75 Ways to Draw More: Advice for People Who Don’t Draw

Michael Nobbs has posted a little booklet on Flickr that has a list of 75 ways to draw more.  Interesting concept.  But of course it should go without saying that if you need to read a list of 75 ways to find more time to draw, you probably should be doing something else anyway.

I think the main information to take away from an illustrated list like this is from the illustrations that show you how to print the list out.  What they show you is that you can just look at an object and start drawing lines on a piece of paper.  Something will emerge.  It might be messy.  It might be neat.  That will be your drawing.  I call this little piece of advice ‘1 way to draw less.’

Don Quixote Illustration by Gustave Doré

Here’s an illustration from Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. It was done by Gustave Doré. It shows Don Quixote reading a book of chivalry in his library.  I love the way Doré shows all the madness of Quixote’s imagination surrounding him in his chair as if his imagination and the book were coming to life.  It’s a reminder that the sanest guy in the entire novel is really the Don himself… even though he does go off tilting at windmills as if they were giant monsters.

Click the image to enlarge.