I Didn't Know How to Draw Until I Learned This 

The word 'draw' used to exclusively mean To pull or to drag. In fact, Drag and Draw come from the same ancient root, _dhregh._ Around 1200CE it was first applied to the act of forming lines with a marking instrument or chalk/charcoal. The word draw - as in drag/pull - was used (instead of To Push, for instance), because a sharp point such as a sharpened reed or quill could not be _pushed_ on most rough drawing surfaces of the time without snagging in the pits of the material. Likewise, chalk or charcoal could snap if pushed against a rough ridged surface. So pulling - _"drawing"_ - it would be! :^)

Best book I ever found was called " The natural way to draw" by Kimon Niccolaides....if you can find it. It's a journey, no "right" way, just a lot of "wrong" ways! I beg to disagree with you here, best way is to go outside and sketch in nature.

Wow… Antonio this has taken me back to when I was helping my own children to work within their learning styles. An early childhood educator friend showed me how to encourage writing skills by drawing. We would get the children to spend 20 or so mins a day doing shapes, lines, concentric circles, zigzags and many other lines from small size to as large as possible on white paper. (For dyslexic children coloured paper works best.) My children learned so well this way, the expansion of their mind (how to remember the shape or line instinctively) was linked, I believe to the expansion and movement of their whole arm from the shoulder out. We encouraged the children with starting to draw/ make marks or lines or shapes from the wrist first and then with each ‘drawn line’ move the arm ever wider up eventually till the whole shoulder was involved in the drawing activity. The success in learning to write letters with ease was much enhanced in my dyslexic, challenged children. To think a similar style of learning can expand one’s ability to both draw and paint is to me nothing short of wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing.

A lot of youngsters tend to move the paper around to meet angles. The issue with is that it puts the draftsman at the mercy of altering their line strokes and movements. You end of up losing your consistency. For those who do life drawing at large scales, you can't afford to shift a giant sheet of paper around. Another thing to point out, depending on which drawing implement you use, that can change your grip and arm or wrist movements. If you use conte or charcoal sticks, it forces you to draw from the arm (shoulder all the way down to the wrist). With enough practice, this facilitates that large movement of lines. As opposed to drawing with ballpoint pens or ink pens, you're restricting yourself to smaller wrist movements which happens quite often to novice drawing artists. The reason people are able to handwrite, is that as young children, we were taught to learn those 'shapes' or 'characters' to the point of second-hand nature. Most people don't realise that certain techniques for gripping a drawing implement can affect the overall presentation of their drawing. Hence, the importance of line quality and form. You can be really well-versed at shading but if you lack the form, it will reflect in the drawing. This can be a very hard thing to comprehend as young artist. It's a culmination of years of understanding of line and form that needs to be put into practice like anything else. It doesn't happen over night.

When i was a kid there was a great art book series called; 'How to Draw...' by Walter Foster. I would sign them out from the library and covered a wide range of subjects from animals faces etc.

Thank you for pointing me to drawbox - I will give it a go! :)

Thank you for that review/explanation and the link. Much appreciated.

Just beginning to draw and paint, and I appreciate you sharing your journey so much. The discipline in learning to draw is a tremendous challenge for me, and the support of the class structure and your content may be of great help. Thank you! New subscriber and grateful for your presence and content. 🙏

This was very helpful! Thank you!

This is what I’ve been looking for…THANK YOU!

This may have come at the perfect time for me. Lately I've been trying to work with larger brushes in order to make more confident strokes and fuss less/overwork the paper less. When I started painting, I knew I was terrible at drawing, but thought it was never a skill I'd need with painting. I've come to realize that knowing about drawing plays into many other skills in painting. Perhaps this is something that folks learn in art school, but as someone who came to painting through the University of RU-vid, it's not something I realized initially.

