Sketching, just like everything else in life…

Hi,

I noticed in your entry on notebooks you had some simple but effective sketches that you had used. Sketching like that has always been a skill I have admired, and I would think it would be very useful. Would you have any advice on how to learn simple sketching as painlessly as possible?
Thanks, and I loved the book too. Youre a voice of calm reason in a sea of ludicrous hysteria. I also like how you emphasize mind set.


Thanks,

--Shanon

P.S.= More on hand to hand combat please! Could you recommend any videos to go along with instruction?

Thanks Shanon, glad you liked the book :^)
Those are just very elemental sketches, personal notes.
There’s no easy way unfortunately. I teach sketching to Architecture students at the University and the only way you can get good at it is practicing a lot. I tell them all the time when they say they just aren’t good, it’s not about being good or not, its about practicing. A talented guy maybe gets it right the first or second time, but even if you don’t have the hand for it, I promise them that attempt number10 will be much better than the first attempt. The guy that just can’t get it right after trying for real several times is a very rare case, out of hundreds of students I had, I only found one guy that simply couldn’t understand proportion, contrast, etc.
Advice for learning how to sketch:

1)Draw a LOT :)

2)Paper and pen handy, start drawing things you are familiar with. A bottle, TV, book, first draw a geometric shape that contains the object you are drawing. A book is pretty simple, but others will have a combination of lines, cubes and spheres of different proportions. The key here is to be religious about proportion.

3)Once you have the basic geometry, complete the details. Notice were light is coming from, where the shadows are. Exaggerating the light/darkness will give contrast to your drawing.
Again, you need to do 10 or 20 drawings, practice is the only way.

4)Once you understand basic objects. Try drawing you own hands. The human body is pretty complex and represents a greater challenge. The good news is that there’s no other object you are as familiar with as the human body.

4)Try drawing people in different positions. Animals too, but you’ll find out that since you are not that familiar with animal anatomy as you are with your own body, it’s usually a bit harder.
Besides the basic geometry, here you’ll want to draw a basic stick structure, representing the bone and axis of limbs and torso to get the position right.

I’ll see what I can do about more fighting videos and some recommendations. I know Gabe Suarez has some good knife and H2h combat videos, and the people from Tactical Response are serious professionals as well. I’ll link some youtube videos later.

FerFAL