How to Draw! Beginner and Intermediate Drawing Class | Essential Art Skills

Transform your drawing skills with this Fundamentals of Drawing course by Amanda Kazemi. 

These are the *essential* and *fundamental* skills young artists need to master. These skills are applicable to almost any style or medium.

Suitable for young artists aged 9 and up who want to improve their drawing skills, this course covers the basics of rendering realistic drawings, including identifying relationships between objects, simplifying difficult subject matter, applying pencil smoothly and creating contrast, adding details, and using different pencils.

By the end of the course, students will feel confident in their ability to approach drawing animals, apply shading to objects, and teach others what they have learned.


Here is the tentative schedule, subject to change:

Week 1: Observational skills - Draw a rose
Week 2: Compositions - Draw a landscape
Week 3: Shading - Draw an eye
Week 4: Perspective - Draw your name in cool letters
Week 5: Light and shadow - Draw an ice cream cone
Week 6: Realism - Draw realistic flowers
Week 7: Draw the human figure
Week 8: Optical illusions
Week 9: Value and line - Draw a ribbon
Week 10: Foreshortening - Draw a foreshortened hand
Week 11: Composition - Use the grid method to draw a shoe
Week 12: Texture - Learn to draw fur on a cat
Week 13: Form - Draw a human figure
Week 14: Optical illusion - Draw an infinity triangle
Week 15: Shapes - Draw an origami fox
Week 16: Perspective - Draw a room

Please note that this schedule is tentative and may be adjusted to better cater to the needs and progress of the learners. In case of any changes or additional topics, please feel free to reach out for updated information.

Supplies:
-Pencil: Regular HB pencil can work, but even better if a student has 2H, HB, 2B, and 6B pencil. Varying values of pencils can enhance work.
-Drawing paper
-For week 7: Three to five household objects such as scissors, mugs, containers, food, etc.
-For week 8: pen

MEET YOUR INSTRUCTOR:
✏️ Amanda Kazemi, MFA, PRO ARTIST AND EDUCATOR: Amanda is an experienced educator and practicing professional artist. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in fine art from San Diego State University and her state teaching credentials. She taught for four years in the San Diego Unified School District, working with students in grades 6-12. In 2021, She left to pursue her master’s degree at Laguna College of Art and Design. She will graduate with her MFA in in drawing in the Spring of 2023. She is passionate about the arts, particularly using simple tools like graphite and charcoal. Her work—displayed in a number of art exhibitions— is primarily in grayscale, but she is well-versed in color theory and painting in various mediums and substrates. While creating art is her idea of fun, she finds nothing more exciting than seeing young folks share the same sentiment. Creating art can be an incredibly rewarding tool to express yourself. She hopes to nurture that with the students in the classroom. One fun fact about her is that she is a huge animal lover and has three dogs. They have even made appearances in her artwork! She loves to draw inspiration from her surroundings and include them in her work.