Pencil Drawing Made Easy Honest Review – What keeps us from being good at art?

It could be many things but most of the time because we believe that not everyone can draw.

We believe that some people were born with the God-given talent to create art like Leonardo Da Vinci and some others just simply doomed.

But what if it’s not true?

What if we all can draw beautifully? It’s possible, right?

Right, but…

“Why my drawings are not like what I have imagined them to be?” You may ask.

Let me tell you the classic answer:

“You probably are not practicing enough.”

Source: Pixabay.com

I used to hate this answer myself but I know that at a certain point this answer completely makes sense. We’ve felt discouraged to see our bad drawings, then we gave up, and there’s no more practicing.

However, the practice itself can be another challenge, especially if you’re a beginner or a self-taught artist whose main resource of learning is the internet.

Why?

Well, with so many choices of art teaching platforms spilled over the internet, it can be overwhelming to find the right one.

But let me tell you:

If your jam in art is traditional realistic drawing like me, I have one reference that I personally have tried a couple of weeks ago, called:

PENCIL DRAWING MADE EASY

Along with this post, I will share with you the insight of this online art course as well as my actual experience of using it (I attach the improvement results of my drawings too).

Does it bring progress?

Without any further ado, let’s dive into it!

First stop, Let’s get to know:

Who’s the Person Behind The Desk?

Pencil Drawing Made Easy is created by Nolan Clark.

The most known profile you can find about him on the internet would be:

He is a self-taught artist and an art tutor from New Zealand.

That’s it. It pretty much has told us who he is.

But, if you're like me, you’d probably have this doubt and question:

A self-taught artist? Can someone teach art without having a degree?

This question will not be easy to address since there are always people who are for and against.

I personally have the doubt but not completely against the idea since I am well aware that some artists don’t have an art degree but able to work with big production houses like Disney and Pixar. Other self-taught artist ran a solo art exhibition and sold a piece worth $250k.

The possibility is always there, but to make sure, I’ve done research regarding this matter and like it or not, the answer is indeed yes, a self-taught artist can teach.

As we all know, art doesn’t work like medical science where formal education is required. In art, having a degree is great, but having none doesn’t mean bad.

However, there’s one requirement of a self-taught artist to become an art teacher/ tutor:

He/she must have at least professional experience in art.

So the question now is:

Does Nolan Clark have the experience?  

From the record, yes, he has been doing art professionally for two decades now.

As written by some sources, Nolan’s art career started in 2000, but his interest in art grew four years earlier after “accidentally” finding out that he could actually draw.

Now, his works cover a wide variety of art mediums; pencil drawing, oil painting, acrylic, and scratchboard.

Courtesy of: Nolan Clark’s Portfolio

You can check out his art portfolio HERE.

He also created art-related books, one of which called; “Top 25 Artist Mistakes; and How to Avoid Them”; Amazon shows pretty good ratings about it.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Since his first starting out, Nolan’s professional experience has always been taking a part in art teaching. After his self-discovery that he could draw, he became convinced that everybody else could draw too.

Therefore he dedicates himself to dig deep in art and shares his knowledge to teach as well as to encourage other people who take interest in art but hesitant with their own capability.

Now, he has taught over 3 million people through his art class.

What Is Pencil Drawing Made Easy?

Pencil Drawing Made Easy is an online course that is created to help you cultivate your skill in realistic drawing specifically in learning the essential pencil drawing techniques over still live objects, animals, and portraits.

How Pencil Drawing Made Easy could help you do that?

Pencil Drawing Made Easy served its teaching materials in a total of 42 hours of high-quality videos accessible everywhen and everywhere. The videos are made comprehensive with easy to follow instructions.

Source: Pexels.com

To make it more convenient this course breaks the lessons down into smaller chunks for you. Each of the lessons will be about 2 hours long and it’s orderly placed to build on each other gradually. As to guide you through every drawing lesson, this course will also provide you with printable handouts!

On top of that, Pencil Drawing Made Easy thoughtfully picks an apt object to draw on each of the drawing practices. In this way, you can definitely understand the given topics much better.

Want to know more about the details of the lessons? Here is…

What Inside Pencil Drawing Made Easy

Pencil Drawing Made Easy is very straightforward on what they offer, which is good!

There are two parts of the lessons: the main lessons and the bonus lessons.

Let’s take a closer look at them!

Main Lessons:

This course has 13 lessons included here:

• Lesson 1 – Introduction

As it promised, the lessons included in the course are consecutive, therefore the first lesson will cover the very basic things before it’s gradually escalated to the next lessons.

Here, you’ll get introduced to the equipment; the range of pencils (from 2h to 6b), the type of erasers, and other needed equipment.

You’ll also get some tips on how to sharpen the pencil using the more traditional way (using the cutter), and how these sharpening techniques will help you to create different values on your drawing.

