Drawing/Sketching fundementals thread

CHIEfy · August 18, 2014, 8:48pm

Let’s just say that I need to buy a new camera. Maybe I’ll use the money left over on my next student loan.

The scanner I have isn’t too bad, but I just need to use it more to make sure.

Sexperienced · August 19, 2014, 6:50am

Posts I’ve found on the net explaining why Life drawing is important:

Basically, it boils down to understanding how things behave in the real world in order to emulate them successfully. Everything from light to perspective to anatomy can be learned and learned well through life drawing.

For instance, let’s say you want to draw a character sitting on a chair. You’re going to run into a series of problems if you don’t do a lot of life drawing:

You probably have a very limited amount of sitting poses in mind, and most of them were acquired through looking at or copying other people’s stylized drawings. It won’t help you that you probably don’t have a good grasp of human anatomy. This means you’ll have trouble coming up with your own pose, and even more trouble if you want to change the angle, even by a little bit. Things that should come to you naturally, such as the position of the legs or arms will become massive walls of pain and despair that you can’t climb over. This is why you see so many “help me with this pose!” or “I don’t know what to do with the arms!” threads in Picture Post.

This happens because these folks don’t have even a basic understanding of how the human body works. Through life drawing, you pick up a lot of subtleties in gesture, weight and balance. So when you draw your character sitting, you instinctively know how to pose the arms and legs because you’ve seen real human beings sitting and you’ve picked up this information through drawing them.

You probably have a very limited amount of chairs in mind, and you don’t really understand how they were built or how they stand on their own so you’re unable to just come up with one of your own on the fly. You’re reduced to finding reference, but you most likely won’t be able to look at a photo of a chair and do a turnaround in your head to make it fit with the composition that you have in mind. So you’re reduced to either searching for hours until you can find a photo that fits or giving up and drawing a rock.

You don’t understand how perspective works in the real world and foreshortening is most likely lost on you. You may have looked up tutorials and whatnot but it never looks quite right. This is because tutorials are 2D things and while they’re useful, you can’t learn everything from them because when you’re referencing or learning from another drawing, the 3D to 2D translation has already been done for you. So you learn a technique, but you don’t have the “visual bank” in your mind to actually apply this technique successfully. As such, you will most likely end up drawing something without a background and not at an angle that is actually interesting.

You don’t understand how fabric behaves in the real world, why wrinkles are formed and how they’re formed or where they go. This results in either excessive wrinkling all in the wrong places (VERY common in newbies trying to draw anime/manga) or none at all. Both are terrible.

You probably don’t understand how light behaves in the real world or its relationship with color, so when you color and shade your drawings, you miss several extremely important things which end up making the picture look flat. You may end up over rendering it or putting in too much detail to compensate, but it’ll end up sucking.

In addition to what I said above, not having an understanding of things like facial and muscle structure will lead to incredibly awkward shading that actually makes the picture look flatter.

This is just the most basic stuff, off the top of my head.

You know how a lot of people post asking for pose help, help with shading, etc? None of them would have those problems if they drew from life.

This is what it teaches you. This is why it’s important.

Will life drawing teach you to draw anime? No. It won’t. You won’t be able to magically draw your K-ON! doujin because you draw from life. That’s not how it works, if you want to learn to draw a certain way, you have to study that particular style. But if you don’t have that base which you can only acquire through study of the real world, you will not be successful at emulating any style. Because anime people are still people, even if they’re highly stylized, they’ll still have the same mannerisms, the same gestures as a real human being. Same goes for anime horses, anime dogs, anime whatevers. Backgrounds in anime are also based on real places, buildings, cars, what have you. Everything is a representation of the real world. Familiarize yourself with it, and you will do better no matter what you want to do with your art.

You also need to study other things! Composition, light, color, perspective and anatomy (both human and whatever animal you want to draw). There are many, many books about these subjects that can help you. The free Loomis books will teach you a little bit of everything you need to know, but remember: books can only do so much. You need to draw from life.

That’s the real difference between this and this. It’s a good understanding of how things look in the real world. The second drawing isn’t a different “style” – it’s a bad drawing!

So, with that in mind, and assuming you do your life drawing every day for an hour or so, just how do you learn to draw anime??? Well, first make sure you can draw real people and understand structure and proportion. Then, just study your favorite artists. STUDY, NOT COPY. This is how you study:

Choose a picture to study. Find one that you really like, because you’re going to be stuck with it for a while.

