn drawing with color pencils and hope to move to watercolors in a couple of months. I am still trying to get to a place where I can draw faces that people recognize.

You can do it too!

I went from being a student who couldn't draw in biology class to someone who doesn't mind sharing their work on Instagram in a year. I spent less than 1 hour every day (30 minutes on most days) this year.

If you put your mind to it, you can learn anything by following my simple learning playbook. While you are at it. Follow me on Instagram 😂