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Workshop Review

The Beginning to Draw workshop is wonderful. It's the very best instruction that I've been able to find, and I am deeply grateful for all your efforts that went into its making. Many, many thanks!

JoAnn L.
Pennsylvania, USA

Workshop Review

I received the Beginning to Draw workshop on Wednesday. I've viewed the first two DVD's and quickly read the CD rom. The workshop is fabulous. Thank you for such quality education I can view over and over in my little part of the world.

Susan C.
Colorado, USA

Workshop Review

Before I found you I had a natural ability to create some nice work in different mediums. However I never knew why or the rules or disciplines to make ones work a better piece. It always seem to turn out nice but after much frustration and correction. Proportions were often off and your lessons are a great help. I love that you started at the beginning as if we knew nothing. That is how it should be taught. Thats why you are "Master" Artist Michael Britton. A well deserved title.

Barbara V.
Trilogy, CA, USA

Workshop Review

I've received my Beginning to Draw course in the post today, and I wanted to let you know how excited I am by it. I've only had time to skim through the CD and watch the preface, introduction and the first exercise, but already I'm so, so happy by what's included!

Would you be surprised if I told you I'd been searching half my life for this kind of instruction? I wanted to go to art school from a child, but I was so disappointed by a visit to the art college when I was 17 (... in Vancouver -- yes, it's my home town although I've been in England for 17 years now) that I changed direction completely and went to UBC to do languages instead. Since then, I've dabbled and futzed and eventually made my way via craft towards textile art, but always I've wanted to go back and learn the real skills of drawing and painting. As an adult, even if you can find someone to teach you (and that's not easy) outside a major city, you likely can't afford it.

I've been receiving your newsletters for a couple of years now and always learn something, but I still felt I needed to start right at the beginning again, being so out of practice, so I waited for this product to be ready. And now it is, it looks exactly what I'd hoped it would be: good solid explanation and demonstration of the skills and techniques, with progressive exercises to build them. I'm so pleased!

Thanks for this great product!
Best wishes

Fiona B.
Northhampton, UK

Learn to Draw: Getting it right from the start...

Learning how to draw is easily taught to almost anyone. Contrary to popular myth most artists are not born with the innate ability or skill to draw. Even those that do seem to possess a talent for drawing what they see before them without formal art school training have generally been drawing for years, sketching and doodling away in their spare hours.

The trouble with the self-taught artist, however, is that many years are lost re-inventing the wheel when they could instead be taught the fundamentals of drawing in a very short time.

Once you have acquired the fundamentals of drawing you quickly work through the levels of skill development from novice to intermediate and then to advanced and onward to a mastery of drawing.


The primary rule in drawing and painting is to always work from general to specific.

The general overall impression is called the arabesque (an other term for this is contour). The first skill that you need to acquire is being able to strike arabesque correctly in terms of proportion and shape. This is a drawing skill that needs to be taught to every artist when they begin to learn to draw.

Once the arabesque has been established the major landmarks of your subject are then placed. From there it is a matter of breaking down form in a logical succession.

Of course, those who devote the most time to practicing and mastering the basics thoroughly using time-tested methods, will generally see the fastest results and develop to the highest levels.

The caveat, though, is to learn how to draw correctly. You want the best possible instruction to avoid costly learning mistakes and habits that later have to be undone.

No matter how far you decide to go, learning how to draw correctly from the start and developing a rock solid foundation based on time-tested principles is the key to your success.

Where does one begin to
learn how to draw?

You start by developing new drawing skills. At first your hand and eye coordination will not quite be there. Your first attempts at drawing will be awkward, but every time you draw your brain adds more information to what it knows and stores it so that next time it is a bit easier and your newly developed neural pathways are triggered. Eventually your drawing becomes more masterful, more automatic and fluid.

With training you will know exactly how to go about beginning a drawing, how to analyze a subject, how to measure and sight to establish the proper proportions of your subject, you will understand the rules of translating what you see into drawings that look three dimensional.

Over time and with consistent practice you will learn to master your drawing materials - how they work, what kind of mark they make, the proper way to maintain them and which materials work best for your desired outcome and you will have tons of fun and enjoyment along the way.

Learn how to draw - the first step

Learn to draw portraits and faces

Your first skill to be acquired is to readily assess simple shape and proportion. Using the lessons and skill-building exercises in my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop you will be well on your way to mastering drawing. From sketching in the simple shape of the head it is only a matter of knowledge and experience (the knowledge I teach, the experience you gain by drawing) to get to a highly resolved drawing like this one which was done using sanguine conte.

This is how all of the masters begin a drawing or painting. The untrained artist will always begin with a detail, such as an eye, and proceed from there; and the result will usually be the same - an exercise in frustration.

This skill of sketching in the simple shape of an object or a portrait is called striking the arabesque and it is the singularly most important drawing skill you can acquire.

An example of why this drawing skill of striking the arabesque is important is also demonstrated in the portrait drawing I did of an elderly Balinese woman. Her headress and sprawling locks of hair not only presented an interesting and challenging portrait drawing but could only be approached by first accurately putting down the overall shape of her face, headress and hair all in one go. It simply could not be done by just beginning with an eye and drawing out from there.

