The first post of 2025
February 15, 2025
A beginner’s guideline to drawing
For the past few years, I have been trying to learn how to draw. I know that I have not been very consistent because there were too many breaks. However, through the years, I have learned two things that are to be taken for granted, and that is that
- You need to learn the fundamentals!
- There are so many places where you could learn the fundamentals that it can be so distracting and frustrating, as you may never know where to start.
As a beginner, it is hard to filter all the information. You could not possibly know what to learn, where to learn it from, which information is best, and so on. If you have no guidance whatsoever, you can get overwhelmed and stop the process of learning. I am now speaking from my own experience. I always searched for the best and quickest way to learn this skill. I gathered courses and resources and bookmarked lots of websites, but they were all forgotten as it was not useful to me because there was no structure to it. That was until last year when I think I found a gold mine.because there was no structure to it. That was until last year when I think I found a gold mine.
A perfect roadmap for every beginner artist
My day was normal, I was searching for motivation and inspiration, things which I always seem to lack when I stumbled upon a Reddit post from 2019. The post was simply just an image with a complete roadmap of what to learn, and it was also very well structured. The image seems to contain the most important resources and information that every artist seems to recommend.
My main question when I saw this was how come this is so under the radar? I searched for roadmaps for a long time, and only now have I found this. Later on I found out that the author created an updated version, which you can find on his Gumroad account. Alex Huneycutt’s Curriculum for Solo Artists. There is a free version that will guide you through the first two semesters and the complete version, which only costs $9, but I think it is well worth it. If you don’t have the money you can just follow the free version and meanwhile save some money to get the full version.
I find this the best list of resources. It is well structured, it has everything you need to learn in the long term and it could well be the only list you will ever need. It covers everything from drawing basics to advanced topics. What I love the most about it is that you could think of this as a school; it actually has 6 terms. Making it easy to divide it by 3 years. Going through 2 terms a year would be the best approach I guess. I know it is a long shot but I think it is well worth it.
Remember, drawing is not something that you can learn overnight. It is going to be hard, and there will be lots of frustrating moments, but passing through these moments shows you that you actually evolved and learned something.
I am now more focused and I know what I have to do
Last year in November when I found out about that Reddit post, I immediately started following this roadmap. I chose to start with Perspective 1, where I followed the Drawabox lesions 0-2. This was not my first rodeo with Drawabox, as I had tried it in the past because it was well recommended by everybody. This was actually the first time I had gotten to the 250 Box Challenge, which, let me tell you, is very challenging, and I haven’t yet gotten to finish it. I also read some books on perspective and watched some videos.
After these lessons, I can say that I have improved a bit, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, and I have a long road ahead of me, and so do you if you choose to follow this path.
Right now I have started following the updated list; even though it is about the basics of how to hold a pencil, how to make some marks on the paper, and so on, I still find it useful to go back to these roots.
Hopefully I will get you updated with each module I finish in this “course.”. I will type more about it here and let you know how it goes and what I have learned. I know I haven’t got to post much on here and neither on Instagram but I am trying my best to go through lots of stuff in my daily life.
Until next time, take a look at the provided link and make sure to download at least the free version of that document if you are into drawing.
Have a good creative day! ^_^
