How I Taught Myself to Draw in 1 Year (No Experience)

Summary of the video

The creator documents a self-taught 365-day drawing journey, starting as a near-total beginner and gradually developing increasingly polished anime-style artwork.

Early progress is fueled by motivation, daily practice, and copying/replicating reference material. Around day 200, improvement stalls despite frequent rendering. After reviewing hundreds of hours of footage, they realize they were mainly getting better at copying rather than learning core fundamentals.

They then overhaul their process:

• Head construction (including Loomis-style thinking)
• Body fundamentals, especially torso/rib cage vs. pelvis separation
• Realism studies to strengthen form and rendering logic

Later, they discover a final bottleneck: their work looked “flat” because they relied on color-picking (often via eyedropper) instead of studying values. They fix this by:

• forcing grayscale/value painting practice
• banning the eyedropper
• then applying the improved value workflow back into anime illustrations

By the end of the year, they return to drawing earlier characters to demonstrate growth (including a final challenge piece). They conclude that consistent iteration plus learning core fundamentals unlocked lasting improvement.

---

Artistic techniques, concepts, or creative processes shown

Practice & learning structure

• Daily drawing over 365 days
• Notes and research on what to draw
• Increasing time commitment, rising toward about ~5 hours/day
• Re-drawing the same character repeatedly for consistency (e.g., Connor, later Marin)
• Weekly fully rendered illustration goal
• Style/master studies copied from artists, alongside real-life references
• Moving from feature placement “guessing” toward understanding why artists make certain decisions

Traditional → Digital workflow shift

• Transition from traditional pencil drawing to digital art
• Learning digital handling with momentum adjustments (initial awkwardness)

Core fundamentals overhaul (after realizing they were “copying”)

Head construction

• Starting with structural shapes (circle/cross/planar guides)
• Adopting Loomis-style head construction, including a second circle to indicate plane orientation for 3/4 angles

Face study process

• Replacing “guessing” feature placement with structured placement based on construction/planes

Body construction

• Breaking the body into basic forms rather than hiding messy sketch lines with clothing
• Treating the rib cage and pelvis as separate structures, each able to tilt independently
• Understanding how limbs and torso forms interact

Style study and realism for transfer to anime

Even though the end goal is anime, they study realism to improve:

• form recognition
• rendering logic
• line purpose and clarity

They also perform style studies from specific anime artists to translate new fundamentals back into anime rendering.

Line art improvement through construction quality

Line work improves not only because the lines get “nicer,” but because:

• the underlying sketch/structure is correct
• lines have clearer intent (cleaner, darker, more purposeful)

Coloring workflow correction: learning values

They identify the “flatness” problem as values/contrast, not a brush issue.

Key fixes:

• Checking artwork in grayscale to verify readability
• Banning the eyedropper to stop color-copying and force real value decisions
• Training with simplified studies, including three-value grayscale replication (e.g., vase-style studies)
• Applying the value-first workflow back to anime:
  • establish the light source and shadow separation before color
  • recolor/re-render using improved value structure for stronger form readability

---

Materials/tools and aids mentioned

• Mechanical pencils for drawing
• Digital stylus/tablet
• Airbrush (attempted for contrast; didn’t solve the root cause)
• Brush variety experimentation (downloaded many brushes; not the solution)
• Skillshare used as a learning resource (e.g., head construction class reference)
• Eyedropper used earlier for copying colors; later explicitly prohibited for value training

---

Creators or contributors featured

• Skillshare (learning platform; sponsor/teaching referenced)
• Azuri (referenced as the artist used for a value-based study)
• Huadi (referenced for a style study)
• Copics art (referenced as a study subject)
• Kanna, Connor, Sub John, Marin, Kokoro, Miko, Freiren (characters drawn; these are featured subjects, not necessarily creators)
• Mentions of “world-class creatives” from Skillshare generally, but no specific instructor names are given in the subtitles.