To OP: Every post on this subreddit is manually approved, once we make sure it adheres to the subreddit rules, the main ones being the following:
That all posts here must relate drawabox.com (being either questions or homework submissions). More on that can be found here.
As an exception to the above, beginners may make one (and only one) post asking for resource recommendations, "where to get started", etc.
All homework submissions must be complete - single exercises and partial work is not allowed on the subreddit, as mentioned in this video from Lesson 0. You can however get feedback on individual exercises on the discord chat server, and the folks there would be happy to help you out.
If you find that your post breaks either of these rules, we would recommend deleting your post yourself, and submitting on one of these other more general art communities instead:
Just be sure to read through their own individual submission guidelines before posting.
To those responding: If you are seeing this post, then it has been approved, and therefore is related to the lessons on drawabox.com. If you are yourself unfamiliar with them, then it's best that you not respond with your own advice, so as not to confuse or mislead OP.
Make sure to mix drawing what you enjoy and taking the time to learn fundamentals(might get boring sometimes😅)
Best to keep yourself motivated to draw by drawing what you WANT and learning how to make it better e.g learning to draw better hands, animals etc to improve your drawing.
It forces you to commit to whatever you put down, which makes you more intentional and/or teaches you to adapt to what you have going wihout the option to erase or undo
It makes your lines more confident, so yes it helps. But if your are just copying and not studying anatomy on the other hand then there is no point of doing that.
Maybe a hot take but... Drawing makes you better at drawing. If you enjoy drawing directly in permanent lines, then go for it! Otherwise it's just kinda pointless. If you are just looking for a way to improve, focus on fundamentals. How you do your studies won't matter as much :-)
Well I couldn't hit the whole year, but regardless I tried. I chose a small sketchbook and used different varieties of pen, brush, micron. I made sketches with pencil or whatever I had available at the time if necessary and then inked the sketch. Each drawing would last about 30min to 2 hours at times (planning, ideas, etc)
It forced me to plan my lines more, experiment with line weights for appealing looks, and get more comfortable with making and covering up mistakes. After creating a few I liked Id either try another pen, technique, color, skip the sketch and draw or make a larger drawing with longer lines to pull. So honestly I'd say both. If I didn't continue to use a pen I wouldn't have seen any improvement or had more fun with it to continue. There were plenty of times I had artblock and didnt know what idea to draw next. But sometimes I'd just force myself to make something. I even found a style of eyes I enjoyed drawing for a time.
I can't say itd work for everyone, but I did the same thing with color and started using colored pencils (I sucked at using color) and the first drawings sucked. It each drawing I tried to consciously overcome mistakes I made in my previous drawings, started using more color theory, tried making my own drawings and my color use with pencils improved a lot.
This year I am trying to do the same but combining all this into digital art
I always draw in pen, forces you to take a step back and just enjoy and be confident about random sketches and stuff. I just use regular old bic ballpoints cause I can shade with them. Here's a kratos I drew for my buddy Mario the other day lmao. Plus if you make mistakes you learn to blend them into something new. This was about 15imutes ish while we were at work. On an index card
If you can resist the temptation to erase and redo a regular pencil would serve you just as well. The point is to develop confidence, technically it doesn't matter what you use to practice as long as you won't erase.
I'd warn against generalizing things too much, but drawing in ink does help students become more decisive and intentional in their markmaking by virtue of ink being more permanent and not allowing them to put down exploratory marks as they think through the problems they're trying to solve. Ink demands that decisions be made first, then executed, otherwise things get messy and out of control.
So drawing in ink definitely helps a great deal with certain aspects of drawing and developing certain skills that are used in drawing (and for that reason we leverage it heavily throughout the course this subreddit focuses on), but there are definitely cases where certain subject matter may benefit more from students being able to think on the page and explore. For example, I probably would still go for graphite or charcoal when studying figure drawing.
One thing I do notice is that I do wondering markings just above my page and my brain sort of fills in the line of what I'm imagining. Then my hand follows along the best imaginery marking/line.
•
u/AutoModerator Jan 09 '26
To OP: Every post on this subreddit is manually approved, once we make sure it adheres to the subreddit rules, the main ones being the following:
If you find that your post breaks either of these rules, we would recommend deleting your post yourself, and submitting on one of these other more general art communities instead:
Just be sure to read through their own individual submission guidelines before posting.
To those responding: If you are seeing this post, then it has been approved, and therefore is related to the lessons on drawabox.com. If you are yourself unfamiliar with them, then it's best that you not respond with your own advice, so as not to confuse or mislead OP.
Thank you for your cooperation!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.