Older women, learn to draw with zero foundation, you can do it too!

Drawing, this should be the dream skill of every young woman. Being able to record every bit of life with your own hands, so cute and vivid, how happy it feels! However, many people fail to persist or even start due to the lack of support and optimism from family and friends around them. Here, I would like to share with you my journey as an older woman to learn painting on her own, to give you some motivation and some reference to avoid detours.

First of all, you need to decide on a few points: self-study or attend a training class? How much time are you prepared to invest in studying? What is the goal and significance of learning this thing? If you’re not sure about these, it’s easy to give up.

Then, search for information on the Internet, similar to "How to learn comics from scratch", and see what inspiration other people's experiences on the Internet can give you? Does the method he provides work for you?

Next, make a practical plan for yourself. This plan can draw a long front, especially for those who use their spare time to study on their own. If they can complete milestones in stages, it is worthy of encouragement. Make plans that follow the SMART principles and are clear, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

The next step is execution. During the implementation process, you will encounter various situations that go against the plan, such as suddenly becoming busy at work, holding a book in the subway every day to pretend that you can't pretend, your family does not understand or support...all kinds of problems arise every minute. You give up. But if you persevere, it's a different world.

I am a child who has not been exposed to drawing since I graduated from elementary school. After I started working, I envied the children around me who could draw. I could write a greeting card more creatively than others, and I just happened to be that way. I have been doing design work for a while, and I am particularly yearning for the ability to draw by hand! Although many people say that painting is a child's skill and it is impossible to learn it if you start learning it at this time, but I was stubborn at the time and did not believe this. I was confused, so I started to try to learn sketching from the most basic level. At that time, I even signed up for a class to learn sketching. The class was attended by an ordinary art school student. Although I only took a few classes, it was still very useful to laymen like us. Understand the most basic theory, which will be very helpful for future self-study.

I have been teaching myself painting for 2-3 years now. Because I can only paint in my spare time and there is no one to teach me, I stopped for a long time. It is a negative teaching material. .....Looking back now, if someone asked me how to teach myself to draw, I could still give some advice.

1. Determine the goal: It is the beacon for your progress. It is easy to give up if the goal is not clear. My goal is to be able to discover the beautiful parts of life and express my thoughts freely in a visual way.

2. Make a plan:

1) Learn the most basic sketching (it is recommended to go to a training class for sketching):

a. Theory: light and shadow, Perspective, proportion

b. Copying: Start with the most basic still life, you can buy some art college entrance examination textbooks to draw against, and then move on to painting figures and landscapes

c. Sketching : I think sketching is relatively difficult. It requires a certain grasp of the human body structure, scene coordination, and perspective. It also needs to be completed quickly, with a strong overall sense, and a certain choice of details. Recommend a book as a stepping stone to draw.

d. Drawing tools and venues: I was also a big fan of equipment at the beginning. I bought a complete sketching set, pencils of various thicknesses, plasticine, small stools, drawing boards... I fantasized about bringing them with me. I used this set of equipment to paint exterior scenes, but I couldn’t fit it in. As a result, I never did any exterior scenes... But it was still useful to use this set of standard equipment at the beginning, at least it looked very professional. But later I encountered a bottleneck. Many times when I see a good-looking painting on the Internet, I want to follow it. It is impossible to draw with a mobile phone and a drawing board while sitting upright. At this time, a useful automatic pen and a simple drawing book are very useful. It’s important. I recommend Pentel for automatic pens. It costs more than 60 soft coins each. The refill is not easy to break and it feels very good in the hand. It makes you feel very happy when you draw with it, haha.

2) After you have a solid foundation in sketching, you can learn colored pencils and watercolors that can be used for coloring. At this stage, you basically only need to master the use of tools based on sketching, and understand colored pencils and watercolors. The use of water-soluble pencils or paints is all a matter of course.

3) Advanced people who want to learn comics/cartoons: Drawing comics like The Great Anne is a matter of minutes, you just need to master some routines; as for those who want to draw CG, it is painful There are a lot of them. You must learn the human body structure well and draw slowly and practice slowly.

Finally, here are some crappy paintings I taught myself, haha...

Above, everyone should feel confident after reading my experience. I am not very talented in painting. Yes, it was all because I was interested and persevered.