Look at the picture. Really look at it. Try to figure out what the artist is omitting or exaggerating. Look beyond the obvious big eyes, small mouth. Look at the shape of the character’s legs, look at the placement of objects in the composition. Why are they there? Nothing is accidental in a composition. There is a reason that artist decided to put that thing there. Why is that? Try to imagine the picture without that element. Does it still look good? Why? Ask yourself these questions all the time: why and how. Why did he/she do it, and how? Try to answer those questions.

Try to break the picture down into simple shapes and draw them. Draw those shapes, little stick figures where the characters go, big boxes where the buildings or whatever go. Skip all the small details, focus on the shapes first. Compare it to the source image. Do your shapes look like they’re in the right place? Measure things carefully. Is the gap between those two shapes really that wide? Does that character’s elbow line up with that other character’s forehead? Pay attention to what you’re doing. Be patient. Get it right.

Once you’re satisfied with your sketch, start adding more detail. Always do the big stuff first – don’t draw all the details on the hair, for example, just the general shape of it. Leave things like highlights on the eyes and hair for later. You want to focus on the stuff that actually makes or breaks the picture right now. Look at composition, light, perspective and anatomy. Try to figure out why and how the artist chose to stylize certain elements. This is VERY IMPORTANT. Don’t just copy the picture, try to understand it. Figuring out the thought process that went into making an image is what’s most important about studying someone, not making an exact copy. You’re going to end up with a pretty good copy anyway, so just forget about the results and focus on the process.

Keep adding more details until you finish the picture. Again, keep in mind that your study isn’t supposed to look identical to the source image. You’re not copying it, you’re just trying to understand it. The final result does not matter at all in this case, it’s entirely about the process.

This is the difference between being influenced by another artist and downright copying them. In studies like this one, you learn how the pictures were made and you also learn why they look the way they do – and then it becomes easy to pick up the elements you like best (and you’ll actually know why you like them!) and apply a similar technique to your own work. This is how you polish your style. It’s not by copying, it’s by studying.

Rinse, repeat.

Disclaimer: I am not an amazing, uber skilled artist and I’m sure I missed a lot of stuff. Please correct me and add information to this thread if you want.

Oh, and the artists I’m using as an example of good anime are my favorite Japanese artist, Kenichi Yoshida, and Miyazaki (I’m sure I don’t need to link you to this one).

The bad drawings were just Googled, I don’t know who the artists are. I’m using their doodles for educational purposes, however, so I’m not violating their copyright. If you drew one of them and want it taken down let me know (and follow this thread’s advice, you’ll get better!)

Words of wisdom:

Kaiser-chan

I think it’s also really, really important to remember and emphasize that drawing from life is not drawing “semi-realism,” or “realism” shading or “style” from your head. It is not about a doodle of a person who has more than a line for a nose, because all that teaches usually is how to polish. I know I learned no more from that when I was younger, and I see a confusion between the two a lot. That stuff is just a variant on drawing anime - it’s regurgitating what you think a person looks like, rather than drawing one, and also just ingrains bad habits.

x_Silver_Starlight_x

I think it might be important to mention the fact that they’re not going to be good at life drawing right away. A surprising amount of people think it’s supposed to be easy.

Bret Blevin’s why draw from life: part1 part2 part3

fistoftheryustar · August 19, 2014, 8:18am

http://i.imgur.com/vSfH4Cp.png

I just don’t get pro-level shading. I feel like I’m either

A) Working off of memory (which isn’t good, because you’re essentially just copying the light source from one sketch to the next)
B) Just putting lines there to suggest generic shading

Sexperienced · August 19, 2014, 9:36am

^^ Read the thread rules.

fistoftheryustar · August 19, 2014, 10:58am

?? Im asking about shading and lighting.

Sexperienced · August 19, 2014, 11:22am

Read the 2nd sentence on the first post of this thread.

Chad · August 19, 2014, 11:38am

Ignore him and draw with whatever media you like.

I wouldn’t worry to much about “shading.” You need to understand how forms work before you will be able to accurately describe them.

