If you’ve been learning to draw and feel like you’re not getting anywhere, it’s very easy to assume you simply don’t have the talent for it.

But in my experience, talent is rarely what holds you back.

More often, it comes down to how you’re practising, what you’re expecting from yourself, and whether you’re giving your eye enough time to catch up with your hand.

Here are seven of the most common reasons why beginners fail at drawing.

1. Never actually starting

This sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly common.

You buy a new sketchbook. You sharpen the pencils. You watch a few tutorials, save some reference images and spend half an hour deciding whether you really need a 2B or a 4B.

And somehow, no drawing actually happens.

There’s a feeling that if you can just get the right materials, understand the technique a little better or find the perfect subject, you’ll be more prepared.

But drawing doesn’t really work like that.

Your first few drawings are supposed to feel awkward. You’re learning a new visual language and your hand hasn’t caught up yet. You’ll make the same mistakes over and over and get frustrated at your lack of progress. That’s 100% normal.

The sketchbook only becomes useful once it has marks in it.

2. Quitting too soon

One of the strange things about learning to draw is that your taste often develops faster than your ability.

You can look at your drawing and immediately see that something isn’t quite right, but you don’t yet have the skills to fix it.

That gap can be frustrating.

Someone might spend three weeks drawing, compare their work with an artist who has been practising for twenty years and decide, “I’m just not very good at this.”

But three weeks is hardly any time.

When students send me a drawing from when they first started alongside something they’ve made a year later, the difference can be enormous.

You just have to keep drawing long enough to see it your progress

3. Not doing enough drawings

We can become very precious about a drawing.

You choose a nice sheet of paper, carefully measure everything out and then spend hours trying not to make a mistake.

But you often learn much more from ten quick drawings than you do from one drawing you’re frightened of ruining.

Small studies are brilliant for this.

Five-minute sketches. Value studies. Simple shapes. Drawing the same object from three different angles.

You’re removing some of the pressure and increasing the number of visual problems you have to solve.

And that’s really what practice is.

The more drawings you make, the less important any individual drawing becomes.

Mistakes stop feeling like failures and start becoming useful information.

4. Not drawing consistently enough

A long drawing session every couple of weeks can feel productive, but shorter and more regular practice is usually much more useful.

Drawing relies heavily on observation, and your memory for learning relies on the forgetting curve.

You’re training yourself to notice angles, proportions, shapes, values and relationships that you might previously have ignored.

And by drawing regularly, you stop yourself having to relearn everything from scratch.

Sometimes keeping the habit going is enough.

5. Trying to learn everything at once

Portraits. Perspective. Figure drawing. Landscapes. Charcoal. Coloured pencils. Ink.

There’s nothing wrong with being curious, but beginners can sometimes jump between subjects and materials so quickly that they never stay with one problem long enough to understand it.

If you spend a few weeks drawing simple still lifes, for example, you begin to recognise the same problems appearing again and again.

How wide is this compared with that?

What angle is that line?

Where is the darkest dark?

Why does my ellipse look out?

That repetition is incredibly valuable.

You don’t need less enthusiasm. You just need to focus it for a little longer.

6. Only choosing subjects you know you can draw

There’s a balance here.

You don’t want every drawing to feel impossible, but you also don’t want to spend all your time repeating things that already feel comfortable.

A slightly more difficult subject forces you to look harder.

Perhaps you normally draw single objects, so you try a simple still life.

Perhaps you always work small, so you make a larger drawing.

Perhaps you avoid hands because they look complicated, so you spend a week drawing nothing but hands.

You don’t need a huge leap.

Just choose something that feels slightly beyond where you are now.

7. Drawing what you think you see

This might be the biggest one of all.

When beginners draw an eye, they often draw their idea of an eye.

When they draw a tree, they draw their symbol for a tree.

A cup becomes two parallel sides with an oval on top because that’s what we know a cup looks like.

But drawing improves when you stop naming things and start looking at shapes.

Instead of thinking, “I’m drawing a nose,” you start noticing the angle of one edge, the shape of the shadow underneath it and how far it sits from the eye.

Instead of drawing a tree, you notice the particular silhouette of that tree.

This is why drawing can feel surprisingly difficult at first.

You’re not really learning how to move a pencil.

You’re learning how to see.

Most of the skills that make someone “good at drawing” aren’t mysterious gifts. They’re habits of observation that can be practised as a learnable skill.

Keep turning up, keep looking carefully and keep making drawings.

The improvement often happens more quietly than you expect.

What should you work on next?

You might be reading through this list and nodding along, recognising yourself in one or two of these points.

But that still leaves the difficult question: what should you actually work on next?

That’s where a structured course can be so useful.

Not because it will magically turn you into a drawing master, but because it gives your practice a clear direction. It helps you know what to focus on, what to practise, and in what order, so that good habits can form and your knowledge, confidence and skills can build on each other.

You still have to do the drawing.

But instead of wondering whether you’re practising the right thing, you have a path to follow.

And often, that little bit of structure is what turns good intentions into real progress!

Absolute Beginners Drawing Course
Light and Shadow Drawing Course
Urban Sketching Drawing Course
Landscape Sketching Drawing Course