Email Your Drawing Guide - Helen South
Like all the Guides at About.com, I'm a real person. You can email me at: drawsketch.guide@about.com.
- Can you post your question on the forum? If you have a question about drawing, art careers or any drawing-related topic, please ask it on the forum so that myself and other forum members can answer, and other readers can benefit from the answers too. It's free and fast to join. visit the forum
- If you do really need to email me, please make sure you use a clear subject line such as 'drawing website comment' and not just 'HI there!' which I am likely to mistake for junk mail.
- In the body of your email, don't forget include your name (a pen-name is fine). Normal letter conventions, like 'Dear Helen' and 'best regards' or 'yours sincerely', please and thank you, are most welcome. I -am- a real person, not a computer program! (seriously, you wouldn't believe how many letters I get that say just "I want to know how to draw a whale." or "Here are my drawings what do you think" with narry a hint of good manners.)
- If you are unsuccessful in contacting me, place a message on the drawing forum, which I check regularly. Try re-sending your email, and be sure to check that your email program and ISP doesn't block About.com mail. I always answer your emails, even if it is only to let you know that I can't assist. No response might mean that your email or my answer has been blocked by a spam filter.
F.A.Q.
- Q. What is wrong with this drawing?
- A. Unfortunately, because of the large number of emails I receive, I can no longer offer personal critiques. The time taken to help one person with a drawing soon adds up when there are several, and means that I don't write an article that could help many readers. Please post your drawing to the forum, where myself and other forum members will try to assist. This will also help other readers, as they can see your work and the suggestions.
- Q. Will you link to/review my site?
- A. I'm happy to take a look at your site if it appears relevant to drawing/sketching, but only link to sites I personally feel are of specific interest and value to our viewers. Feel free to post your url on the forum if you wish to share it with us, but irrelevant, commercial or spam urls will be deleted.
- Q. Do you have any information on.....?
- A. There's a search box in the page headers - use it to search 'in this topic'. See the box at the bottom of the page for Related Topics to check with too. You can post a question on the forum, where your guide and other members may offer input. Other readers might want to know the answer too, so this is the best option! Try searching Google too, and send me an email if you have no success.
- Q. I want to be a famous artist. Please help me.
- A. I get asked this a lot. There are no easy answers. Learn to draw - check out my drawing lessons on this site - practice constantly and look at lots of art. Send in some sketches for the gallery or attach one in a forum message for comment by your guide and other artists. Many current artists can't draw at all - they are very clever at marketing and understand the art world and how critics think. If you want to go this way, study marketing and contemporary philosophy and sociology. Good luck.
- Q. I want to start learning to draw, but I don't know where to begin.
- A. Begin on the 'Learn to draw' tab at the top of this page. That will take you to the beginner articles. Begin at the top, and work through each article in each section. Read about the materials and do the exercises. This is important: DO THE EXERCISES ! If there is no specific exercise, you can copy the examples. An email learn-to-draw course is coming soon.