John S. answered • 06/15/19
Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing 10+ years of Teaching
Hello I can understand your issue. I’d like to suggest that you change your perspective on how your HAND is moving. Instead I will suggest that you think (or move) from your shoulder. You see, your hand with its multitude of bones and muscles is perfectly suited for fine, detailed nuanced movement and when you are creating a drawing it may be more helpful to think “big” and simple shapes first, which will require straighter lines. Your hand simply does not like to make straight lines, nor does your wrist (go ahead move your wrist, it is describing a curve doesn’t?) your elbow basically does the same as your wrist (except bigger!) but your shoulder, ah, your shoulder can “draw” straight lines all day long. So when you begin a drawing (or a painting or any work of art) you are going from a general idea of something to later being more specific. Most beginners have it backward: you want to get every detail perfectly as you go, but an experienced artist knows that the basic, general, “straighter” line will be the bones of where all that detail will eventual live. Does this make sense? Since we are artist it will probably make even better sense visually. I will try and make you a video in the coming days to show you what I mean. For now you might want to think about reducing the opacity of the lines you are making with the stylus and pretend that your hand, wrist, elbow are frozen or made of wood and only your shoulder can draw. Squint your eyes while you are copying or tracing and try to draw with only 6 or 7 light lines of the figure, THEN switch the opacity to something stronger and draw the way you usually do over those lines and you might be surprised. Let me know if this has helped or if you need me to clear things up a little more. Good luck and Cheers!
