Ten essential tips on how to draw, by a leading British artist

Times

16 hours ago

The English artist and designer David Gentleman, 95, has been drawing, painting, illustrating and engraving for more than eight decades. He still sketches every day without fail, looking out from his studio window in central London, or walking at home or abroad with a sketchbook, a pencil, a paintbox and a few brushes packed into a small bag.
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1953, he has completed hundreds of commissions — among them the National Trust's oak-leaf logo, the 1970s New Penguin Shakespeare paperbacks, the 100m-long mural at Charing Cross Underground station (1978), dozens of stamps and travel books. Here, he shares his advice on developing a drawing habit for life.
How to begin? This is one of the most difficult questions. I would always start small, choosing something nearby to draw — a tree or the view from the window. Keep your expectations slight. And begin with a pencil — a soft pencil is easiest and lightest, although light or hard graphite pencils or charcoal sticks are worth trying out. Have a go at what catches your eye. For me, that's barns and trees; light and dark; near and far — just a few lines to suggest distance. The most valuable thing about drawing is that it makes you look harder at the world around you. It enhances your power of attention.
I like going out on foot and drawing what I see on the street, things like cranes, curved streets, canals, trees and traffic. But it's important to vary it from time to time. It may sound mundane, but even taking a bus ride can be fruitful. If you sit at the front of the top deck and take in your surroundings from this higher vantage point, you have the whole landscape ahead and you'll see things — buildings, trees, the skyline, people — in a new light.
A scene doesn't have to be picturesque to make a good picture. Juxtapositions are interesting; prettifying a scene isn't. It isn't about trying to make something beautiful. For example, the duomo at Monreale in Sicily is a wonderful spectacle, and drawing it was the perfect way of enjoying and gradually understanding the complicated patterns of its structure. A Fiat parked in the foreground wasn't exactly majestic, but it struck me as an expression of Italy's more recent industrial strength. On display were two kinds of Italian brilliance.
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Mistakes come in all shapes and sizes, but they aren't to be feared. Often they are reversible: with oils, you can paint over what you've done. With pencils it's much the same. With pen and ink or watercolour you have to be more careful. But even if your line looks wrong, it's still worth keeping it going bit by bit: the work grows as you add to it, and that can take care of any mistakes. Once, when my son was playing the piano, I decided to draw him quickly. I drew three feet, but the one in the middle wasn't worth rubbing out: it added a sense of motion. Generally, it's worth not messing around. Eventually, you'll find that your 'style' — the result of all your small choices, experiments and mistakes — will emerge.
I've never had any interest in consciously developing a style. I'm not even sure it is something you can decide to generate. It just happens: you evolve over time. So it's worth trying to be single-minded, energetic and yourself. When I began using watercolours, I found new ways to paint and draw through doing it regularly and experimenting. Memorably, this happened in 1995 in Bologna, when I was sitting in a café, slightly raised above the main square. I was alone, having a glass of beer and facing the duomo. It was a wonderful view. The square was full of life. I wanted to capture it — but nobody was standing still. I began a pen drawing. It had to be done very quickly. I couldn't have painted it. If I didn't move fast, the people I was drawing would be blocked off or disappear. Afterwards I added a colour wash (a little paint added to water): you can see it is slightly bigger than the drawings. This way of working has become one of the styles I most enjoy.
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It's perfectly possible to take a photo of a scene and then spend hours back at home drawing it. But I think it's good to draw on the spot — scribbling what you see, before the moment passes. There are many more possibilities that arise when you do this; the scene changes, new people come past and new details come into view. There's also a liberation, a release, that happens when you work quickly. I think you often get better work this way. You don't have to draw particularly carefully to capture what you're after — you can do it in almost no time at all. You can spoil work by being too careful. I was once in Rio de Janeiro for just two days, and looked at the city from my hotel window. It was too tempting not to draw. The height of everything made me draw it on a vertical sheet of paper. The street at my feet was in deep shadow, while the cliff was gleaming. Had I seen it on a different day it might not have spurred me to draw the scene: it was the sun, there and then, that made me work.
I've spent 50 years looking out of the same studio window, at the top of my house, five storeys up. I like the trees in front of me, and the parakeets and pigeons that land on them, as well as the crows and seagulls that float in circles above them and the Victorian and Edwardian architecture beyond them too. These views have changed over time: all the distant skylines have vanished as new buildings have got taller. But I'm interested every day in the changing weather, the clouds moving across the sky. Most days, a crow perches on the birch tree, usually on its own. One day, I quickly drew a pen and wash watercolour sketch and was pleased with the results — particularly the curve of its talons.
After I graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1953, my first professional commission was a set of wood engravings for a book called What About Wine? I'd been interested in engraving ever since my father gave me a book of Eric Ravilious's work when I was about 17. The commission was a success, and I got more for engravings, but it's a laborious process and my enthusiasm for it has varied. So I have engraved only when I felt it was worth taking on, and have enjoyed it all the more for doing it in my own way, in my own style. I particularly liked engraving the complete New Penguin Shakespeare series in the 1970s, combining wood engravings with colour.
Negative feedback can alert you to something you might not otherwise have noticed, and often there is something you can do to put it right. It's important to develop a capacity to be self-critical, because that's how you will gradually get your work closer to how you intended it to be. I seldom feel complacent about what I'm doing; this self-criticism is part of the continual process of working out how to do things better. One chilly February, I made some pictures of the Piazza del Campo in Siena, drawing in pen and ink as quickly as possible. I wanted to capture the piazza's overall D-shape, and kept drawing and redrawing until I felt happy with the outcome. I spent two days working like this.
It can't be wished on you. Don't worry — just do what you can. I don't waste time thinking about how good or bad a drawing is. When I'm at work on a picture, I hope it will end up interesting, and I try to enjoy the process. That's about it.Lessons for Young Artists by David Gentleman is published on Jul 10 (Penguin £20 pp192). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
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