Practice Drawing with Quantity over Quality

When learning to draw, it’s natural to want to spend a lot of time on each drawing, carefully making marks, before moving on. But if you’re just getting started, there’s a faster way to learn!

And… the way that you do that is by actually “being faster” — now, don’t run away just yet, because I’m not trying to say “get good”, even if that’s what we are all trying to do…. anyway. What I mean is that instead of spending a lot of time on one drawing, spend a little bit of time on many drawings. Don’t put as much effort into them, just sketch something quick, observe, and move on to the next.

But that’s confusing! What do you mean by “just sketch something quick”? Well, let me give you an example. One of the most popular ways to learn to draw is by practicing the art of “gesture”, particularly by drawing people. How that process works is worth saving for another video, but there’s a key element to a lot of gesture practice, and that’s a time limit. In many in-person gesture classes, as well as online gesture tools, you’ll notice that there are built-in timers that limit your drawings to 30 seconds, or a minute or two. There’s a reason for that! For artists with some experience, it acts as a warm-up for your eyes and hands before moving on to longer drawings.

But for beginners, it prevents you from focusing too much on any one drawing. You don’t yet have the skill to see the finer details that you’d use to refine your studies on longer drawings. But that’s OK, because these short drawings help build up your foundations so you can gradually get there. There’s no need to spend time trying to refine those advanced portions of a drawing when you can be taking in the general shapes, motion, and forms of what you’re drawing instead.

This doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to spend time drawing something you love. By all means, have fun! But when you’re practicing to practice, quantity beats quality. Yes, you’ll fail more but you will improve much more quickly, because you’re getting more exposure to different aspects of drawing instead of trying to spend time struggling with longer works. Limiting your amount of time can feel frustrating at first, but you’ll improve much more quickly, and you’ll get more comfortable with practicing.

Think about it: if you spend an hour as a beginner carefully drawing a person, you’ll practice drawing arms once. You’ll practice a head once, legs once, a torso once. And you might get frustrated because it doesn’t look how you wanted! But if you instead spent that hour doing twenty short drawings, you’ll have sketched out each of those things 20 times! Sure, you’re not spending as much time practicing each drawing, but again, you’re not yet at the skill where more time would benefit you. So use the time wisely!

This practice of making many quick drawings can also help you build up a drawing habit, if that’s something you struggle with. You train your brain into drawing a lot very quickly, and you’ll notice it takes less effort to pick up the sketchbook and doodle each day. It can help you let go of the need for perfection and the anxiety that results when you don’t meet your own expectations.

Even for more advanced artists, it’s beneficial to warm up with repeated drawings. If you’re drawing a particular subject, try drawing it a few times quickly, then a few times with slightly more detail, then a couple more times with even more effort. Yes, it takes more time, but you’ll be way more satisfied with your work as opposed to trying to draw perfection in one try.

Let loose! Accept that drawing more quickly means that you’ll be making messier drawings up front, but you’ll gain that experience much more quickly. It’s one of the best ways to help keep drawing fun: knowing that you’re always learning, and allowing yourself the time for some quick practice. Thanks for listening to my ramble, and I’ll see you here for the next one!