What if you could make one tiny, simple change to the way you draw that could increase your accuracy, without you really having to work at it?
Sounds too good to be true, right?
Well, I think I have one for you. The only catch is that it will take time to see the results.
Why does drawing accuracy matter?
Accuracy is a core skill, one of the foundations of drawing well. If you can’t draw accurately, you’ll struggle to draw anything well at all.
Obviously there’s much more to drawing than simply drawing what you see as exactly as you can. But as my friend Dorian says, if you struggle with accuracy, everything in drawing becomes that much harder, takes that much longer.
How to develop drawing accuracy – the slow way
If you want to develop your drawing accuracy fast, then the best approach is to practise it exclusively for a while. Do nothing but accuracy training, and do it regularly. Spend two hours a day copying Bargue drawings, and push yourself to achieve absolute accuracy. You will improve, and quickly. Dorian’s drawing accuracy guide would be a great place to start.
But there’s more than one way to develop a skill. And if you’re not in any particular rush, I’ve got something deceptively simple for you.
I call it:
Guess, then measure
Because that’s what it is. Let me explain.
When you boil it down, the most basic, core skill of accuracy is judging relationships: The distance between two points.
Recent research into brain science, specifically brain plasticity, has borne out what we’ve always known all along, if we’re honest with ourselves. The most efficient way to develop a skill is to practice it over and over and over again.
How to do it
Often, when we’re drawing and we want to find, say, the distance between a life model’s head and their feet, between two elements of a still life, or between one tree and another, we’ll measure it.
And that’s fine. But it won’t develop your core accuracy skill much, your ability to correctly judge the distance between two points.
So what should you do instead?
Guess first.
Estimate the distance, and make a mark.
Simple, right? But that’s just the first part.
There’s one more very important part of practice that makes it much more effective. It puts your practice on steroids: Feedback.
Feedback allows you to make adjustments to your method, based on the results you get. Practice without feedback is like chucking a basketball without bothering to see if it goes through the hoop.
You won’t make so much progress if you practice without checking your results.
The feedback loop
The way we build feedback into this simple method is to measure the distance after we’ve guessed at it, to check it against our guess.
I know, it seems too simple. But if you break it down, here’s what’s happening:
When you guess, you’re requiring your brain to estimate a distance between two points. Every time you do that, you develop your skill at estimating distances a little more. A tiny bit. Over time, that tiny bit becomes much bigger, it becomes a development in your skill level that you can see.
So far so good. Here’s how you get feedback:
Now you measure the distance to check it. This is your feedback mechanism. Over time, you’ll see whether you tend to guess distances smaller or larger. You’ll be able to compensate for any habitual errors you make. And you’ll see yourself getting better, as your margin of error decreases.
This feedback is the part that makes this little change really effective.
Guess, then measure
Be prepared for your guesses to be wildly out at first. Gradually, they’ll improve. As long as you constantly give yourself feedback by checking your guess against a measurement.
It’s such a small change to the way you draw. Nothing really, you won’t feel it at all.
But if you manage to make it a habit, over time the repetition will really mount up. I think you’ll be surprised what a difference it makes to your drawing accuracy. Astonished, in fact.
Small things really can make a big difference.
Thanks for reading,
Paul
Creative Triggers
The idea of developing skills through repeating small actions many times isn’t new. Neither is the idea of feedback making for more effective practice. But both really work.
The drawing exercises that form the core of Creative Triggers, my drawing practice community, are built entirely around this idea. They’re simple, deceptively so.
But when combined with a drawing practice habit (and some time, of course) they effectively build your fundamental drawing skills more than all the art books lining your book shelves (and mine).
Find out more about Creative Triggers here.
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Thank you for this insight Paul. Sometimes I measure and sometimes I guess my lines in drawing, which is not always accurate on the first try. That is why the eraser was invented and I am not feeling guilty about using it.
I actually noticed that during my practice drawing and seeing the lines I am slowly evolving in the way I see things and render them.
I am intrigued by how do we really see. I know we see with our brain and the eye is the window to that part of the brain. There is a profound connection of our perception and what we see. I have a habit of seeing details and I pay close attention to my surroundings.
I used to have a big garden and grew a lot of flowers so I studied the shapes and size of flowers, and they are in my visual memory. We do not posses memory of color, but we are able to remember shapes. The shape of a leaf or flower pedals are fascinating and I noticed that to change one little line the whole composition changes. Like you said, it is about relationships. I am very interested to find out just how do we really see as an individual. Can we through practice (drawing) change and evolved how and what we see. I know that brain plasticity is very attainable with the practice of doing and seeing.
