A Beginner’s Guide to Drawing | Lesson 1: Introduction & Essential Materials

[New Masters Academy]

The New Masters Academy Beginner Series helps aspiring artists start their artistic journey on the right foot. Your expert instructors will gently guide you to an understanding of drawing fundamentals. In this lesson, Chris Legaspi and Heather Lenefsky show you the essential materials to begin your drawing journey. Including pencils, pens, markers, erasers, and so much more! At the end of this lesson, you’ll be given an assignment to practice what you’ve learned.

Materials

• Staedtler Graphite Pencil
• Cretacolor Monolith Graphite Pencil
• Mechanical Pencil
• Compressed Chrarcoal Sticks
• Willow Charcoal
• General’s Chracoal Pencil
• Kneaded Eraser
• Wolff’s Carbon Pencil
• Conté Charcoal Pencil
• CarbOthello Pencil – Burnt Sienna
• Prismacolor Verithin Colored Pencil – Black
• Prismacolor Colored Pencil – Grey and Brown
• Soft Pastel – Black
• Smooth Newsprint Paper
• Bond Paper
• Tracing Paper
• Canson Mi Teintes Toned Paper
• Strathmore 500 Series Toned Charcoal Paper
• Strathmore 500 Series Vellum Bristol
• Rives BFK Paper
• Canson Biggie Sketch Pad
• Hard-bound Sketchbook
• Spiral-bound Sketchbook
• Post-it Notes
• Clipboard
• Watercolor Sketchbook
• Strathmore Toned Sketchbook

Hardware and Software

• Wacom Intuos Tablet
• Wacom Cintiq 13HD
• Apple iPad Pro
• Adobe Photoshop
• Autodesk Sketchbook Pro
• Procreate

[Susan B]

Thank you to Steve Huston for this outstanding intro lesson!! I feel myself breathing a sigh of relief as the weight of doing well falls from my shoulders. What a refreshing perspective of nurturing the budding artist within each of us as a path forward instead of criticism. This is really a concept that can be life-changing and only lead to good things. Many thanks.

[Tabea De Wille]

This was the most wonderful introduction to a beginner’s course, thank you!

[Aryane Siebra]

Amazing introduction Steve Huston! All I needed to hear and surely will replay this video whenever I’m putting myself in this super critical position (and it happens A LOT). Thank you for your words!

[Jacque L]

When do we get sorted into our houses?

[Jacque L]

Hey, it’s time for your assignment! Go get those smudging tools we didn’t go over and make sure you practice sharpening your pencils in the way we showed y— oh wait we didn’t go over that. Well anyways, be sure to buy a drawing board—or is it a clipboard? And let’s throw in an art supply box for fun.

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Jacque,

It is standard practice to purchase your tools before you learn how to use them. For example, learning to play guitar would be a bit difficult without having a guitar to practice on.
You just have to watch the subsequent videos to find how to use these tools

The video for how to smudge is here: rendering techniques
keep in mind you can use your finger, a paper towel, a que tip, or a tortillon, they all do the same thing in the same way: smudge
https://www.nma.art/videolessons/beginners-program-lesson-4-applying-the-basics/?course=36875

The video for sharpening a pencil is here: sharpening your pencil
https://www.nma.art/videolessons/beginners-program-lesson-3-using-your-pencil/?course=36875

The term drawing board is the common name for clip boards that support 18×24 drawing pads, clipboards typically only support 8.5 x 11 or smaller pages

Good luck young Slytherin 🙂

[Author]

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