Wow, this is such an interesting perspective to come at drawing from, starting back at the fundamentals after 19 whole years of art experience just in a different medium that I would think of as related. And yeah, it makes sense that the art of painting, where you frequently end up with strokes that are much more focussed on tiny detail adjustments than the big movements of just creating a continuous outline, ends up giving you a habit of only working with those smaller strokes. The end result is certainly unique, because of how the work still turns out amazing in a ley person's eyes, despite it having been made without the artist actually understanding the tool they are using. Makes me wonder what other intricacies of each medium would be revealed if someone else with over a literal decade of experience in one was to attempt working in one that still works in the same dimensions, but would normally require a different thought process and workflow to go along with the new set of tools. Regardless though, as an absolute beginner myself (I am all of roughly 10 pages deep on an A5 noteblock... yes, my stroke confidence is pretty much complete garbage as a result and I am working way too small for the amount of detail I could put into my sketches and scribbles), I thank you very much for introducing me to this course along with showing this unique perspective of yours. Literally the exact thing I thought I could need right about now.

Thanks, Antonio! I've just taken up watercolour painting, and I'm loving it. At the same time I realise that I also can just copy and have no clue how to draw properly. So your insights are much appreciated!

Dude you are so right ! I can copy and interpret ( sorta ) but real bare bones drawing yep nah . So I’ll be watching your videos for your progress. Whole arm movement !? yeah ive used this application in calligraphy textualis quadrata , copperplate and I don’t want to think about fraktur ( that’s scary ) but I resonate with you on real understanding of drawing and getting to the bare bones of it .

I am almost to the 250 box challenge hearing this encouragement help me to keep going. Thank you.

"i didn know how to draw until I learned how to draw"

Thank you.

This is awesome.,

Antonio, thank you for popping up on my feed. I had a horrible handwriting since I could write which is the last 51 years. Drawing is one of those impossible challenges that I've wanted to tackle in my life. Your explanation of the course let me see that this is actually something that can help me possibly fix a bunch of problems that I think her connected to the motor control issues which are actually a symptom of the deeper problem not the actual problem itself. Thank you for taking the time to make a video to explain the course and how the mechanics of it work. Best of luck to you, m8.

At the end of the day.....all art is a rendering.....art is how an artist interprets an object ...living or not. Classical learning is a great....and fundamental s are core to any discipline ....but some ppl just like to draw or paint . We all have been lead to believe that if you don't have a piece of paper or take a course that you have no knowledge of a subject. Which is not true....art is so subjective...unless you just feel the need pay someone learning thru trial and error is what makes the artist journey enjoyable

I like both this Way and a more improvised free style playfull and experimenting drawing and painting - and I also do believe that every art practice has to have some kind of dynamic balance bettween the classical sharing of techniques and the more spontaneous playfull inspirational ways of investigating drawing, painting,and end Other arts like, songing, dancing,choreographing and all the other ways of expressing and communicating about what we want to share and what we find of importance in our experiences of life - happy both meditative, and Experimentarium drawing and painting 🎵🌷🎶♥️😊

I have been working really hard on all fundamentals since I started to learn to draw and I've been aware of draw a box but I just know how strong of a mismatch it is to my ADHD to do such a long tedious grind on self motivation alone on a very boring subject, so I just don't set myself up to fail and feel horrible about it. I work on my perspective the more challenging way; the Kim Jung Gi way.

Man your grip on the pencil is WILD! While it's certainly not as bad as I've seen, I think switching that up to be something looser could help you a lot too

So…… I don’t see how you can physically see and copy what you see but be unable to see basic shapes in what you’re seeing? Like looking at a train and seeing a rectangle. The details/information is your rendering. In real life there are no vanishing points. So no perspective exist in our world. We experience it all at once (aside from fish eye). But to show this on paper you need to converge to a point. To give that illusion. Outside of building your visual library and the amount of hours invested that’s it for drawing. A literal rule for drawing is draw what you see not what you think you see. So if you can copy. You can draw.

"Draw a box" excercises are good when you need to get in some drawing practice but you cannot think about what you draw so you can do these basic mechanical tasks. You don't need to think about proportions of human body, anatomy, etcetera when you draw specific objects, you only draw lines, circles, squares and boxes. For more active practice these are not good because they are mind numbingly dull. Also an okay warmup before more involved practice, too. Just to get your hand in working order. So for anyone still looking into practicing from their site, prepare some podcast, tv series, movie, youtube video, idle videogame or videogame with low involvement, and go ham on these excersises. Talking with friends over discord helps too. Otherwise you will automatically kill your desire to want to draw.

I think that was the most painful website I've ever tried to navigate. What a mess.

