All my life I've had this nagging thought that I should draw, but years went by and I just never managed to sit down and draw and if I did I just didn't know what to draw anyway. This is my life-long creative block that I finally have started to break.
I thought going to art school would help, but although I did learn a lot about art in different aspects in the two years I went to art school, I still never sat down in my own time to draw, paint or create. When I then went to University to study graphic design, drawing skills was not something that was focused on.
Around 2018 I discovered Stan Prokopenko's lessons on proko.com and felt it was exactly what I needed – specific, high-quality and engaging video tutorials on all the fundamental aspects of drawing. I started dabbling a bit with Proko's lessons, Drawabox and some Domestika courses and feel like I have gradually been carving out more space for art in my life.
As I am mainly doing exercises I don't have a lot of 'finished' works to present but I would like to talk about the things I am learning in the course here (line, structure, gesture, etc). For now there is just some drawings from a recent drawing challenge that was held at proko.com.
Perspective Drawing Challenge
In June/July (2024) I participated in a 28 day drawing challenge to do a perspective drawing every day. This was held at Proko.com where I take all my drawing lessons. I love a challenge because I feel like the regular practice with the added pressure of a challenge leads to a higher rate of improvement. At the end of this challenge I felt like I could draw just about anything! Knowing how to construct things with some perspective principles is very empowering I think. There's no need to be 100% accurate, like for architectural/technical drawings, but it really helps to know the basics.
Day 1 - Fire hydrant with photo reference
My first drawing was not very good. I drew a fire hydrant but had to keep it very simple because I spent too much energy and time on constructing the perspective of the boxes and cylinders that I just thought I'd simplify... Construction lines can get mixed up in the chaos, and one mistake can lead to other mistakes later on... Another challenge is line quality, which might ruin all the hard work constructing the drawing.
Towards the end of the challenge I noticed that it was much more enjoyable (and possible) to draw more complex drawings, and we can clearly see improvement in the subsequent drawings as the days went. As the challenge was around the topic of perspective aspects like shading, colouring, details etc were left out. All drawings are done with graphite on paper.
Video cameraCastle (own design)ToolbagThe ColosseumDeep sea diver helmetCyberpunk car (my own design!)My deskSwiss army knife
