Love Dave Malans art. It was cool to see how he draws. I like the technique of breaking things down to abstract shapes, and have been practicing along with the videos. Some of the lessons could’ve been more in depth than they were. Could’ve used tips and tricks on how to deal with replicating curves in drawings. I have a hard time with that. Would’ve liked one lesson to go all the way to a finished Dave Malan Drawing. But overall I found it pretty helpful.

The class helps you breakdown what you see into simple 2D shapes.

This course was helpful learning to see the abstract shapes comprising any object and learning to sketch concisely. I found going through the longer videos watching and copying Dave's process particularly helpful. Noticeable improvement on my part from start to finish. Thanks.

I can hear and see that this instructor is really good at what he does. In the instruction it comes out very tentative and he leaves out a lot of information. For example, he uses the word shape interchangeably with form and in some cases (a lot of cases) since he does two lessons one 2d one 3d it’s important to make the distinction. He also, is so into his own head about what he is teaching that it appears he forgets he is teaching people who don’t know how to draw and are really starting at the beginning. So it’s important to belabor the subject (in a way) remembering to mention overlaps and why they are important. Sightmeasuring is really vital in the beginning and he does mention it, but should really have a separate video on how to sight measure. It’s those little things that add up that can cause confusion and uncertainty. Keep teaching you’ll get better at it. Meanwhile he has a really pleasant demeanor, and is easy to listen to. I hope this is helpful to make this foundational course a true cornerstone for future courses.

A positive experience with the instructor. Definitely a learning curve to work big to specific, still working through that. My worksheets are looking far more accurate with these foundation steps. Overall I was happy with this class. Thanks.

This has moved my drawing skills up to another level. The content was very clearly articulated and demonstrated, and the principles ''stuck''. Thank you.

The course is probably aimed at experienced beginners and up. Dave Malan teaches you how to break down a series of different subjects into their most fundamental shapes. You then use those basic shapes and build on them further, to create visually satisfying and well balanced drawings with accurate proportions. Thanks Dave!

The speaker is monotone and has slow and broken speech. He goes through the lessons quickly and doesn’t explain everything he is doing especially with hands.

I liked. It a lot. All instructions were very clear and easy to follow

The title is misleading compared to some of the other courses on SVS that teach drawing from the ground up like Jake Parker's "How to Draw Everything" course - the course is mainly a seminar in drawing from reference images rather than fundamentals of drawing these things from scratch. The tips and commentary are still useful practical information, as is watching the demonstration of his process, but some of the paired topics are imbalanced as well. For example "Hands and Feet" demonstrates 20 minutes of drawing hand reference but only 2 minutes of drawing foot reference, while "Cloth and Hair" was primarily drawing cloth with a small amount of hair in the reference photo.

This is a very good course about how to start a good drawing. Just don't expect it to be a step-by-step guide of how to make a finished, cool-looking picture of a subject you like. It's about how to capture shapes and make a good structure for a drawing, which is well explained, but you have to be patient and not expect to produce master works after your first exercises. There's plenty of insight on other topics too if you listen carefully to the explanations and try to relate it to what's happening in the video. I would recommend this course as a mandatory first step in learning how to draw.

I'm super beginner and this was very helpful :D

I was expecting more on basics being explained and demonstrated.

As a beginner, found the information in the course very useful. The focus of ‘general to specific’ is the area in which I really need to practice, learning to set the foundation of a sketch accurately before diving in to the detail. Thanks Dave! - brill-

I really enjoyed the course and thought the suggestion of breaking things down into large, then medium and finally smaller detailed shapes was very helpful when drawing from reference (or any time in general). I was definitely the person who would try to start with the intricacies first and then end up with a picture that was off in all the proportions so this has helped me big time.

David is methodical and patient throughout his creation of portraits. Thank you for sharing with us. I learned so much and inspired for my drawings, too.

The course is not bad, present some nice tips to draw things from observation. However, the title is a bit misleading: I actually thought I was going to have a crunch course with fundamentals like perspective, construction, composition, etc.

They were great tutorials for beginners, however I had to speed up the videos because he was slow at explaining.

Basically teaches you how to break stuff down better and genuinely teaches the FUNDAMENTALS no lie, straight to the point. I'm 16 and am taking lessons here with my parents and I drew a really wicked tiger within the first lesson and it was only 20 minutes!

Extremely helpful and much appreciated. Thank you

These videos well help you if your new or stuck drawing anything.

This course is perfect for artists with drawing experience who wants to review the basics. It focuses on simplifying complex subjects into basic shapes and getting the proportions right. This was my first course on SVS and really happy with it! I did the workbook exercises, applied the advices and got results very quickly. Really appreciate the quality of the work too. Thanks Dave!