There will be some exercise given to get you used to the equipment. As we all know, different types of pencils create different shades of darkness. And with this kind of exercise, you’ll get the hang of each different shade of your pencils.

Furthermore, you’ll also learn the different types of strokes that used to create a realistic outlook.

• Lesson 2 – Shading Techniques

Lesson 2 starts-off by previewing the first lesson; there will be more explanation of how the light would affect an object and how this light would create different shades a.k.a tonal values.

The most important thing you’ll get from this lesson is you’ll learn how to correctly creates transitions of contrasting tonal values. Shading is very important to create the effect of a voluminous object, especially if we’re talking about realistic drawing.

• Lesson 3 – Creating Texture

Insight of lesson 3 – demonstrating how to spot the right tonal values like a pro

Texture is another important thing you’d want to learn in mastering the art of pencil drawing. This lesson is rather challenging but it will definitely bring your drawing skill to a higher level.

Various objects come in different shapes and textures, and being able to capture them the way they are is important. In this lesson you’ll be taught to see things like pro artists do and able to spot the tonal values of an object correctly (in this case the given objects are onions and garlic, they are a good example of one object shares a different kind of textures).

To make the object looks even more convincing on your drawing (not just flying in space with no background); this lesson will also cover various ways to create a background image without losing its realistic effect.

• Lesson 4 – Creating Depth

Lesson 4 will talk about creating an illusion of depth on a flat sheet of paper. One can say that this lesson is the extended version of lesson 2.

But here you’ll have a different level of difficulty. In lesson 2, it talked about the basic shading in objects in a more modest way whereas in lesson 4 you’ll get to learn how the shading creates depth to make the more complex object looks real.

Again, this lesson picks a suitable exercise to help us immerse with the theory. The object chosen is a rose. Rose is complex yet an apt object to learn depth; I mean, the petals are overlapping on top of each other and if we’re not correctly translating the depth, our roses will look like a mess or worse: unrecognizable.

The depth taught in this lesson also talks about perspective; it gives us an idea of where should the depth place if half part of the object is closer towards the viewer and the other part is further behind.

• Lesson 5 – Negative Drawing

Insight of lesson 5 – drawing along using the negative technique

If you think that drawing transparent or glassy objects is complicated and infuriating, after this particular lesson you won’t think it the same way ever again, because here you’ll learn a new technique called the negative background. And this technique will help us see the values of glassy objects better than using a positive background.

Don’t get me wrong, this technique is also applicable to any other objects, including portraits. Once you get the hang of it, you can definitely improvise.

Plus, Don’t panic if you don’t know what negative drawing is because this lesson will explain the difference between negative and positive, and how you can combine both to manipulate a realistic outlook on your drawing.

• Lesson 6 – Reflective Objects

Whether we realize it or not there are actually more objects around us that are reflective. And as an artist, it’s important to be able to read this reflective side of the objects even in some cases these reflective sides are very subtle.

You may have good shading but without this tiny part, your drawing will look like it’s missing something. The reflective side is like the final touch to make the drawing perfectly look three-dimensional.

Addressing this subject matter, this lesson will tell you the secrets to spot and draw the reflective side of an object correctly and not be distracted by any texture that the object has.

Insight of lesson 6 – drawing along, catching the reflective side of apples

Note: The rest of the main lessons (lesson 7-13) will cover the area of realistic portrait drawing. It will guide you to draw each of the facial features as well as some other body parts and make those look as realistic as possible. These lessons include:

• Lesson 7 – Realistic Eyes
• Lesson 8 – Realistic Nose
• Lesson 9 – Realistic Mouth
• Lesson 10 – Realistic Ears
• Lesson 11 – Realistic Cheek, Chin, Neck, Forehead
• Lesson 12 – Realistic Hairs
• Lesson 13 – Realistic Moustache

So, that’s the end of the main lessons, now let’s take a look at the BONUSES!

Bonus Lessons:

These additional lessons in the bonus section are no less important than the main lessons, it covers 7 useful subjects that you can study to push your realistic drawing ability further. The bonus lessons here will talk about various objects, such as:

• Bonus 1 – Clothing & Knitwear
• Bonus 2 – Realistic Hands
• Bonus 3 – Hyper Realistic Drawing
• Bonus 4-7 – Birds

Now, with all these goods unloaded…

Who Would Find this Course Beneficial?

You probably can already tell if this course would benefit you, but if you’re still figuring it out. This list may help you.

Pencil Drawing Made Easy is for you, if…

• You want to be a realist artist

There are so many genres in art, and Pencil Drawing Made Easy course is specifically dedicated to the realm of the realist. So, if you’re hoping to get manga, cartoon, or caricature drawing; feel free to skip ahead.

