These Practices Improve Your Drawing Skills - written by Ruediger Schmidt

When you learn to draw, soon you recognize: a major part of this artistry is mere craftsmanship and technique. When you're expert in the primary methods, your creativeness can rely on these basics. This leaves you more freedom to develop your drawing skills and imagination instead of concentrating on applying the basic methods decently.
Therefore it's a great idea to exercise these primary drawing methods regularly. Particularly when you're beginning to learn to draw, a lot of practice of these primary methods will quicken your drawing success.

Learn to Draw Hatchings and Cross-Hatchings

Hatching implies to draw a lot parallel running lines close together. Other than in conventional shadings the lines are not allowed to adjoin eachother! Although there's still a small blank space 'tween the lines they form an region seemingly shaded strongly.

Cross-hatching goes one step farther. When you are doing cross-hatching you cover one set of hatchings with an additional set orthogonal to the first one. Thus cross hatchings become a lot thicker and solider than (single) hatchings.
Drawing hatchings calls for preciseness. So exercising hatchings is also a outstanding chance to train your drawing preciseness. When starting begin to fill up empty pieces of paper with hatchings and cross-hatchings not having a special depicted object in mind.
Once you've acquired some technique, you should try first simple studies. Choose such scenes that contain plenty of shadow. Try to depict this scene not employing the use of outlines. Instead rely completely on translating the shadows and dark areas into hatchings. Let the hatchings' direction follow the subjects you are drawing. For drawing blacker areas and shadows lay the lines of your hatching nearer to each other or use cross hatching.

Learn to Draw Shadings

To draw shadings is more common than hatching. It's more instinctual and needs less experience. When drawing shadings you merely fill up areas of your drawing with your pencil. By changing your pencil's softness, the force you employ and the number of layers of shadings you produce you manage the tones you create.
Similar as when creating hatchings you'll draw shadings by drawing lots of lines. For now you draw them so close to one another they intersection and merge completely. Shadings made out of lines still bear a direction (though not as strong as in hatchings). So pay attention to align your shadings' direction with the shapes of the objects you're depicting. To make the shading heavier you have to employ the same techniques as when creating cross hatching.
A different way for drawing shadings involves drawing countless really little scribbles or circles close together so they merge and blend. Shadings made this way are highly even and miss a visible alignment. The advantage: you won't have to pay attention to the shading's hidden alignment.
Ideally you start exercising shadings right now. Take a few pieces of paper, outline a few bare forms like rectangles and start to fill them with shadings. Try to make them as smooth as imaginable and use all the different methods explicated before.
Once again when you have reached enough levels of expertise, try to start using the techniques learned on real-world sceneries.

Use Different angles and perspectives

In addition to creating shadings and hatchings the most important technique you have to acquire when beginning to learn drawing, is a sound apprehension of perspective.
There are a few rules that can help you in constructing perspectively correct drawings. But first it's essential you exercise your eye to acknowledge basic forms and structures.
Choose easy subjects mostly containing of straight lines and not too much arcs. Then depict those scenes by drawing only the silhouette. This way you can concentrate on interpreting dimensions and perspective. But do not stay here, reiterate this practice by drawing exactly the same scenery again and again from different angles.
You will see with each repeating you'll apprehend the subject more skilful and your ability to understand and picture the dimensions of any subject will increase greatly.

And What comes Next?

These three exercises are the most crucial while studying to draw. There are more basic skills and formulas you might want to learn. You could improve your drawing expertise by yourself - just get and draw living subjects. Begin with simple ones and step-up the level of difficultness while you make advancements. Additionally you could learn drawing using exercises planned and tested to warrant ideal progress for your drawing skills.