I'm realizing how many elements my art teachers skipped over the years. I think in my day, many years ago, it was assumed you had talent, not treating drawing as a skill that could be learned from nuts and bolts. I appreciate this lesson.

Dude, PREACH. I spent the last 15 years learning how to draw what I see, because that was emphasized so often as the only thing that mattered. But I hit a wall, ate some humble pie, and started drawing cubes. It's really elevated my art, but man, it's difficult. Not impossible, but hard. Draw cubes, kids. They will help you so much.

I've been drawing for almost 50 years. The structure/shapes are what stick with you for the rest of your life, insomuch that you can pick up a pencil from a dead sleep, and immediately sketch something from a dream without having drawn for years. The drawing structures becomes automatic like breathing.

This is actually the first time I've heard anyone mention 'structure,' in terms of drawing, directly. I usually just hear "practice your simple forms" over and over. Its nice to know there is a name for the concept.

Say it loud for the people in the back! I was doing my daily sketch and it was of flip flops. Going okay and then I realized flip flops are short rectangular boxes. And that help so much. Using this in my daily sketches now. Thank you.

This step is so critical to any artists journey, yet I always found myself struggling in the beginning to get through this step when I was first learning to draw. So if anyone is looking for advice, I found it helpful to make those shape studies relevant to what you'd like to draw instead of doing them at random. It helps to go with your impulse to draw the cool thing, then do it again but breaking it down into shapes and references, then redraw the cool thing a third time with the 2nd attempt as a guide. Helps to see the progression too if that helps with reassurance.

Each of your little gems is so much a part of my keeping my eye on the prize. I confess, I was going to skip this one the moment I saw the S word! So glad that I didn’t Alphonso. I have both your books and owe you so much for being there to guide, to instruct to encourage. I hope you know what a treasure your videos (and books!) are to those of us who don’t have access to a good teacher. Thank you so much.

Thank you for everything! In the last six monthes i started to take drawing classes.. Every time i make drawing i wasnt heapy with it. The reason is that no one understood that my problem is with my basic skills. Two monthes ago i buoght both of your books and finely i am not throwing my drawings away! Thank you so much!

Thanks so much Alphonso, emphasizing on the basics is truly critical, even for a well seasoned draftsperson.

I bought and used your pen and drawing workbook. It was fantastic I learned an amazing amount. I was a complete novice at drawing and I had never had a legitimate art class. Your book taught me the tools that I needed. After 2 years of diligent work, I'm proud to say, I'm on my way to becoming a credible tattoo artist. Thank you Mr Alfonso Dunn, you're brilliant. C.

Thanks so so much. Everyone of your videos moves me closer to being a better artist. You are so clear and concise.

I have both of your books. I even bought one for a friend of mine because she said "i'm so nervous when i use a pen!" I said "well there's this guy named Alphonso Dunn..." 😁. Keep it up. You're a great teacher👏👏👏👏

Found your KZfaq channel a couple of weeks ago, ordered your book and got it a couple of days ago. Just wanted to say thank you for THE best instruction and description and suggestion and all the tion(s) of shading I have EVER found! OMG thank you so much! Love it! You’re words resonate with me and I find myself listening to you and saying to myself, “of course”. Very intuitive. I am overjoyed that I found you

I so admire your drawings. You are tops. Thank you for reminding us of structure first. Sometimes I get lazy or hurried…or both…turning out unsatisfying sketches that look ill-formed, flat, and rushed.

So true I never understood why my drawings came out wonky until I realized I needed to work on structure.My drawings have definitely gotten better

This is something I have been trying to spend more time doing is going back to my basics. A lot of my sketchbook time these days has been spent working on improving my basic skills.

I am currently reading George Bridgmans constructive anatomy book and they explain things in similar ways like first understanding mass of an object then the plane and finally defining those things in strokes and lines. This video is really helpful and a good reminder that I need to focus on the simple shapes more because they are extremely important.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. It Helps so much When I finally realized how fundamental structure is to drawing it changed everything. It stopped me wasting hours on drawings that were flawed from the start. Now I don't proceed unless the underlying form is solid. Take care

Wow. I just half-realized this today while I was drawing a character in perspective. This video really solidified the importance of structure for me. Great vid!

Really love how relaxing this video is when I'm drawing and listening.

I'm going through your book now and indeed I agree that the structures are the important part I wish I could be better at, and at the same time, structures are not the 'fun' part of drawing.

I just bought your books. They are excellent. I’ve drawn for far too long without the knowledge you bring. Thank you.

This explains why I struggled with texture and volume in my drawings for a while. Thank you so much.

