Improve Your Drawings by Avoiding This Detail Trap

what's the difference between a drawing that looks like this and one that looks like this the key is that the pro artist has learned something about drawing detail that has allowed them to make that jump to more realistic drawing but if you don't know this one thing yourself then you'll always be stuck making drawings that look like these and you're always going to find drawing detail really intimidating now if I was to ask you what is the most important part of a realistic drawing would you say proportions shading well most people I ask say the same thing detail and that makes sense right surely if something is more detailed then it's going to be more realistic but actually that's wrong not only is detail not the most important thing to make a drawing realistic I reveal what actually is in a little bit but more detail can actually ruin the realism of your drawing entirely I remember when I was starting out drawing and I'd get my reference and I would start drawing and I was really fixated on all of the tiny details if I was doing a portrait I would want to get in every strand of hair or if I was doing like freckles I'll try and get every single one in exactly the right place that was on the reference and it became the thing that I was just focused on and I'd get frustrated because no matter how many details I added and whether I got them in exactly the right place it still don't feel like my drawings had that wow factor early on when I started drawing it felt like they still sort of fell a bit flat no matter how much detail I was adding it wasn't really translating to the realism in the drawing and it was a bit confusing because I thought well for it to look realistic I need more detail because otherwise it will look cartoony and for cartoons they're really simple so surely it's adding more detail and getting really detailed with the drawing that's going to make it more realistic but it just didn't seem to be the case no matter how much detail I was adding it wasn't going to get me to that next level of realism that I really wanted and now that I've learned the thing that really makes drawings realistic I really spot this era so much in other beginners I see what a big Focus because beginner and even intermediate artists place on detail and all detail is seen as good and the more the better but this just isn't the case and more detail can really damage the realism of your drawing for a more realistic drawing you want to make sure that you're adding the right type of detail and the right amount of detail so here's five reasons why detail is actually making your drawings less realistic first of all if you add detail to every part of your drawing your drawing can end up having no depth and just look very flat and it doesn't sort of have that three-dimensional quality so take a look at this drawing you can see at the moment there's a lot of detail going on but now look what happens if I'm just a bit more intentional about what I am making detailed so I'm keeping the focal point detailed and then I'm sort of softening out everything else you can see just how much more depth has been brought to this drawing just by blurring out and getting less detailed with certain areas more realistic right so being very selective about what you make detailed and what you make a bit blurrier it's going to add so much depth to your drawing which will make it more realistic and that leads on to the next point if everything is in detail then the drawing can quickly become very cluttered looking and the problem with that is when everything's in detail the person looking at it won't really know where they should be looking there won't really be a focal point if everything stands out nothing stands out but if you use detail intentionally and sort of decide what you want to be the focal point and that thing is in more detail and everything else is softened and blurry and has less detail that is when your creator drawing there's a clear Focus to it which will not only make it more visually appealing but it can make it more realistic as well now this next problem could really ruin the realism of your drawing because you see when you hold this belief that more detail means more realism is tempting to want to add detail to everything even things that shouldn't be detailed and so if you're following a reference and you try to add detail everywhere it's tempting to start to make up and invent detail that doesn't actually exist and when you start to use your imagination and make up detail yourself that's when things can get less realistic because when you do this you'll be ignoring your reference and you'll actually just be making stuff up and our imagination when it comes to realism is not something that we can rely upon it's not going to be very accurate and so your drawings can become less realistic looking if you start to make up your own detail that doesn't exist and when you start making up detail it can actually really highlight any weaknesses that you have in your fundamental skills for example if you're a bit weak with anatomy and you try to make up details and you're sketching away then something can easily look off or weird and that might highlight that you're a bit weak on your Anatomy because your imagination isn't very reliable and when you make up details they might not be accurate and this last point is the one that's the most important and the one that the pros really understand and that is when you focus too much on detail you are going to ignore all of the other really crucial fundamentals of realistic drawing because the thing that the pros know that you don't is that detail is not the most important part of a realistic drawing in fact it's just like the cherry on top of a cake it's not the cake it's not the most important part of realistic drawing and what's crazy is that for a lot of my drawings I just ignore the details for like the first half or even three quarters of the drawing process I don't even think about them that is because there's one very important thing that I need to focus on first before I can enjoy adding all of those fun details so what is the most important thing to making a drawing realistic let's take a look at a couple more drawings here are some before and afters of drawings that I've transformed every week for my mailing list readers I take one of your drawings and I transform it and I break down in those emails exactly what I would do to make make that drawing more realistic and this is just something that I exclusively do on my email list so I'll leave a link in the description if you want to submit your drawings for critique and if you just want to access those emails I'll leave a link for that as well but if you look you can see that the after the drawings are a lot more realistic than the before drawings and what's crazy is that most of the time when I'm transforming these drawings I pretty much have to do the exact same thing every single time and this one thing that I have to do is the one thing that the pros know is the most important thing for realistic drawing and it's the thing that so often beginners underestimate the pros understand that the most important part of a realistic drawing is value but not just value it's about using a range of values and properly shading with a variety of values to build up form and structure in your drawing but most beginners get stuck because they're focusing a lot on detail and they ignore value and that's why you wonder why your drawings look flat even though you've added a lot of detail you're probably ignoring these important things like value form and light and Shadow and that is why I created this free mini class on the most important fundamentals of realism I go through the things that really will make you joins more realistic and also mistakes to avoid this mini class will teach you how to get unstuck and finally start seeing progress in your very next drawing click here to check out that mini class or there's a link at the top of the description and it even comes with a checklist that you can use as you're drawing to check off to make sure you're doing the things that will make your drawings more realistic check it out and I'll see you in the next video bye everybody

Channel: Kirsty Partridge Art

Views: 216,441

Keywords: drawing, drawing tricks, drawing trick, drawing tip, drawing pro artist, trick pro artists use, drawing hack, easy drawing tricks, how to draw, drawing tutorial, how to draw for beginners, drawing supplies, drawing details, how to draw details, how to draw detailed drawings, detailed drawings, drawing detail, realistic drawing, how to draw realistic

Id: C_3fxoF0CFY

Length: 7min 38sec (458 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023