There are a few main ways I have developed my drawing skills over the years, and a few things that allowed me to show major improvement. Sketching regularly people, objects, and animals from life and from photos has yielded incremental improvement for me. One of the things that has been the most helpful to me has been to receive critiques from artists who are more skilled than I am. Particularly for drawing people, critiques have helped me learn to draw less idealized versions of people and refraining from censoring features that would not be considered beautiful. It is often tempting to draw different humans with a homogenous, flattering style but interesting drawings show the ways that people are distinct, and their stranger facial features can give a drawing character. Noses are something that I am continuing to work on and draw in a way that encapsulates the full character of a face. There are a lot of tutorials that show how to draw something, and I am skeptical of their impact without a component of receiving feedback for one’s work.
Another thing that I think is helpful for people who are beginning life drawing – drawing from a usually nude human model – is that I found it easier to draw models who I did not know. This eliminates part of the temptation to make a “pretty” drawing of the person that censors things like wrinkles or belly holds or distinctive features. The drawing is not for the model, but for the artist to refine their drawing skills with a neutral, realistic perspective of their subject. Drawing people I know tends to bias the way I draw them, because it can be difficult to separate my own feelings about the person I am drawing from the subtleties of how I am drawing them. I have a tendency to draw cute drawings of people that I am fond of. In short, starting with models I did not know allowed me to see them as closely to an object I could, and until I became comfortable with drawing human proportions, it is something that I tried to stick with. In most cities, the figure drawing models tend to cycle through the same groups and most of the models that I draw nowadays I have spoken with at least a few times and are no longer strangers to me. Since I have reached a place of comfort with human proportions and life drawing circles are also a social activity, this is fine with me, but it is always refreshing to try drawing strangers, especially with different body types and features.