Try holding the pencil less like a writing pen, and a little further back from the tip. Loosen up a little.
Exercise your ability to look at your subject and not the paper. Try not looking at the paper at all, and doing continuous contours where you don’t pick up the charcoal / pencil at all. These will look silly, but that’s ok!
Learn to draw what you see, and not what you already assume is there. Make a mark on your paper - let’s say the curve of someone’s eye. Then, squint one eye and hold out your pencil and use it as a measure. You can measure the length of that mark and compare it to the distance of another mark you see in real life. Use this technique to find how far things are really from each other, whether they’re level, and the proportion of one line or shape to another.
Use your eraser as much as your drawing implement, and keep a light touch. No need to sketch over and over and over the same lines. Let each line count.
Start out with just lines - don’t worry about shading right away. Once you’ve mastered lines — how they define areas, etc, — you’ll find that the shading comes natural.
Try holding the pencil less like a writing pen, and a little further back from the tip. Loosen up a little.
Exercise your ability to look at your subject and not the paper. Try not looking at the paper at all, and doing continuous contours where you don’t pick up the charcoal / pencil at all. These will look silly, but that’s ok!
Learn to draw what you see, and not what you already assume is there. Make a mark on your paper - let’s say the curve of someone’s eye. Then, squint one eye and hold out your pencil and use it as a measure. You can measure the length of that mark and compare it to the distance of another mark you see in real life. Use this technique to find how far things are really from each other, whether they’re level, and the proportion of one line or shape to another.
Use your eraser as much as your drawing implement, and keep a light touch. No need to sketch over and over and over the same lines. Let each line count.
Start out with just lines - don’t worry about shading right away. Once you’ve mastered lines — how they define areas, etc, — you’ll find that the shading comes natural.