Once you have acquired the drawing skill of accurately striking an arabesque, whether it is for portrait drawing, still-life or landscape, etc., then the interior placement of the features, or landmarks, is a relatively straight forward endeavor. In learning how to draw portraits a knowledge of facial anatomy is indispensible but that is simply a matter of study.

There are no tricks, sleight of hand or dazzling short-cuts in learning how to draw and paint.

The single biggest obstacle to learning how to draw is our perception of what something actually looks like and it does take training to reprogram our perceptions.

The traditional approach of learning how to draw is to train you to actually see what you are looking at and then applying what you see to paper. This is the surest method to building a solid foundation upon which you can grow as an artist. And every accomplished artist has undergone this training at some point in their career.

Learn to draw portraits and faces
Portrait Drawing of Verna
Michael Britton, Sanguine Conte

Understanding Tone

learn to draw portrait drawing

Developing tone, more commonly known as shading, is how we construct the illusion of a 3-dimensional drawing on our paper (our pictorial surface). An excellent tool for developing your drawing skill and sense of tone is to practice with the 9-bar tone strip. Beginning with the color of your paper as your lightest light you render each box a little darker in a smooth even transition until you reach the last box which is as dark as can possibly make it.

Developing form is called plasticity and this is, in my experience, the most challenging aspect of learning how to draw. The actual process of pulling out and pushing down form as you draw is an additive/ subtractive endeavor of applying pigment (such as your pencil in, well, pencil drawing) and then selectively stumping and lifting out with a kneaded eraser.

The critical matrix to acquire as you learn how to draw is proportion, shape and plastic form. My Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop not only shows you how to draw but TRAINS YOU TO DRAW WHAT YOU SEE! This is an important distinction.

The workshop is accessible to everyone who wants to learn how to draw. It is a self-contained education designed for both home and class study. The content of Beginning to Draw is equal, and more!, to a 12-week college-level foundational art course at a fraction of the cost.

The first 2-hour DVD in my learning to draw workshop is your Basic Training. Here you are trained in acquiring the all-important drawing skill of striking the arabesque; assessing proportion and shape with a consistent accuracy.

The second 2-hour DVD in my learning to draw workshop is Plasticity: Form & Structure. Each successive drawing lesson and exercise builds upon the previous. You begin with a very simple object and progress to still life drawing acquiring the skills and knowledge to competently render 3-dimensional form as you learn to draw with increasingly sophisticated approaches.

The third 2-hour DVD is The Cast: An Introduction to Portrait Drawing. Learning to draw the portrait from the cast has many advantages; the most important of which is the elimination of symbolic preconceptions - the primary psychological barrier to learning how to draw.

“About” – the Contents – A sneak Preview

beginner drawing

An Historical Overview of Drawing

beginner drawing

About Perception – Training your eye to see as you learn to draw

beginner drawing

The Arabesque – The Beginning - Learn to Draw

Part 1: Proportion and sighting drawing exercises

Part 2: Drawing shape exercises

beginner drawing

Basic Drawing tools – Learn to draw with the pencil for professional use

beginner drawing

Modeling Form – Cross-hatching drawing exercises and development. Drawing skills and technique

beginner drawing

Constructing a black box for drawing

beginner drawing

Introduction to Developing Plastic Form – The illusion of three dimensional space on a flat plane – Learn to Draw - The Egg. Drawing skill development – Using a kneaded eraser in drawing

beginner drawing

Drawing the Bottle – Learn to draw - the tonal approach to rendering form. The Figure/ Ground relationship. Learn to draw with Vine Charcoal. Drawing skill development – the Mahl Stick. Composition: Constructing a Golden Rectangle

beginner drawing

A few notes on 1 and 2-point perspective in drawing

beginner drawing

Learn to Draw the Still Life. A drawing demonstration in black conte. – Making and using a “viewfinder” as an aid to determining the pictorial field as you learn to draw – How to render multiple objects as a singularity vis-à-vis positive and interspace (negative space) as you learn to draw

beginner drawing

Drawing the Plaster Cast – An introduction to learning to draw the portrait in black conte. Drawing skill development: using the plumb bob to establish vertical relationships and angles and putting it all together as you learn to draw

beginner drawing

Learn to Draw Conclusion – We’ve come a long way

Plus you get two CDs to help you learn to draw! The first CD-r is the Drawing Workbook that accompanies the DVD workshop.

And as a FREE LEARN TO DRAW BONUS you get my Drawing Drapery Workshop plus four supplementary drawing lessons. This alone is more content than in an entire art school drawing course!

My Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop is designed specifically for home study and for the absolute beginner who wants to learn how to draw.

Learn to draw with the proper foundational skills of drawing and save yourself years of frustration and false starts (and, I might add, thousands of dollars in tuition).

learn how to draw
learn how to draw

And best of all, if my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop does not meet every one of your expectations I will refund your money.

In fact, you have an entire year, 365 days, to decide if my Beginning to Draw DVD Workshop has really taught you how to draw.

Beginning to Draw: the foundation of art
DVD Workshop

LEARN TO DRAW!

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Originally priced at $267 Beginning to Draw is 3 DVDs (that's 6 hours of intensive foundational training), and 2 CDr's: that is the 70-page Textbook and four supplementary learn to draw lessons on CDr and the Drawing Drapery Workshop on CDr.

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