Sketchbook Tour: A Four Phase Recipe for Developing Your Sketching Skills

Sketchbook Tour: A Four Phase Recipe for Developing Your Sketching Skills
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This video is a tour of my first sketchbook. The video also provides a four-step guide for those of you who do art for a hobby to improve your drawing and sketching skills. The four phases I describe here can be especially useful for beginners who would like to develop their drawing skills.
The following are the four steps/phases shown in the video:
Step 1: Practice line drawing and shades: This is just pen drawing to learn basic shapes and shades. More importantly this phase helps you to be confident and comfortable with sketching and helps you to make drawing your habit. Simply draw the things you would like to draw. As I mentioned in the video, the lines could be messy and lack discipline. That is not a problem at all. You will eventually draw much better if you keep practising.
Step 2: Practice free line drawing without using any references. Just draw from your imagination. This is a really relaxing and enjoyable exercise. Let the lines flow and develop into beautiful sketches. I usually start with one object, like a bin, vase, or a fence and draw everything else around it.
Step 3: Introduce colours. Once you have practices sketching, start colouring your sketches. Use a simple colour palette to paint your drawings. I use a basic Cotman watercolour set of ink and wash watercolour painting. Most of the time, I do not use a lot of colours. I only use a few colours for all my sketches.
Step 4: Gradually move to complex objects. Draw objects around you. Select objects with odd shapes and sizes. Find interesting combinations of objects to draw. Your drawings do not have to be perfect. The whole objective is to enjoy the sketching process. That will be a formative experience that helps you to improve the quality of your drawings significantly.
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#art #sketch #sketching #sketchbook #sketchbook tour #drawing #tutorial #stepbystep #drawingtutorial

[@CastleMc]

This is not typical of anyone's "first sketchbook." Your work is precise and expressive, and you clearly honed your skills outside of a sketchbook, because there are very few errors or false starts in these drawings. The "sketchbook" looks more like a publication prototype with digitally scanned and edited drawings, even in "Phase One." I'm not commenting to diss you; many artists keep both "working" sketchbooks and others for more serious or polished works. I'm commenting because people new to drawing should not expect to achieve these flawless results. Drawing initially requires lots of practice and some failures and mistakes are inevitable and totally normal-especially with an unforgiving medium like ink.

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thanks so much for the comment. I really appreciate it. I hear you. To be fully honest with you, I skipped a number of pages in this sketchbook that had some sketches that didn't look as good as the ones included here. The sketchbook took about a year to complete, and I used this only when I'm really motivated and relaxed so that I can sketch with minimum errors. I draw on anything I see, including my university notebooks, meeting notebooks, papers I read etc... :). So a lot of experimentation happens outside sketchbooks.
🙂🙂🙂

[@bobby28257]

Best off, but not a beginners sketchbook... I love it!

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thank you so much :)

[@mashedpotato579]

I am a big fan of inking but it always overwhelmed me so bad to even start drawing. Thank you for this video, it make me finally pick up my pen today!

[@chamilrathnayake]

I am delighted to hear that this video gave some inspiration. Believe me, the more you draw, the easier it gets :)

[@michaelsigler5820]

Beautiful!

[@AshaDrawsHerself]

Amazing sketch ❤

[@anacarr4795]

Beautiful. Can you show us how to do it?

[@chamilrathnayake]

Hi Ana, thank you for the comment. Absolutely, I've been trying to create videos to share the techniques I use. I've posted two ink and wash videos. This could be useful 🙂 czcams.com/video/hXrGzLvF4MU/video.html

[@autfiltv5331]

Really good and it gives me hope to sketch more ❤ Danke sehr 🙏

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thank you so much 😊👍

[@donnareilly1312]

❤

[@pranavgawade4713]

Wow really great art ✨

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thank you very much. I really appreciate the comment :)

[@Isha_tiwarii]

Beautiful artwork.

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thank you very much 😊😊😊

[@helhely1294]

So beautiful sketchbook 🌹👍

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thank you so much 😊🙏🙏

[@NamalPradeep-ln1sp]

Excellent bro...

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thanks brother 👍

[@sumpengnim5705]

Im gonna try water colours now :)

[@chamilrathnayake]

I would love to see some of your work :) I'd say line and wash is a great way to start watercolour. That's how I started :)

[@Angela27red]

Do you use a pencil to sketch first then use the ink? Great sketchbook tour so motivating

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thanks for the comment 😊 I don't use a pencil because I don't really follow a reference. I start with a reference, but move to free drawing after I start. But I think that a pencil outline could give you more control when you start with the pen.

[@lapun47]

Nice sketchbook! Good tips, but I'd rather hear your voice than read and listen to music.

[@chamilrathnayake]

Thank you so much. I have to admit. I've been too shy to record my voice. But this is something I want to do (and I know will greatly enhance the videos). I have another sketchbook nearing completion. I'm going to give it a try next time :)