# Everyone Can Draw! 5 Drawing Exercises for Non-Drawers - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/everyone-can-draw-5-drawing-exercises-for-non-drawers/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Solid intro · Rated 6 /10 # Everyone Can Draw! 5 Drawing Exercises for Non-Drawers By Gareth B. Davies · Updated August 2026 Fatih Mıstaçoğlu · watercolor storyteller Beginner · 177 min A watercolor artist's blind-drawing warm-up class strips away the fear of drawing badly, not the skill of drawing well. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Feveryone-can-draw-5-drawing-exercises-for-non-drawers%2F1010095989) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## A class built on removing obstacles, not teaching skills Fatih Mıstaçoğlu's premise is simple: most people who say they cannot draw have never actually tried to see clearly, and the physical act of moving a pen across paper is not the problem. The class is structured as a sequence of constraint-based games, each one removing a different crutch. Blind contour drawing takes away the ability to look at the page at all, forcing full attention onto the subject, a mug, a photo of the teacher's face, a church facade, so that the hand becomes a passive recorder of what the eye notices. Continuous contour brings the page back into view but forbids lifting the pen, which produces looping, overlapping lines that look strange but visibly improve proportion compared to the blind versions drawn moments earlier. The strongest section is the upside-down portrait exercise, which explains a genuinely useful idea: the brain has a "labeling" habit that flattens complex shapes into a symbol the moment it recognizes them, an eye becomes a shorthand almond shape rather than the actual curve in front of you. Turning the reference photo upside down disables that recognition and forces line-by-line copying instead. It is a well-worn drawing-instruction trick, but Mıstaçoğlu explains the reasoning behind it clearly and demonstrates it in real time, mistakes included, which makes the mechanism land rather than just the instruction. ## From lines to structure The second half shifts from observation exercises to construction. The simple-shapes lesson has the teacher call out a sequence of rectangles, triangles, and circles with no explanation of what they will become, only revealing at the end that the shapes combine into a desk lamp. It is a clever way to demonstrate that any object, however complex it looks, breaks down into primitive forms. The cityscape lesson repeats the same logic with only overlapping rectangles, building a skyline through layering and size variation rather than detail. The final two lessons address copying and tracing directly, including tracing a photo on a laptop or phone screen to lock in proportions before adding freehand detail. The teacher is upfront that this is a real technique used in professional client work, not a shortcut to feel guilty about, and frames it honestly: trace for structure, then observe for detail. ## What it does not do The course never teaches shading, value, perspective construction, or rendering, and it says so implicitly by staying entirely in loose pen-line territory throughout. Every exercise ends with a rough, deliberately imperfect sketch, and the entire pitch of the class rests on the idea that imperfection is fine, even desirable. That is honest and reassuring for a nervous beginner, but it means a viewer looking to leave with technical drawing ability will finish with warm-up habits rather than a skill set. The pacing also drags in places: some segments meander through anecdote before getting to the drawing, and the exercises repeat the same handful of reference images across lessons, which starts to feel padded near the 177-minute runtime. As a confidence-building on-ramp for people who have talked themselves out of ever trying, it does its narrow job well. The standout The upside-down portrait exercise, which forces the brain to stop labeling shapes as "eye" or "nose" and instead copy the raw lines it actually sees. ## What you will learn - · How to use blind contour drawing to slow down and actually observe a subject instead of relying on memorized mental shortcuts - · How to draw without lifting the pen (continuous contour) to build hand-eye coordination - · How turning a reference photo upside down bypasses the brain's tendency to symbolize familiar shapes like eyes or faces - · How to construct a complex object, like a desk lamp or a city skyline, entirely from basic rectangles, circles, and triangles - · How tracing and copying from photos or other artists' work can be used honestly as a technique-building tool, not a shortcut to avoid Best for: Total beginners who have talked themselves out of drawing and need a low-stakes, no-erasing, no-judgment way back into picking up a pen. Skip it if: Anyone with prior drawing experience looking to build technical skill, since the exercises are warm-up games rather than instruction in shading, proportion, or rendering. Engaging Teacher Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples Organization of Lessons [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Feveryone-can-draw-5-drawing-exercises-for-non-drawers%2F1010095989)