How to Get Better at Drawing Fast:
“Do these funny drawings every day”

“Keep drawing. The more you draw, the better you’ll get at drawing.”

So a friend said to me when I explained that I feel like all my drawings are awful. I was at an international sketching event, full of architects and professional illustrators and graphic designers.  I was way out of my depth, and I was feeling it.

I wanted to scream:

“But I want to be good at drawing now!”

I’m impatient. I’ve been drawing on-and-off (mostly off) for seven years. My progress is gradual, and I find that frustrating. Plus, I’m ponderously slow and timid at drawing, and I rarely have an hour or two free for a sketch.

Then I met Tine Klein. We were at the same conference, in a group playing a sketching game together. Tine drew a dog in just a few seconds that had so much energy and life to it:

Tine Klein’s dog.

Tine also drew a couple of portraits that I loved – again really quickly, using a HUGE brush with big splashes of watercolour.

So I asked:

“How do you draw like that?”

By now, the sketching game had finished, and we were standing at a paintbrush stool.

“Why don’t you buy this?” she said, holding up a paintbrush with a bright pink handle that she found in the bargain basket. “It’s only a few pounds, you can try it to see if you like it.”

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