Easy Step By Step Drawings

Why Most Drawing Tutorials Make It Way Harder Than It Needs To Be

I've spent years watching people try to learn how to draw and immediately getting bogged down in theory they don't need yet. The problem isn't that people lack talent. It's that they start with the wrong framing. Easy Step By Step Drawings works because it strips away everything except the actual steps you need to repeat. Here is how it actually functions when you sit down and use it, not how the marketing copy describes it.

How Easy Step By Step Drawings Actually Works In Practice

The format breaks a subject down into discrete, numbered stages where each stage adds only one layer of information. You are not asked to replicate a finished image from memory. You follow a sequence where step two builds directly on step one, and step three builds on step two. That sounds obvious until you see the alternative, which is a tutorial that dumps a complex shading diagram on you before you have even drawn the basic shape. I ran into a specific issue with a tutorial series that claimed to use this method but didn't actually maintain proper stage isolation. The fifth step would introduce a new structural element without referencing the second step where that element was first established. So you had to backtrack through four completed stages just to fix something that should have been clean from the beginning. The workaround I ended up using was printing out each stage as a reference sheet and keeping them stacked so I could verify exactly what the pencil marks should have looked like at any given point before moving forward. That cut my revision time roughly in half. The technique relies on a concept called incremental structure building, which means you establish the gross geometry first, then the mid-range forms, then the surface details. Most beginners skip past the gross geometry because it looks too simple. That is exactly where the failures happen later. When you get to the detail stage and something looks wrong, you cannot fix it without going back and reworking the foundation. The entire process usually takes between 15 and 40 minutes for a standard character or object study, depending on how precise you need to be.

The Actual Process You Should Follow

Start by identifying what the subject's basic shapes are before you draw a single line. A face is not a face. It is an oval with a jaw block attached. A car is not a car. It is a series of rectangles and trapezoids. This is the part everyone rushes through, and it is also the part that determines whether your drawing holds together at all. Step one is to map those shapes lightly with a hard pencil or digital underdrawing layer set to low opacity. Step two is to connect and refine those shapes into actual forms. Step three is to add the key details that define the subject, and step four is shading or line refinement, which is the final polish, not the main event. There is a counter-intuitive thing most people miss here. The more detailed the subject, the simpler your initial shapes should be. A realistic dragon needs broader geometric understructure than a cartoon one because realism amplifies every error in proportion. If your foundational shapes are slightly off on a realistic subject, the final result will look broken in a way that is impossible to fix without redrawing. On a stylized or cartoon subject, small proportion errors often get absorbed by the aesthetic style itself.

Another thing beginners consistently get wrong is the order in which they apply shading. They shade before they have locked down the line work or the form structure. This creates muddy values because you keep adjusting the underlying shapes and the shading gets in the way. Lock the forms first. Shade last. I lost three full sheets of paper doing it the other way before I figured that out.

Where This Method Falls Apart

Easy Step By Step Drawings is not universally applicable. It fails in a few specific scenarios and you should know about them before you commit to the format. It does not work well for fully freehand figure drawing from life where you need continuous gesture capture. The step-based structure introduces too much lag between observation and execution. For that, you need timed gesture studies, not staged tutorials. It also breaks down for highly organic, abstract, or texture-dominant subjects like watercolor washes or ink bleeds where the process is more about material behavior than sequential construction. Those require a different learning model entirely. If you are trying to learn traditional oil painting layering, for instance, this method will frustrate you. Oils require wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry sequencing that depends on drying times and medium ratios, none of which fit into a clean numbered step format. In those cases, look for process-based video tutorials instead, where the artist works through the layers in real time rather than breaking them into static stages.

There is also a bottleneck when you reach intermediate levels. The step-by-step format assumes a controlled subject with clear geometric boundaries. Once you move into complex scenes with overlapping forms, perspective grids, and atmospheric depth, the single-subject breakdown stops being useful. You need compositional training at that point, which is a completely different skill set.

Practical Tips That Actually Matter

Use a separate layer or a lightbox function when working digitally. It saves you from constantly erasing and redrawing over mistakes. On paper, use a light touch for the first three stages and press harder only in the final stage. This makes corrections nearly free during the setup phases. Measure proportions with your tool, not your eye. Hold your pencil at arm's length and compare the width of the subject to its height. This takes about ten seconds and prevents the most common error, which is drawing the top half of something disproportionately larger than the bottom half. Time yourself on the initial shape stage. If it takes longer than five minutes for a simple subject, you are overcomplicating it. The whole point is to establish structure quickly and refine later. Overthinking the first stage creates rigid lines that resist correction and make the subsequent stages feel like arguing with your own work.

The format is not perfect and it is not meant to be. It is a scaffolding system. You use it until the underlying logic becomes automatic, then you drop it. That transition usually happens within the first dozen or so completed exercises for most people who stick with it consistently. After that, the steps become internalized and you start seeing subjects in their component shapes without consciously thinking about it. That is when the method has done its job.