Top 10 Mistakes New Artists Make and How to Fix Them Drawing

Starting your drawing journey is exciting, but it’s also easy to fall into common pitfalls that can slow your progress or hurt your confidence. The good news? These mistakes are normal—and completely fixable. In this article, we’ll walk through the 10 most common mistakes beginner artists make, and most importantly, how to fix them with practical strategies, mindset shifts, and helpful resources.

This guide complements our main article: The Ultimate Guide to Drawing for Beginners. Read that first for a complete overview of techniques, tools, and mindset.

1. Holding the Pencil Like You’re Writing

The Mistake: Gripping the pencil tightly in a traditional writing position restricts your range of motion, leads to hand fatigue, and limits the quality of your lines. This grip often results in overly stiff and short strokes.

Why It Happens: Most beginners treat drawing like writing because it feels familiar.

Fix It: Learn proper drawing grips like the overhand, underhand, and tripod grip. These allow for looser, more expressive lines. Practice drawing from your shoulder or elbow rather than your fingers. Refer to our guide on How to Hold a Pencil for Drawing for visuals and detailed advice.

Pro Tip: Try taping a pencil to the end of a ruler and drawing on a wall — this forces you to move your arm, not just your wrist.

2. Pressing Too Hard

The Mistake: Beginners often press too hard on the paper, producing dark, indelible lines that are difficult to erase and reduce flexibility for adjusting compositions.

Why It Matters: Heavy pressure creates grooves in the paper, making clean shading nearly impossible.

Fix It: Focus on developing line sensitivity. Use a soft touch and build value gradually through layering. Practice drawing with lighter grades of pencil like 2H or HB to avoid dark marks. Work with sketching exercises that encourage line confidence and control.

Try This: Fill a page with straight lines using the lightest pressure possible. Then do the same while slowly increasing pressure.

3. Avoiding Construction Lines

The Mistake: Jumping straight into details without laying down basic shapes and guidelines leads to poor proportions, awkward placements, and inconsistent results.

Why It Happens: Beginners want immediate results and feel that construction lines make the drawing “messy.”

Fix It: Embrace rough sketching. Use light, loose shapes to block in proportions before refining. Draw circles, boxes, and stick figures to map out the structure. Remember: even professionals start messy before cleaning up.

Bonus Tip: Use colored pencils for construction lines so you can distinguish them from your final lines.

4. Drawing Only from Imagination

The Mistake: While imagination is a powerful tool, relying solely on it can hinder accuracy, depth, and realism.

Why It Happens: Many new artists believe drawing from reference is “cheating.”

Fix It: Use references generously—whether photos, life objects, or master studies. Practicing from real life sharpens your eye for proportion, light, and form. Then apply that knowledge to imaginative work.

Exercise: Choose one object and draw it from three different angles using references. Then try drawing it from memory.

5. Not Studying Light and Shadow

The Mistake: Neglecting how light interacts with form leads to flat, unrealistic drawings.

Why It Matters: Shading defines volume and space in a drawing.

Fix It: Learn how to observe light sources, cast shadows, and transitions between light and dark. Study the five elements of light: highlight, midtone, core shadow, reflected light, and cast shadow.

Practice Tip: Draw a simple white ball under a single light source and identify all five elements of shading.

6. Fear of Making Mistakes

The Mistake: Hesitating to put lines on paper, over-erasing, or never finishing drawings out of fear they won’t look good.

Why It Matters: This mindset stunts growth and creativity.

Fix It: Accept that mistakes are necessary for improvement. Keep a separate sketchbook just for exploration and experiments. Challenge yourself with timed sketches where the goal is speed and flow—not perfection.

Mindset Shift: Instead of asking, “Is this good?” ask, “What did I learn from this?”

7. Neglecting Perspective

The Mistake: Avoiding perspective leads to warped, unrealistic environments or scenes that feel “off.”

Why It Happens: Perspective seems complicated or intimidating to learn.

Fix It: Start with basic 1-point and 2-point perspective. Understand the horizon line, vanishing points, and how objects change in space.

Starter Drill: Draw a simple room using 1-point perspective with a central vanishing point. Add boxes, a table, and a window.

8. Not Drawing Regularly

The Mistake: Irregular practice makes it hard to develop consistency and retain skills.

Why It Happens: Lack of time, motivation, or structured goals.

Fix It: Create a habit. Set a small daily goal (e.g., 15 minutes a day). Use challenges like our 30-Day Drawing Challenge for Newbies to stay motivated. Track your progress weekly with before-and-after comparisons.

Routine Tip: Choose a time of day when you feel most creative and block it off for sketching.

9. Comparing Yourself to Others

The Mistake: Constantly comparing your early work to professional artists can lead to frustration and self-doubt.

Why It’s Harmful: It discourages experimentation and makes you lose sight of your own progress.

Fix It: Focus on your journey. Save your old drawings and review them monthly to see improvement. Follow artists who share process videos or early work to stay inspired.

Goal Tip: Set personal art goals (e.g., “Draw 10 hands this month”) instead of trying to “be as good as X.”

10. Using the Wrong Tools

The Mistake: Working with low-quality paper, the wrong pencil types, or no erasers can limit your potential.

Why It Happens: Beginners often don’t know what tools are best—or assume expensive means better.

Fix It: Start with reliable, beginner-friendly tools that don’t break the bank. Use a sketchbook with decent paper, a few pencils ranging from 2H to 6B, a kneaded eraser, and a blending stump. Our Essential Drawing Supplies Under $50 article offers a full breakdown.

Budget Tip: Start small. As your skills grow, invest in better tools that fit your style.

11. Final Thoughts

Mistakes are not setbacks—they’re stepping stones. Every misproportioned sketch or awkward hand is part of your learning curve. What matters most is that you keep drawing, reflect on your habits, and make small improvements over time.

The best artists didn’t become great overnight—they got there by showing up consistently, being curious, and staying kind to themselves in the process.

Ready to go further? Revisit The Ultimate Guide to Drawing for Beginners to reinforce your fundamentals and discover what to practice next.