How to learn to draw: start with simple forms, and draw what you see

Yes. In studies, beginners got measurably better at drawing from observation, and Elena Ant has watched students without obvious talent reach good results through work.

At Dartmouth College in the United States, students taking drawing and painting classes improved in their ability to sketch human figures from observation, compared with students who did not study art (Schlegel et al., 2015 (opens in a new tab)).

Research on why drawing from life is hard finds that the hand is rarely the problem. In four studies, motor coordination was a very minimal source of errors, and misperceiving the object was the major one (Cohen and Bennett, 1997 (opens in a new tab)). A 2016 review concluded that accurate perception of the subject and of the drawing is at the heart of drawing skill (Chamberlain and Wagemans, 2016 (opens in a new tab)).

Some students progress quickly, others slowly. Elena Ant has watched students without obvious talent reach good results through work, and gifted students who relied on talent alone fall behind them.

With line and form. Elena Ant starts beginners with how to see the volume of a sphere or a cube, how the body of an animal is built, how light and shadow fall, and how tones grade from light to dark. Composition, mood and colour theory come after.

Each lesson adds something harder, so students learn the logic an artist follows from the first line to the finished picture. Teenagers take the same habits further in academic drawing: perspective, form, tone and composition, drawn from observation.

Art academies have long taught drawing in a set order. At the Royal Academy of Arts in London, life drawing was the final stage of learning to draw, approached only after copying prints and drawings, drawing from ancient statues or their plaster casts, and studying anatomy and perspective (Royal Academy of Arts (opens in a new tab)).

In Elena Ant’s studio, students draw still lifes from life under a directed light, and build volume from the sphere and the cube.

Draw from life, in stages, and look at your subject often. Practice builds skill together with technique: art students who drew a lot but learned few techniques reached a lower level.

A lesson with Elena Ant runs in three stages, each about a third of the class and each harder than the last: a linear drawing first, then volume, then composition. She demonstrates each stage at her own easel and checks every student’s work after it.

At the end, she asks students to step back a metre and a half to two metres to judge their work, because an artist can usually judge a drawing only from that distance.

In experiments, people who looked back at their subject more often drew it more accurately, and changing how often they looked changed how accurately they drew (Cohen, 2005 (opens in a new tab)).

Among 301 art students whose drawing was tested, ability was related both to time spent drawing and to the techniques they used. Students who spent more time drawing but learned fewer techniques reached a lower level of skill (Chamberlain et al., 2015 (opens in a new tab)).

Elena Ant compares drawing to sport: the skill is trained through repetition, until the hand does what the artist intends.

Both are used. Elena Ant sets still lifes under a directed light and offers references for linear drawings, and OCAD University prefers drawing from direct observation in Illustration portfolios.

For a still life, Elena Ant sets objects under a directed light that shows the boundary between light and shadow, the cast shadows, the form shadows and the direction of the light. Students start with a linear drawing, then build the volume.

For a linear drawing, such as an animal figure, she offers three or four references, and students choose one.

OCAD University asks Illustration applicants for observational drawing, and states that drawing from direct observation rather than from photographs is preferred (OCAD University (opens in a new tab)).

(view larger) (view larger)

Years. Elena Ant compares it to training a surgeon, which takes seven to ten years: an artist also needs time to learn to draw, to see and to understand.

Measurable progress comes much sooner: in studies, beginners improved within a single course of drawing classes (Schlegel et al., 2015 (opens in a new tab)) (Vodyanyk and Jaeggi, 2025 (opens in a new tab)).

Elena Ant asks students not to judge each result but to treat their work as a process of becoming an artist.

Yes. In a randomised trial, adults aged 65 to 87 improved their drawing with 10 online lessons and daily practice, and Elena Ant teaches adults from complete beginners to retirees.

In the trial, run in California and completed by 34 adults aged 65 to 87, a course of 10 online lessons with daily practice improved participants’ drawing skills by more than half a standard deviation (Vodyanyk and Jaeggi, 2025 (opens in a new tab)).

Many adults come to Elena Ant with the same words: “I like drawing, but I don’t know how.” Classes start from the basics: line and form, volume, light and shadow, tone, composition and colour.

Elena Ant came back to drawing herself at about fifty, after years away from it, and her skills returned within about a year.

The benefits of drawing for adults and seniors