I haven't watched your videos in a very long time. I'm glad to see you're still great at explaining concepts like this.

For this reason children's toys can be a great subject to sketch from a few angles just for practice. They usually have simple geometrical shapes without distracting details, so you can get a feel for rendering those shapes on a flat page.

That rock at 4:12 was really eye opening to me in how you use a simple cube in order to illustrate something that doesn’t need to follow the same exact shape as the cube but instead uses the cube as guidelines to achieve the depth of a complex form

Such a precise and detailed video! props to you man, and thanks for this! I've started drawing around 6, almost 7 years ago, and even though i have a slow progress, I'm always down to learn important stuff, like structure. As a self-taught artist that isn't very active on, well, learning *new* things, this has actually piqued my interest! I think it'll help give my drawings a more tridimensional feel to it, so yeah, thank you so much again!

Best way I’ve come to understand this is like when drawing something like a fork, the question isn’t what is a fork, but what IS the shapes that when put together just so happen to produce something that looks like a fork? But to even get to this point, I know of a LOT of artists, myself included, that had to put their egos to the side before this reality opened up to them.

Oof okay, guess I'm going to start drawing basic shapes! I've been thinking that that's an exercise i should probably do, but I've been passing over it in favour of other more exciting or glamorous ones. But I've watched so many videos where accomplished artists have stressed the importance of learning how to convey volume, and now this! Thank you, such an illuminating video. Really concisely conveys the importance of learning structure and how it will support the rest of your development!

very useful reminders! Bought the workbook, it'll help my skills advance.

Hey man, been watching a lot of you videos lately. its helped me to understand some essential concepts and helped me improve my work. Thanks for the uploads!1

Damn. A KZfaq creator explain shapes and forms better than all of those disappointed looking art teachers I’ve had… big W

I will like to thank you for inspiring n’reminding me: to go back, and enjoy the time I spends in the process, for the process of improving~practicing drawing.

I draw fairly well but still trying to get better…your videos are so awesome!

I just bought your simple guide book. It's insanely helpful, just like your KZfaq videos. Thank you so much for the tutorials I have no idea where I would be without them 😁

An excellent point on why we need to learn this first. Thank you!

great advice! this stuff is my morning practice

i love your videos thank you for your hard work ❤️

You just changed everything for me :) This is the key to everything ! THANK YOU so freakin' much !!!

My art didnt start improving until I actually learnt what simple forms are. I thought I knew how to draw a box, but I actually didnt. This was proven to me when I tried to rotate a box in perspective. So I practiced that a LOT. probably over 10k boxes by now. I figured out what the minor axis and degree of an ellipse actually meant and how it related to perspective. I started manipulating simple forms, bending and twisting and cutting them. I started to FEEL the space, like I was drawing on a 3D surface. Still not entirely comfortable I feel, but when I am I will start constructing objects and oberve more before going into anatomy

Wow Im a beginner and this is so helpful! Thank you Alphonso!

Fantastic video. So helpful. Thanks

Too many art teachers fail to express what parts of art intuitive and what is technical. Learning the concepts should be the easy part. I had all the observation skills but couldn't figure how to apply it in a way that made sense. Took lots of trail and error. Lots of confusing artbooks out there that are big for no reason

i can draw cartoons a little but not real stuff. stick figures only lol. i'm sculpting now using clay which i have a talent for. i find ur videos helpful in my sculpting. sculpting a male figure currently.

KZfaq Artist Reiq (Reynaldo Quintero) often uses the term "dimensionality" or "Three dimensionality" to discuss form and structure. He tends to not draw through objects, but applies the light and shadow to simplified forms to create a 3D look. This is a shortcut, but he is skilled and experienced enough to do the 3D form and basic shapes work in his head, keeping it in mind for the rendering stage, without actually drawing it on the paper. I hope to get there one day.

i have always had a talent for drawing. not much actual training though. for a long time i felt like i never improved but this concept has changed my whole perception of drawing and brought back a lot of fun to me. nice discussion on this topic though. i feel a bit inspired hehe

I have a character design that uses pinball flippers for ears. Every time I draw this character I dread the ears because they require a precise structure at a relatively small scale, and there's just no way of getting around that without redesigning this feature. At the same time, it means I'm practicing my simple forms, every single time. Then I did it to myself again by making a robot character with blocky limbs...

"Pros get it but students don't" ...yeah, that's kind of how most professions work :P Jokes aside, great video. I certainly wish I'd started practicing this sort of thing earlier

it was ! thanks

Thanks you very much.

