The Learn to Draw in an Hour a Day Challenge: Episode 2

Welcome back to the Learn To Draw challenge! In this series, I'm documenting the process of following Richard Taylor's latest instructional art book Learn to Draw in an Hour a Day, covering everything from the mental health benefits of drawing regularly to how the book helped to grow my artistic skills. Follow along for the full journey, and find out how you can be in with a chance to WIN this fantastic book in the last installment of the series! 

If you missed episode 1 of this series, you can catch up here. 

On day 1, I began with the foundational techniques at the beginning of the book and worked on drawing and painting basic shapes. This task was great at getting the creative ball rolling by giving me a bit of confidence in my skills, and I afterwards felt motivated to put Richard Taylor's teachings into practice by following the next exercise: turning those shapes into recognisable objects.

Any object can be broken down into a collection of shapes, and Richard emphasises that this approach can help artists to work more accurately and with less hesitation. In this excercise, he turns a cone into a terracotta flowerpot that can be found in most gardens:

Working on this painting was hugely satisfying. Beginning with the cone shape gave me a great framework that helped me to immediately start sketching out the proportions of the flowerpot over the top, and I was able to envision how the finished painting would look quite early on in the process.

When drawing, I often get 'stuck', not knowing how exactly to bring my vision to life. This usually ends in one of two ways: I push through and guess which techniques are needed to depict what I'm imagining just to be disappointed at the final result, or get so frustrated that I abandon the piece midway through - which is obviously NOT ideal. Working with Learn to Draw in an Hour a Day gave me a reference point that clearly laid out exactly how to achieve my desired results, preventing any confusion. This made the experience of drawing so much more enjoyable, and I found myself really relaxing into the feeling of being creative and disconnecting from the world. 

In the next installment, I'll be putting the watercolours aside and focussing entirely on light and shading - join me back here on Bookmarked Hub to see how the next drawing turns out! 

- Jenny, Bookmarked Hub Team Member

Would you like to brush up on your artistic skills? Pre-order Learn to Draw in an Hour a Day at the link here!