Here is an interesting book I just got on my kindle:
“ Eye and Brain: the Psychology of Seeing” by Richard L. Gregory
Another book I have my eye on (pun intended) is “The Island of the Colorblind” by Oliver Sacks
Happy doing and seeing
Helga
If it makes you feel any better Helga, my guesses are NEVER right the first try!
That’s very interesting what you say about having a memory for shape but not for colour. Do you have a source for it you could point me to?
For the record, I absolutely believe that the more we draw the more we see, because practice is development of the brain and as you say, we see not with our eyes but with our brains.
Thanks so much for the recommendation of the book! I’m off to check it out now…
I totally agree with you, Paul! Make a mark, then measure. After a time one gets faster and more accurate.
When you get enough accurate marks on there you can start to do what I think of as the “flip-book” method, where you skip your eyes back and forth from subject to your work. Where there is a difference, there is an error.
Keep up the wonderful work your’e doing with artists all over the world!
Hi Linda, great to hear from you! Thanks for the kind words.
“Flip book” method is a great way to describe it – I do that too. It’s immensely helpful, especially if you’re working sight size of course.
I really needed this recently realized in my daily drawing that I have to
Measure everything. Due to a stigmatism in my eyes
It really helps to measure especially getting eyes accurate in portraits
Thanks for the article
You’re welcome Patty, thanks for letting me know you liked it.
Lovely, thanks 🙂
You’re welcome Julie – it’s too long since we spoke!
Nice site. I found you via Fizzle but I was wondering if you actually have a facebook fan page?
It would be nice to keep updated via facebook.
I don’t! I know, I really should – it’s on the to-do list (along with 156 other things…) 🙂
Thanks for your blog posts. I also teach that the drawing process is a circular one. You observe, remember something useful about the observation, make a mark that records the observation and then you compare. Round and round – I advise 2 seconds looking, one second drawing and 1 second comparing. Although, of course, no-one is timing! I just want to reinforce the main idea that the best possible source of information for a good drawing is the subject itself and those timing proportions get the balance right.
Thanks for your posts.
Malcolm
Thanks Malcolm.
That sounds like a really good balance to me, definitely more looking than drawing. That’s one of the things sight size taught me: you can spend an hour and get little more than a few points on the paper. But they’re right 🙂 It means the rest of the drawing has a really solid foundation.
I think your students are lucky to have you.
Drawing accurately is indeed a basic skill. An advanced skill is learning how not to draw accurately. You get more of the artist and less of the subject into the artwork that way.
I think that to draw with accuracy is an advanced skill, in that it takes many, many hours of practice to do well. Unfortunately it’s one that not many people seem to take the time to develop, which is a shame.
I do agree that there is much more to drawing well than drawing accurately – if I’m correct in assuming that’s the general thrust of what you’re saying. For me, there came a point where I wanted to move away from absolute accuracy to my visual impression. I did that because I wanted to take a more active role in the design of the pictures I was making and that meant beginning to deviate from accuracy and replace it with arrangement and design.
I found it hard at first. It can be difficult to start to move away from accuracy once you’ve learned it intensively, because it can be a kind of safety net. What do you replace it with? Where do you want to take a drawing or a painting, if you’re not trying to create as accurate a rendition as you can of a visual impression? That’s a huge question, and one that perhaps we have to answer individually, for ourselves.
I taught myself to draw with a high level of accuracy and it was quite hard work. But it taught me to focus for long periods of time, and it taught me to see more closely. In a sense, it taught me to see. I’m not comfortable with using the word “basic” for that skill, because it has pejorative connotations. I believe that accuracy is an extremely important skill to learn. The benefits are far reaching.
This is just what i needed. Ive been jumping from tutorial to tutorial for a while now getting frustrated even though im putting in the work, because my accuracy sucks and it always has done. Im glad that i have pin pointed exactly what needs work and have a path to improvement. Im going to get started on those Barque drawings.
When you say measure and correct – would it be ok to trace for this step? its just my measuring with a pencil is poor too!
Thanks
Hi Pleg,
Guess first, then trace to check. The point of doing it that way is that every time you do it, you get a little better at estimating distances by eye. If you don’t stretch that muscle, it will never develop.