Hey everyone,
i was wondering what you all do to improve your drawing skills. i know obviously draw, draw, draw, but what do you actually do as a routine? i am usually alone at night so i can't draw characters from real life, should i do it from photos? my style is a blend of cartoon and actual figures. any suggestions?
thanks in advance
Take what you are already drawing, and add to it.
If you are good at drawing faces, then keep doing that, but add a figure's body to it.
No need to add lots of things at the start, you want to take small steps so you can learn how to pull off these new items.
If hands give you trouble, then draw a figure and put extra effort and study into the hands--and if the drawings "fails" for whatever reason, you still have the parts you are comfortable with to make it a successful drawing anyway.
This way you increase, what I call, your visual vocabulary.
This takes the "practise" philosophy and applies it in a methodical way.
You build on what you already know and chip away at your weaknesses.
At the start it might seem like you have so mny things to learn, but just concentrate on things like the figure, then add simple backgrounds, then work on perspective, then work on props, vehicles or animals.
Always draw stuff that interests you in the process--so that you keep drawing--and challenge yourself occasionally. Look for other images that have solved the drawing problem you are immediately facing and learn from those images.
Good luck.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
According to John K.'s blog, just buy Preston Blair's instructional book and follow those steps.
Order my book Jesus Needs Help on Amazon or download on Kindle.
You can also read the first 18 pages of my next book for free at this link: The Hap Hap Happy Happenstance of Fanny Punongtiti
I think drawing life would make you better with animated characters, but to build characters and say that it could improve your skills as a drafstman seems like reverse engineering. Seems like a one way street, but I don't -know- for sure so I'll concede to any good argument =) If he didn't already have 57000 comments per post I might ask him about that.
So SL, are you saying that learning solid construction techniques doesn't improve your ability to draw? Should we all go back to starting from the left eye and working our way out?? I hope I misunderstood you.
Drawing from life is a very uncomprimising way to learn, and probably the best to get your skills up to par. -It either looks like the subject or it doesn't. But even when drawing from life, you need construction lines-- and Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation is a good book to learn them from.
I'm also partial to Draw Comics With Dick Giordano. And, of course, anything by Andrew Loomis.
Hello.
The best way to improve your drawing is to obtain the information and then to practice, practice, practice....
I find Glenn Vilppu's books the best. He breaks the figure into simple forms and them helps with the anatomy and proportions. He offers books and has demo tapes and DVD's for instruction. He also offers DVD's with models for practice.
His location drawing book is also very, very good. I used to have a fit with location drawing and painting because I was overwhelmed with the info of a scene. Glenn demos a couple of ways to approach the material. His point to point method makes it easy to drawn on location...now drawing on location is one of my absolute favorite things to do.
Other good books are:
THE NATURAL WAY TO DRAW by Nicholaides
DYNAMIC FIGURE DRAWING (or any book by Burne Hogarth) The Hogarth drawings are over the top but the TEXT info is great.
So....get some info and DRAW, draw draw.....
Thanks
Larry
web site
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Yeah, Vilppu has great books. I also like George B. Bridgeman's books. He also likes to break the body down into basic shapes and wedge them into one another.
Get those books, study them and draw, draw, draw.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
I have a number of Hogarths and the complete Bridgeman, and I find them both remarkably bad teachers. They try to force their particular styles on students with this "When can draw exactly like me, THEN you'll be ready" kind of attitude. And I disagree.
Hogarth gives every figure these grotesque, ropey muscles, and makes womens's breasts look like little tea cups located under their arms. Bridgeman draws this odd, lumpy combination of fat and muscle. I have yet to see that texture on a human being.
Both Al Williamson and Archie Goodwin took a classes from Hogarth, and pretty much railed against him. He had a charming habit of sitting down to "correct" something in a student's drawing, and end up redrawing the whole thing his way. Exaclty what an art teacher should NEVER do.
I'll stick with Loomis, Blair and Giordano.
One thing I can't find much on in anatomy books-- even Loomis's-- is body fat. I have every bone and muscle listed and illustrated in three or four books a piece. But fat doesn't seem to exist. Even Bridgeman, whose models seem to have a fair amount of 'junk in the trunk,' doesn't really talk about the underlying forms of body fat.
Fat comes in many shapes, levels of bounce, etc. Much of cheesecake style pin-up art is finely sculpted body fat which acts in a certain way.
Observe the firm bounce of a young lady's nice, round derierre tightly wrapped in a form-fitting skirt as she walks on stiletto heels. Now compare and contrast this with the pendulous gut that hangs out from under the Tweety Bird shirt of a woman of late middle age who's spent most of her life parked on the sofa in front of the TV, eating potato chips while watching her "stories." Do you not see a difference? Pleasantly plump and morbidly obese are two very different things, and that has to do with more than just gender.
In other news: Christopher "Cutting Edge Manga" Hart has finally put out a how-to book that's worth owning! Drawing Crime Noir For Comics & Graphic Novels isn't as good as, say, Crime Does Not Pay or EC's Crime Suspenstories, but it's still pretty good. Hart displays more knowledge about light and shadow in this book than I thought he had. Some compulsion made him put a few costumed superheros in it, and there are hardly any cityscapes-- which are essentail to the genre. The awkward attempt at hardboiled writing throught the book is also pretty amaturish, but it's still cool to see something about crime comics come out in the modern age.
No offence Doc, but I've always told people NOT to get any of Hart's books. I've checked out a couple of this books, and they are very amaturish and he never seems to really have a good grasp of what ever style he's doing. Just my own personal preference.
Looking at the masters, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Rubins and the like won't hurt you're drawing skills either.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
They get inexpensive real quick...if it's a good quarter I think someone easing into the information could still benefit. Personally I like the concept of his anatomy book, only doing superficial muscles (in the literal sense)...
Yes, I generally hate Hart's books. I'm just a sucker for the crime comics genre, so I picked this one up. Maybe it was low expectations, but I like it pretty well. Of course, you could still probably learn more from getting a magnifying glass and studying one splash panel from a crime story by Wally Wood, Reed Crandall, Johnny Craig, Jack Davis or Bernie Krigstein. But then I've already done that over and over.
Just to harp on my favorite, I love Loomis's simplified muscle forms in Figure Drawing...
Is that a similar approach? Just covering the obvious forms that show up externally, instead of total anatomical review?
Here, he's talking about the "cape". I've found this and similar ideas in the book very useful.
http://www.fineart.sk/show.php?w=910
Study the drawings that you admire, not the drawings that other people admire, as cited above. Pinpoint what it is you like about those drawings, whether line style, form, coloring, expressions, fullness, or flatness. Don't bother with "how to" books if you don't admire the drawings within.
You should decide early on what type of style it is you want to approach and study people with similar styles. There's little sense in extensively studying the drawings of Da Vinci if you really want to draw like George Herriman, or vice versa.