If you struggle with liking your drawing skills, then get the FREE drawing tutorial with the sign up below and start to build your ability to draw what you really see.

In this tutorial you will use tracing paper and the line drawing by Matisse to:

• Slow down
• Look at what you are drawing
• Train your eyes to see
• Get your eyes and hands to work together
• Have some Fun
• Let go of judgement
• Stimulate ideas to practice your new drawing skills

Drawing is the most basic art making tool and if you can learn to like your drawing skills, then you will be more confident in your overall art making methods.

You can use your own style of drawing to:

1. Make printing plates
2. Design stencils
3. Cut stamps
4. Create complex compositions

You will not need to buy tools and images that are made by other. Think about the possibilities!

Very soon I will be offering a weekend Drawn to Print online art course. I have been examining and thinking about how drawing feeds all of my printmaking processes.

I actually started printmaking because I did not like to draw. Printmaking plates, stencils and tools can give life to a simple drawing. It can make all the hard work of drawing live on and be bigger than the original sketch.

Making printing plates from your drawings is great if drawing feels like a struggle or burden to you. You can spend some time drawing and then a lot more time using that printing plate to make your artwork.

I challenge you:

1. Expand you idea of what a good drawing is
2. Look to some Master artists for study and inspiration
3. Draw even just a little bit each day
4. Consider accepting the idea that 75% will be practice drawings and you might like 25%

Here are some of the masters who I admire for their drawings, line quality and expressive marks. Do google image search of each name for quick visual of their style.

• Alice Neel
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Paul Klee
• Robert Motherwell
• Henri Matisse
• Kathe Kollowitz

Here is a great article about the importance of drawing. The Art Supply Store – Written By: Laura Spencer

It is wonderful when you get to a place in your art making that you realize that your unique differences are what make your art so special and powerful.

Love your wiggly lines and warped perspectives! They will help others to see what you see.

You can try to avoid drawing and there are lots of tools that you can buy to make art with out drawing: stencils, stamps and coloring books.

But if you have the urge to make your own unique art, to express your voice in the world, then the tug of drawing is there. I know because I am not natural lover of drawing. I judge myself too harshly and I often resist the process.

Now I know that:

• drawing is an essential tool.
• the more I draw the more I like what I draw
• drawing can be a scribble (google Cy Twombly drawings)
• kids drawing are moving because they are raw and real

Try this:

1. Get 10 sheets of copy paper
2. Stand up, wiggle, breathe and stretch
3. Arm out stretched and soft pencil in hand, scribble with abandon
4. Just keep making marks
5. Get a new sheet when you feel like it

How did it go?

• Did it feel fun? Foolish?
• Were you judging or allowing?
• Did you trust yourself?
• Do you feel looser, freer?