Source: Pexels.com

Please also note that this course is using a traditional approach, which means every drawing is done by hand (and a set of pencils) not digital.

• You’re a beginner, a self-taught artist, or an art enthusiast in general who has done art for some time without knowing the essential art theory on realistic drawing.

If you consider yourself an advance, chances are you won’t need this.

• You’re subscribing to the art of independent learning

Since this course is online, there won’t be any direct interference from the tutor. Despite what this course has to offer to lift up your drawing skill, you’ll still be the one who’s in charge of your own progress.

So, if you’re not sure about it, I suggest you sign up for an art school or a conventional art course instead.

Who Have Found This Course Beneficial; Users’ Testimonials

 Prabhandini says:

“Overall, I’m happy with Pencil Drawing Made Easy. I didn’t expect that my bad drawing would turn into something else that I never did before.”*

Diona says:

“I am one of the people attending your classes.  I learned a lot and improved my drawing skills 1000%. You are a great teacher.”*

 Lidiya says:

“Thank you for the great class. I really enjoyed shading a spoon, just one thing was distracting. These swirls on the spoon reminded me of cinnamon buns so now I am hungry, lol.”*

Source: Pexels.com

Do I Find This Course Beneficial? Here’s My Experience

I’ve been doing art as a hobby for so long. However, I can’t make any claim that my art is good or anything because I’m aware that in my art journey, I am guilty of skipping the basics and just dive right in. Unfortunately, the more I get deeper the more I realize that I need to go back to the surface.

Doing art without knowing the basics is like building a house without a foundation. The house may look great but it will eventually crumble.

You surely don’t want that, do you? Well, I don’t, so here I am, partaking this course and so far here’s what I think:

Since I consider myself in a “more experienced” level; I only need to take the first four lessons (as the course suggested); and for the rest of the lessons, I can jump to whatever I like or skip it altogether.

I thought I wasn’t going to take any interest in joining the rest of the lessons, but when I got into it, it’s actually nice, I made up my mind and turned out spending more time on it. I mean, they have Hyperrealistic drawing and some other useful additional drawing skills included in their bonus section; I’d be a fool not to seize it.

Source: Pexels.com

If you’re interested to know the actual feeling of joining Pencil Drawing Made Easy without spending a penny, you can get FREE samples by visiting their site and sign up through a pop-up banner. Or, you can type free sample class on their search box, and voila!

TRY THE FREE SAMPLE CLASS NOW!

As I’ve mentioned earlier the course given by Pencil Drawing Made Easy is an online course (with no interaction), and it can be quite challenging. Especially, since I’m not pro (duh) and therefore my eyes are not trained to critically see my art. Without the teacher’s supervision, this can be a huge struggle.

And as someone who has partaken the conventional art class (for cartoon drawing) before, I’d say that’s the crucial difference. With this online course, I won’t have the privilege to directly ask questions and there’s no direct supervision, nor constructive critique to get my drawing right if I make a mistake.

But on the other hand,

I think this can be a great opportunity to force myself; to train my eyes to observe live objects; to be able to transfer them into a drawing; as well as making an objective evaluation of the result independently.

Moreover, the way this course serves its curriculum; the easy-to-follow instructions and theories, the useful tips, the camera angles; the printable resources, as well as the responsive customer service, I’d say it all helps the independent learning process effectively.

There’s more…

I, later on, found out that this online course is not completely neglecting us, users. It still cares! Well, maybe not in a “direct” way but there’s still a considerate option to get feedbacks; to share progress, and get comments/ critiques by joining its private Facebook community.

Here’s an example of a user who received a constructive critique from the private FB community:

So with this all installed, can this Pencil Drawing Made Easy help my drawing skill progress?

Yes! After some time joining this program, I indeed experienced some progress*

The progress was not just about the final result of my drawing, but most importantly is in my thinking process; how I can comprehend an object and differentiate its complex tones; like knowing where the darker shades, mid-tones, highlights, and reflected lights are placed on an object in order to create a believable drawing.

Here are some photos of my drawing practices:

The sphere drawing may look simple with not much detail but trust me it wasn’t as easy as it may seem.

The first circle sketch was already intimidating for me. But in the end, I’ve learned to have a good grip on my pencil and to control my hand motion so I can constantly be able to draw a perfect big round shape. Well, it’s not that perfect tho; you can still see something off on its sides, but again we’re talking about progress here.

Still with the sphere drawing, I’ve learned something called reflected light. I may have used it in my drawings before but I didn’t really know how that actually worked. Well… now I know. And this knowledge is not just applying to a sphere but also to any other object. Thanks for this course!

I decided to post this drawing on the private FB community to see if I can have a feedback. To my surprise, Nolan commented on it!

