The School of Drawing: How to Draw Nature Masterclass

Welcome to this comprehensive beginner's guide to drawing—that aims to inspire you to embrace sketching as an integral part of your life, encouraging you to venture outdoors with a sketchbook. Drawing plays a pivotal role in developing any creative individual, heightening your perception of the world through keen observation, thus fostering imaginative thinking and the ability to establish meaningful connections. For me, drawing is the foundation for all visual art disciplines, providing a fundamental framework for expressing ideas and emotions. Beyond that, it holds a special place in my heart as I have drawn before I could talk. This course allows me to share my passion for drawing and nature, delve into the bonds that unites them, and how drawing can help unravel what you are looking at.

For me, mastering the art of drawing has its share of challenges, including still life, landscape, architecture, and more. The skills required to sketch moving animals and people differ from those needed for static scenes and subjects. In this first school of drawing course, I am focusing on drawing stationary natural forms and capturing subjects that are all around us. You can set up similar arrangements to the ones I demonstrate and visit similar locations to draw from first-hand observation. If you have trouble finding a comparable subject, I will also include photos in the resources section.

To participate in this course, I recommend keeping a sketchbook and dedicating a double page to each assignment. This way, you can track your progress and experience the satisfaction of filling up a sketchbook. Conversely to the "just draw what you see" approach. I believe that there is a wide range of ideas and exercises you can practise that will genuinely improve anyone's ability to get the animal down on paper. I mix and match ideas I have picked up throughout my career from the best teachers and maybe a few new ideas that I have invented along the way.

Training the eye and hand takes time and practice but can be sped up if you follow the exercises in this course. This way, you will hopefully get a feeling of progress rather than that of frustration.