Developing art skill takes practice.
You can start learning the basics of art at any age. Art lessons, when done correctly, change the way you see the world, bringing out the richness of color and shade and heightening your observations so you notice things you may not have noticed before. While not everyone is a "natural," anyone can grasp beauty and improve their skills.
Visual Lessons
Since drawing means using your eyes or your mind's eye to translate an image from life to paper, learning to see is often the first step to developing artistic ability. Train your eyes to break objects down into shape and shade. Pay attention to scenes or things that please your eye and sense of aesthetics and then note the composition of that scene or object. Pay attention to how things are grouped. If you find yourself looking at a pasture and on one side there are two horses and on the other there are three horses beneath a shade tree, note how the second scene may be more interesting. This is called composition, and is an important part of learning to create art.
Beginning with Shape
Learning to see shapes in everyday objects helps you in recreating that object on paper. No longer do you see a baseball, but instead you see a sphere. Break down live figures into a series of connected shapes. A four-legged mammal may consist of spheres for shoulders and haunches, a cylindrical mid-section and a combination of spheres and planes for its head and legs. Learning to draw shapes before placing them into a certain form is helpful in understanding drawing.
Beginning with Light
Light gives shape its depth. Without light, everything would appear flat and two-dimensional. Teach yourself to pay attention to the origin of light on specific objects and how that light translates into highlights, shadows and mid-tones. Study simple shapes first and use artificial light sources such as lamps or flashlights to manipulate the light on the object. Note how the part of the object farthest from the light is the darkest, while the highest point of the object is the lightest in shade.
Developing Skill
Develop your artistic skill by practicing visualizing light and shape. Sketch often, drawing simple shapes and shading them with pencils or charcoal. The more you draw, the more you will learn about drawing and the better you will become.
