You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less

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This book is dedicated to my dear sister Mari
(
http://mari-kistler.memory-of.com/About.aspx
)
Mari, LOOK! You’re in my book just like I promised you!

C
ongratulations! If you’ve picked up this book, you are exploring the possibility that perhaps, just maybe, you really could learn to draw.

Guess what? You’re right! Even if you have little or no previous drawing experience, and even if you don’t believe you have natural talent, if you can find a few pencils and twenty minutes a day for thirty days, you can learn to draw amazing pictures. Yes, you have found the right teacher. And yes, you have found the right book.

Welcome to my world of creative possibilities. You will learn to create realistic renderings of everything from photos to landscapes from the world you see around you and to draw three-dimensional pictures entirely from your imagination. I know this is a big claim filled with enormous promise. I’m aware that you may be skeptical and wondering how I can make such a statement. The simplest way for me to qualify my teaching confidence is to share with you my past student success stories.

During the last thirty years, I’ve taught millions of people how to draw during my extensive travels around the country and through my television shows, websites, and videos. Many children have grown up watching my drawing lessons on public television and have gone on to pursue careers in illustration, animation, fashion design, design engineering, and architecture. I have alumni stus who have helped design the International Space Station, NASA’s Space Shuttle, and Mars Exploration Rovers and others who have worked on animation megafilm projects such as
Shrek
,
Madagascar
,
Flushed Away
,
The Incredibles
,
Happy Feet
, and
A Bug’s Life
.

But here’s a secret—learning is learning and drawing is drawing, no matter how old you are. My techniques work for adults just as well as they work for kids—I know this, because I’ve taught thousands of adults as well. In this book, I will introduce sophisticated concepts and complex drawing theories in a simple, easy-to-follow way, but because I’m a kid at heart, I will not cut back on any of the fun that I believe drawing must be.

I am a cartoon illustrator by trade, but these lessons will give you the basic skill set that will enable you to draw three-dimensionally in any style (realistic drawings, photograph studies, portraits) or medium (oil paints, watercolors, pastels).

I will teach you how to draw using the same step-by-step, follow-along method that has proven successful for all my students. I will focus almost exclusively on what I call the “Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing,” beginning with basic shapes, shading, and positioning, all the way through more advanced perspective, copying from photos, and drawing from life. These basic concepts, discovered and refined during the Italian Renaissance, have enabled artists to create three-dimensional renderings for more than five hundred years. I will teach you these basics, one key term at a time, one step at a time, one line at a time. I believe that anyone can learn how to draw; it is a learnable skill like reading or writing.