About Lapis
Drawing can be taught. We built Lapis to teach it.
Lapis teaches drawing the way a good art teacher does at a kitchen table: show one step, wait, let you try it, then hand the pencil back so you can make it your own. It’s for five-year-olds, their grown-ups and everyone in between.
Why Lapis exists
Most people stop drawing somewhere around the age their pictures stop looking the way they want. Not because they can’t learn, but because nobody showed them how to look, where to start, or what to try next.
Lapis is that teacher, patient and on hand: lessons that wait for you, practice that tells you what to fix, and a record of how far you’ve come. With no ads, and nothing for children to buy.
How Lapis teaches
Lapis follows 12 rules, taken from how art schools, ateliers and classroom research teach drawing. Each one shapes something you’ll find in the courses.
- 01
Drawn by people
The lessons are drawn by people, stroke by stroke, in the order an art teacher would show them: light shapes first, then the outline, then colour and shadow.
- 02
A few fundamentals, in order, revisited
Line and shape, then form and perspective, then light, then colour, and back again at a harder level. One set of skills runs from five-year-olds to grown-ups.
- 03
Build it, and see it
Drawing from understanding (boxes, balls, cylinders) and drawing from looking (measure what is really there) are taught side by side, the way art schools do.
- 04
Most mistakes are mistakes of seeing
An angle misjudged or a proportion guessed goes wrong more often than an unsteady hand, so looking is taught on purpose and checks measure angles, proportions and landmarks.
- 05
Help that fades
First trace, then copy with the step beside the page, then draw it from memory a day later. Guides under the pen are easy; carrying the shape across is what teaches it.
- 06
Narrow drills, specific feedback
Each drill trains one named technique and says what happened to the line, not how good you are. Warm-ups bring drills back later, when they are harder to remember.
- 07
Techniques, not hours
Reports list the techniques practised rather than minutes drawn, because learning to look is what makes the hours count.
- 08
Drills serve drawings
Drills stay a small part of each course and never the whole session. Free drawing is never scored.
- 09
Light before colour
Value comes first, then colour as relationships: warm against cool, light against dark, one colour idea per page.
- 10
Gesture early and often
Quick timed poses start early for teens and grown-ups, in simple form for children, with drawing from memory throughout.
- 11
Structure, then freedom
Every children’s lesson ends with a “make it yours” step, and every course has an open project. Praise names what a child did, never who they are, and rewards are surprises, never promises.
- 12
Growth you can see
Every course opens with a “then” drawing and closes with a “now”, compared with your own earlier work and nobody else’s.
8 kinds of lesson
A course mixes them, so watching, practising, looking and making each get their turn.
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Watch and draw
A drawing draws itself step by step, then you draw it: traced, copied beside, or from memory.
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Drill
A short set of exercises, scored at once, getting harder as you improve.
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Concept
A few cards and quick visual questions: choose the drawing, tap the spot.
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Draw from life
A prompt, a set-up and a timer, then a photo of your drawing on paper.
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Colour
A colouring page with one colour idea, then something of your own to draw.
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Gesture
A run of timed poses, with the line of action shown afterwards.
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Project
A bigger piece, or a set of drawings over several days.
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Check
A then-and-now drawing, or for teens and grown-ups a short unaided skill check.
Lapis in numbers
The courses are being filled in lesson by lesson; the numbers here are read from the catalogue each time the site is built.
- courses for three age groups
- 42
- lessons in the plan
- 569
- lessons ready today
- 350
- drills and drawing games
- 22
- pictures in the colouring book
- 156
See it for yourself
Try a lesson with no account, or make a free family account and start a course.