Muito bom 😌😌😌😃😃❤

good video

oh, this is reassuring, because i don't know how to draw either

I'm also learning to draw that way. I found it's the best method for me to learn drawing. I stick with these absolute basics for a very long time until my lines are mostly even. But after all the organic shapes, I had some problems drawing straight lines and boxes. I probably practised the same thing for too long and then couldn't do the other thing any more. Furthermore, I should have always learned a little bit of everything every time I practised. Especially at the beginning, it was pretty quick to learn the individual basic shapes. After a few days of practising I was able to do every basic shape, and now I've had the problem for a few weeks that it takes a lot of practice before I can draw lines and boxes good again. At least I can learn other things in addition, such as a feeling for composition, brightness levels, colours and so on without drawing, when I rest my arm. Once I can draw the basics, there's no stopping me.

Interesting distinction between "drawing" and "rendering". For me personally, I feel confident in my drawings for the sake of painting, but drawings that stand on their own are quite hard for me. Nice video!

The word “draw” is so multifaceted. You pull the pen/pencil/brush across the surface. You draw/pull wire through ever smaller holes to make it smaller. Water forms a draw in mountains since it is pulled by gravity. A drawbridge is pulled open. We draw/suck the venom out. By the way your lines have good form. Mine end up looking like a willow tree trying to stand up very straight. Practice, practice, practice…

i see you doing something ive seen a load of people doing that restricts your movement and makes your drawing really stiff... resting your middle finger on top of your pencil, instead of resting the pencil on your middle finger. it may seem like a small thing, but it restricts your hand movement a lot...

Drawing is about looking. It is a form of investigation. It is not about learning how to construct a box. Drawing is seeing the world a new. It is about discovery.

I wonder if Rambrandt took that course? Mmmmmm.

Rendering is drawing. Honest you may be, but drawing is simply the pull of the stylus. Pulling your finger through sand is drawing. How detailed a drawing is depends upon many things. However, the desire to add more texture, detail, depth, hue, shading, etc. and is a learning process, it takes some talent, a lot of practice, patience, perseverance, creativity, and tenacity. Good luck.

Why don’t you learn how to do Zentangle. That uses micron pens. You learn to move the paper. You learn to draw straight lines. It is so relaxing. Then after you can add paint

same i have a problem

I love you

It is not free! $35.00 per month.

The way you hold your drawing instrument drives me nuts!

This is exactly my problem I can copy but not draw

I enjoyed draw a box until the cube challenge. that destroyed my desire to draw for a long time. and then nobody would review it. I was very disappointed. If I took it again, I would just skip that.

Infelizmente está jogando dinheiro fora, desenho e pintura não dependem de linhas curvas,sinto muito 😢

I am confused by their verbiage “a set of free exercises…” and the “25% off the first billing cycle” of $35 a month. A small fee for learning these essentials but too much for a dabbler who wants to dabble.

May I recommend x1.25 speed.

I have a New Masters Academy subscription, it has been the best investment I've ever made!

It’s not free it’s starts at $35 a month, that is surely not free.

My man.. the way you hold a pencil is WILD wtf

where are your other pictures? (50/50 rule)

I am learning from Peter Han

So if you don't know how to draw, how were painting for 19 years?

I quit draw a box in 2 weeks it was so boring

I don't even know how to copy...

you went through all of this for an ad for a site with drawing lessons and you do not draw any better now than before

Sorry to get somewhat off topic, but the way you hold your pen/pencil tells me you were not properly taught how to hold them at school. Schools don't seem to do these little [but important] things nowadays. No caligraphy either... It just looks weird, not to mention mechanically challenging, to see someone hold an instrument that way.

Ugh dude you're back to square 1 what's the point of this?

Draw a Box is not free; it's $35.00 a month. But, thanks Antonio.

Complete nonsense. If you've been drawing, painting, etc. for nineteen years, you might not have the best technique, but you certainly know how to draw. As long as you can translate what you see into a drawing, painting, sculpture, etc., that's all that matters. Some of the most famous works are pretty horrible...but they're still "fine art". Even if you're unsatisfied with your own work, show it to people who don't do art--they'll praise your skills until you die of embarrassment. What I'm saying, is that you're likely your own worse critic.