How To Learn To Draw By Drawing Cartoons

Mikemo | Jan 18, 2010 |

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Are you one of the millions of people who wish they could draw, but believe they can't? Maybe you've tried to learn to draw on and off over the years - followed a course or two on drawing, but given up, lost interest, passion and inspiration, and ultimitely lost belief in your talent... until the next burst of creative enthusiasm.

This is the plight of at least half of the potential drawing artists out there - the other half don't even start.

I believe though that everyone has the talent to draw - even you - but you're finding it hard to learn because you're probably going about it the wrong way. You think there's only one way to learn, and one way to draw - you're told that in all the books and courses, so why wouldn't you believe it? You want to draw like a professional but get frustrated when your results don't match up to the professional's examples. And you become completely demotivated by the endless series of instructional exercises on form, texture, shading technique, how to hold a pencil, what paper to use, understanding perspective, or how to divide a face up into realistic and correct proportions.

Who wouldn't give up , if drawing is this hard to learn?

Maybe it's time for another approach! Maybe it's time to become motivated by your own imagination, free yourself from all those rules and techniques of drawing - and start having immense fun drawing cartoons.With cartoons you can't really make mistakes - you can put ears in the wrong place, draw faces without mouths, draw only dots for eyes... You can be as free and as silly as you like in cartooning, but at the same time you are learning to draw - and here's why:

In all your crazy cartoon drawing, you are getting endless practise with your pencil, improving your eye-hand coordination constantly, without even trying. You are building your visual skills through observation - noticing, and applying subtle differences in forms and features. All this is achieved naturally and passively in the act of doing - and because you're having so much fun, you'll continue doing and thus continue learning and improving.

You may hear, or read, that to draw a cartoon hand (for example) you have to be able to draw a real hand. And to draw a cartoon face you have to know the proportions of a real face. In other words, to draw cartoons of "anything", you have to learn to draw them in their true form.

Well that isn't true... and it can work the other way round: draw a hand with three fingers, and it's easier to add two more later on.

The point is this: it's more important to be drawing than to be learning how to draw. Drawing cartoons is an easy and fun way to keep drawing.