Now let’s move on to the spoon drawing…

This is where I feel kinda irritated with the course. I’m shocked that it teaches users to trace an image. I’ve attended an art class before, and this tracing method is a big no-no. Because first, it’s cheating, second, it doesn’t train you to organically study the object’s structure.

However, Nolan indeed has sensible reasoning behind this tracing practice. He argued that for starters, this method is a considerate solution to focus on the study of the tonal values a.k.a shading, and not bother too much with drawing the outlines.

So, in this case, I give him that. As long as tracing is used as a part of the learning process, it’s fine; but if it’s used to create a final art piece, that’s intolerable!

Okay, everything is cool now, let’s go back to the spoon drawing…

The spoon’s outlines were already served on the printable resources. So all I gotta do is just paying attention to its shades and practice the shading.

It certainly required me more time to grasp how light falls into a metal object and to deconstruct its tonal values. But this course has done a pretty good job on the lesson’s delivery; the follow-along video has a fair explanation. As a result, I think I’ve made the shading looks pretty decent!

Source: Pexels.com

I actually have every progress with every lesson I’ve taken noted down, but I think I’ve given you enough insight into the main lessons.

So, to save time, I’m gonna wrap my testimonial up with a bit of my experience on my favorite bonus lesson; Hyperrealistic drawing.

The Hyperrealistic drawing lesson was seriously addressing my shortcoming when it comes to drawing a portrait: the skin textures. I used to play it safe by mostly draw a young female’s face. It’s surely easier to draw but my drawings went monotonous.

That’s why I’m glad that this course has one session dedicated to teaching how to draw hyper-realistic skin (specifically on wrinkly older man’s skin). It also provides tips to selectively choose and edit a good reference photo.

Hence to really test out the given tips as well as the step by step skin drawing instruction, I decided to find the reference photo myself (instead of using the already given one). After that, I will juxtapose it with my old related drawing, just so we can make a clear judgment about it.

Here’s a drawing I made before:

As you can see, It looks stiff, scratchy, the shadow is all over the place, the eyes look dull, and it doesn’t have much of skin detail.

And here’s a WIP (work-in-progress) I made after joining the lesson:

To be fair, this WIP is not drawn merely based on the hyper-realistic lesson, it actually a summation of the lessons I’ve taken so far (Shading Technique, Creating Depth, Realistic Eyes and Nose, and lastly the Hyperrealistic drawing for the skin detail).

Not so much of a hyper-realistic drawing, I know…

But, what do you think?

Did I make good progress?

Are you interested to make progress of your own?

In case you are…

Here’s Where To Buy Pencil Drawing Made Easy Course:

You can purchase this course by visiting their official site: HERE.

With a total of 42 hours on 13 realistic drawing lessons and 7 more bonus lessons, Pencil Drawing Made Easy will cost you $47 only and that’s for lifetime access!

The price is considerably cheap.

How so?

Well, as I’ve said before I’ve attended an art course and trust me it costs higher (some even much higher). I remember I got to pay about $10/ hour (and that’s the price after discount).

You can already calculate how much cheaper this course compares to the conventional art course.

So, if you want to start learning realistic drawing but you’re on a budget, this course can be a good alternative.

Moreover,

As to address our insecurities when it comes to spending our money, this course offers a 60-day 100% money-back guarantee. So, if you happen to buy this course and turn out disliking it, you can snatch this option and get a full refund!

Final Verdict

Judging by my actual experience of joining Pencil Drawing Made Easy as well as the proven progress on my art knowledge as well as my drawing skill, I’d say this online art course is approved and definitely worth a try.

And if you ask me; would I recommend this program to you?

My answer is YES.

 This program can be a great alternative and a safer way (cause it’s online and home-based duh) for you to learn pencil drawing.

Why?

• The curriculum of the lessons given (both main and bonus) is very well thought; the lessons given are comprehensive

• The lessons have pretty much taught the essential theories that every realist artist should know

• The price is considerably lower than those of the conventional art classes; $47 only for 42 hours pencil drawing class, whereas in general, it can cost you the minimum $10 per hour

• The course also gives the benefit of a money-back guarantee of up to 60 days to ensure the customer’s satisfactory

• Most importantly, this course works; many other users and I have seen the progress and better results after partaking in the course

So, the choice is yours to make now.

But there’s no need to rush because there’s another benefit given to you here…

You can try the free sample class!

CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE FREE SAMPLE CLASS

Disclaimer

Pencil Drawing Made Easy takes reasonable steps to ensure that the information given in the course is correct. However, this course doesn’t hold a guarantee of every user’s success.

The results that come out of this course are varied from person to person due to some aspects e.g. the user’s previous artistic experience or the amount of time given for practice.

The content written on this post is solely made based on the writer’s very own experience after joining the Pencil Drawing Made Easy course and it can’t be overgeneralized to any other user.