# See Better to Draw Better: Fundamental Drawing Exercises & Practices for Beginners - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/see-better-to-draw-better-fundamental-drawing-exercises-and-practices-for-beginners/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # See Better to Draw Better: Fundamental Drawing Exercises & Practices for Beginners By Gareth B. Davies · Updated August 2026 Yasmina Creates · Artist & Creativity Cheerleader Beginner · 96 min Ninety-six minutes of pure observational drawing drills, no shading tricks or shortcuts, just training your eyes to actually see. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fsee-better-to-draw-better-fundamental-drawing-exercises-and-practices-for-beginners%2F1729691996) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## A drawing college course, compressed The course is built on a single, well-argued premise: most self-taught artists plateau not because they lack talent but because they never learned to truly observe. The opening experiment, in which the teacher hands her husband a picture of a lion and has him draw it first normally and then upside down, is the strongest teaching moment in the class. His second attempt, done faster and with his brain unable to default to "lion" instead of shapes and lines, comes out noticeably more accurate. It is a simple, convincing demonstration, and it sets up everything that follows. From there the class moves through a sequence of exercises that mirror a foundational art-school curriculum: warm-up scribbles and figure eights, blind contour, standard contour, cross contour, negative space, gesture, value, color, and finally a lesson on deconstructing a subject into simple shapes. Each lesson follows the same pattern. A short explanation of the concept, then a live demonstration on a real object such as an apple, a radish still rooted in its dirt, a carved wooden panda, or a pear under a desk lamp. The teacher narrates her thinking as she draws, including her mistakes, which she treats as useful data rather than failures worth hiding. ## What actually gets taught The cross contour lesson is a genuine highlight. Drawing lines directly on a physical apple with a marker to visualize how contour lines curve around form is a concrete, memorable way to teach something that is usually explained only in the abstract. The value lesson is similarly hands-on, built around squinting at a lit pear to isolate its darkest and lightest planes before ever picking up color. The color lesson that follows makes a useful point often skipped by beginner tutorials: color is secondary to value, and a color study that ignores value will never look realistic no matter how accurate the hues are. The exercises are intentionally repetitive and not designed to produce attractive results. The teacher says this outright, more than once, warning that the drawings will look "wonky" and that the point is the practice, not the picture. This honesty is a strength for setting expectations but also means the course offers little visual payoff along the way. The final deconstruction and style lesson is the one place stylization gets addressed, and it functions more as a preview and a pointer toward the teacher's other classes than as a fully developed technique in its own right. ## Where it falls short Structurally, the class is efficient. Thirteen lessons in under 100 minutes is tight for the amount of ground covered, and it never drifts into padding. The tradeoff is depth. Each exercise gets one demonstration and a nudge to "practice more on your own," with a companion worksheet doing most of the heavy lifting for repetition. Viewers wanting detailed guidance on shading technique, composition, or how to develop a personal style will need to look elsewhere, since those topics are explicitly deferred to the teacher's other classes. For a genuine beginner without any prior drawing foundation, or a hobbyist who has hit a plateau with proportion and realism, this is a well-focused, honestly presented set of drills worth working through with a stack of scratch paper close at hand. The standout The upside-down lion experiment in the second lesson, a simple before-and-after test that makes the whole premise of observational drawing click in under ten minutes. ## What you will learn - · How to loosen up your hand and pencil control through scribble, figure-eight, and connect-the-dot warm-up drills - · Blind contour and continuous contour drawing to strengthen the eye-to-hand connection without checking the page - · Cross contour drawing to understand and render three-dimensional form on flat objects - · Negative space and gesture drawing to capture proportion and essence quickly instead of getting lost in detail - · How to see and render value (light and dark) by squinting at a subject before ever touching color - · A basic method for deconstructing a subject into simple shapes as a bridge into personal style Best for: Self-taught beginners who can already sketch basic shapes but feel stuck, inconsistent, or unable to make their drawings look believable. Skip it if: Anyone who already has formal life-drawing training or is looking for a class on shading technique, composition, or a specific finished-art style. Engaging Teacher Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples Actionable Steps [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fsee-better-to-draw-better-fundamental-drawing-exercises-and-practices-for-beginners%2F1729691996)