Exercises that transformed my drawing skills

Hey everyone!

Here are 3 things I thought were worth sharing this week.

1. I drew a portrait

I had too much fun drawing this. Here's the reference if you want to try it (I don't know why I flipped the image when drawing this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

2. I studied a portrait from the Moonlight Magic

I recently stumbled upon this beautiful painting by Dean Cornwell depicting a moonlit scene and I just fell in love with the composition. I studied a small section of this gorgeous painting (while listening to the Moonlight Sonata 🎵).

I think it's the first time I actually tried drawing a night scene and I thoroughly enjoyed shading the soft transitions in shadows and exploring the properties of moonlight and how it responds on different surfaces.

I'm planning to do more of such studies from different artists over the next week to disrupt the monotony and push myself to try different art styles. I'll be documenting my study sessions in my next video.

3. I made a video about the six exercises that improved my drawing skills

When I got back to drawing two years ago, my portrait drawings lacked structure, depth, and art style, and getting them to look somewhat believable was a long and often frustrating process.  

Recently, I have been practicing a lot and just exploring different exercises to improve my drawing skills, and in the following video, I share 6 of my favorite exercises that have improved my ability to draw consistently better faces as a beginner over the last couple of years.

🕗 Chapters of the video

00:59 Exercise 1: Drawing sculptures

02:59 Exercise 2: The Bargue method

05:00 Exercise 3: Skull practice  

05:49 Exercise 4: The Loomis head  

07:03 Exercise 5: The Bridgman head cube

08:10 Exercise 6: Master studies    

Thanks so much for reading, and happy drawing! ✏️

Ammar