Pencil Drawing Made Easy
- CarolaSims

- Aug 25
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 12
I stumbled upon a pencil drawing course that specializes in taking beginners and teaching them how to draw in a realistic style. The course itself is in the form of online video lessons accessible from anywhere in the world - the videos worked perfectly on my tablet and phone.

Each class is two hours long so you can even draw while watching the video, nothing is left to the imagination. The course starts off by showing you all the equipment you need and the basic strokes. Even in this video, I picked up a cool tip for erasing.
What I like is that each lesson builds on the previous, so you are never thrown into the deep. Each class has its own concept or technique that you need to master, for example, in the second class you learn how to spot the different tonal values.

In this class Nolan (the instructor) uses different Styrofoam objects to show you how the light affects the tonal values. The way he explains it makes it so easy to understand, like theory being explained in a practical way.
With each class, you get a downloadable template which you can print out and use to transfer to your drawing paper. You then also get a high-quality photo of the reference and the final drawing.

They are laid out in the PDF in such a way that when you print it out, each are exactly the same size. This makes it easy to judge sizes while drawing.
In each class you complete a drawing project. For example, in the second class you draw a realistic spoon. At the beginning of the class, I thought it was going to be difficult, but after watching the explanations at the start of the class and the practical demo, it turned out to be quite easy.

The next four lessons are also still life drawings. There are an onion and garlic still life, a transparent wine glass, a rose, and an apple drawing. In each of these you learn all about creating texture and depth in your drawings as well as drawing negatively and how to draw reflective objects.
From there you start drawing portraits.
Nolan shows you how to draw all the major features like the eyes and mouth. What I liked was that he shows you what to look out for with each one. Once you have completed, say the ear class, you will be able to draw any ear and not just the one from the class itself.
What really makes this course stand out from the rest is that it goes much deeper than any of the other courses I have seen. There are even classes on how to draw material textures and hands.
The course has over 42 hours of video. It is currently on a launch special at less than half price. Check it out for yourself.
This post contains affiliate links. View disclosure here.



























I enjoy art a lot
I'm so glad to be majoring in art
Beautiful drawings
These fine drawings remind me of Art projects I used to do in my first college semester. I chose Art as an elective back then. Out of all the courses, Art was the only class I was looking forward to the most. It was a really fun class.