I am finally getting your book on Thursday. Maybe sooner I hope. I had my granddaughter get it for me for my birthday (yesterday), 9/15

Great video! Have both your books and love them.

Thanks for the reminder!

Shapes are my go to whenever im bored

Thanks!

Very good information.

Thanks bro.

Thank you so much!! Ack why am I late discovering your yt channel

very important info to remember, i needed this

It's quite funny.. I view fine arts the same way I view any other profession. To me a student who wants to skip structure, blocking in, proportions, basically the "boring" steps of a drawing is exactly the same as a carpenter who doesn't build a steady foundation or frame for his house, and skips straight to what plants will look good on the window sill, what curtain will go good with the carpet, what color the walls should be.. 5, 10, even 20 years pass by and they still don't know why their drawings are always crooked or "off". I always been told by my peers that my skill is "good enough", they don't understand what I'm trying to do.

Amo seus vídeos vc é sensacional

Great tutorial? Thank you

Excellent lesson!

I feel like a learned a whole class worth of information in a five minute video

Your videos have been the absolute best help for my art. Which is saying a lot because I procrastinate watching art youtube way too much.

Solid advice

Alphonso,Nice talk about,thanks..

Thanks 👍

Wow….your teaching skills are impeccable. You turned the light on for many of us. Thank you for what you do. Sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know. From now on, my primary goal will start with “structure “. 😊

Thank you, this video helped me to understand that I am moving in the right direction^⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_⁠_^

Great message!

Thanks

Amazing to see you now have 800k subs! I remember watching you while I was still in high school :)

ive been doing structure without even noticing 😫

Ello from the Philippines! Welcome back sir

Se pudesse compraria seus livros desejo de consumo

True

I’m still trying to figure structure out but one practice method I’ve found to be useful is to take a lump of clay, form it into whatever I want and then draw that. Having just handled the clay in a way where I understand it’s mass in a 3-Dimensional way, the structure becomes much easier to understand. Hope this helps out some other students out there! :]

Great, thanks! Which pen/holder are you holding there?

You’re a great teacher, Alphonso. I love your books too. Thank you!!

You are a very good person. Thank you so much

Hello Mr. Dunn, like the other commenters said, I too wasn't taught much about structure and I am very interested in learning how to do it. Other than your two drawing books (which I have), are there videos that you have that teach, to show me step by step (showing more examples) on how to do structure? Your videos and instructions are great you mention things that a lot of art instructors don't, sometimes I need to see the whole process. To walk me through. Thank you very much.

I really want to be a dynamic comic artist when I grow up. Should i draw everything I see or is that not important? Can you give me some direction?

could you post on how to cross hatch or hatch shade a costumed figure? coz I see many head renderings but not figures and it would help

Hay quick question is that a standard number 2 pencil you are using?

I realized over the years that drawing is a skill and not a talent ! It was opposed to what i learn from my seniors .

Brilliant five minute art class. Five minutes to watch, but hours of information to think about. Do I detect a cold or sore throat? Your voice is sounding a bit rough on this video.

If I want to reproduce your drawings for practice, should I use a pencil under drawing, or try only with a pen?

The redline of preview image made it look like I've already watched this video

Hello Alphonso! Your art is a big inspiration for me, and I try to put all that you teach us on practice, so thank you very much. I see that there are many artists worried about AI replacing art. It would be interesting if you could talk about it, if you want. I would love to hear, and maybe it would make me feel better about this all.

How can I take out the captioning on the video. It blocks a lit of what you're drawing.

Alphonso, pls, write another book! Write a whole textbook. I am so impressed with your teaching style and writing skills. Your emphasis on the science of drawing and the science of life is brilliant.

One of my younger sisters, at 8 yo, asked me to teach her how to draw. I told her, "draw these four shapes and then combine them in different ways as you look at objects to construct them." I was living with our birth father at the time and moved shortly after. I met up with her 8 years later and the drawings on her walls, y'all...she could draw feet and hands better than me! I was so proud of her!! She told me it all came from that lesson.

Awesome videos, thanks so much.

My usual drawing pattern: Ok, enough structure, I think I got it now, I`m experienced! Yes, I can skip this! After some hours of drawing and painting: Hold on, something is off with the perspective and why does it look so flat?

Dude! You’re the author behind the ink book I borrowed from my art teacher!! Awesome vid, really glad I found your youtube!

So helpful! I know your books are Pen and Ink, but are they also good learning tools for just pencil? Thank you!

❤❤❤❤

can anyone reccommend me books for learning it?

Thanks Alfonso, it's always good to get back to basics. Can I complement you on you impeccable English, it would put a lot of English people to shame.