Sexperienced · August 19, 2014, 1:51pm

Drew these quick sketches 40 minutes ago. I’d prefer to draw from life but life drawing classes aren’t provided on the days that I’m currently available.

StockyJam · August 19, 2014, 6:41pm

@Sexperienced
I would highly recommend you rethink the “rules” you conjured up for your thread man.
for the simple fact it really deters people and it limits and inhibits people from participating.

also, whats your obsession with graphite man?

its literally THE WORST medium to produce artwork in.
THE
WORST
HANDS DOWN.

looking at stuff drawn in pencil…its just…hurts my eyes mang.
painful.
makes my eyes strain just to see whats going on.

here’s an art lesson for you,
“lots of gradations of grey…sucks donkey balls.”-Da Vinci

GomuGomu · August 19, 2014, 9:12pm

Something I did the other day. I haven’t drawn in a couple of weeks, and I need to get back on it.

Spoiler

http://i.imgur.com/MkDCsxw.jpg?2

fistoftheryustar · August 20, 2014, 1:00am

Yeah not sure why the rules are so strict. Its making me weary of posting another one.

And gomu, enjoy the high of getting back into art. The past two weeks I got back into drawing, and its an amazing feeling to see yourself grow. No doubt thatll happen to you too.

Sexperienced · August 20, 2014, 1:45am

I don’t need everyone participating. Rather than me rethinking the rules here’s a thread for you guys to post in… Another fan art thread

You can also post artwork in the lounge thread or you can start your own thread.

The aim of this thread is to teach people how to draw realistically from memory and in order to do so you need an understanding of light and shade, anatomy, form, perspective and composition. fistoftheryustar, If you want an understanding of high level shading I suggested you gain an understanding of these things first before you even think about adding colour to your work.

People who hate working with the easiest medium which is graphite generally can not draw. This isn’t an art dump thread. If you want to post colored work you can do so in the lounge thread or in the link I’ve posted above.

Neesa · August 20, 2014, 3:56am

It’s really pretentious to say that people that don’t like/hate working with graphic can not draw. I personally love pen/ink, markers. I only use a pencil for my framework and go from there. But hey, this is your thread. I’ll see myself out.

fistoftheryustar · August 20, 2014, 4:17am

Hi is this an improvement from the other pictures I posted? (About the same, better, worse?)

http://i.imgur.com/3ntwpfI.jpg

Sexperienced · August 20, 2014, 4:17am

Plenty of threads around to post your artwork in. My threads aren’t for everyone. It’s annoying when I post rules to my thread and I get posts like these:

If I’m pretentious and the rules to my threads are too stringent just post your work somewhere else.

Neesa · August 20, 2014, 4:36am

You obviously need better reading comprehension:

Best of luck with your thread.

Sexperienced · August 20, 2014, 5:15am

Err… no offense but my post wasn’t a direct response to your post. I was addressing the people who don’t like my single colour graphite and black ink rule. I don’t know why you seem to think I care whether you post in my thread or not.

CHIEfy · August 20, 2014, 5:21am

Guys, I was summoned in this thread hoping to look at a variety of traditional work and help improve other people’s skill as well as my own; however, I didn’t make this thread nor it’s rules.

That being said, if you want to improve then I can only suggest that you learn from the bottom up (pencil and paper). No matter if your work is digital or abstract, I could never imagine anyone making quality work without any experience with the most common of mediums. They are only going to help you improve.

If you don’t like graphite that’s fine. That really doesn’t make you a bad artist; however, rejecting specific mediums all together (not just graphite) can effect your rate of improvement. Personally I adore graphite since it clears the path to my clean lines with ink and darker leads.

@fistoftheryustar I’m enjoying the Street Fighter work, but you’re only slowing down your improvement if you limit your work to one subject. I think this explains the rule “variety in your work”.

I’m actually putting the drawings for my story aside for a while to get a head start on my figure and life drawings before classes.

fistoftheryustar · August 20, 2014, 5:33am

Not the critique I wanted but hey thanks more nazism!

Taito · August 20, 2014, 5:46am

The thread title says drawing/sketching fundamentals, so I’ll treat it as a thread emphasizing discussing fundamentals + examples instead of a general art dump, that jives with the OP rules anyway.

Came up with this the other day

http://i.imgur.com/WxfiPtS.jpg

Tried to pay attention to lighting and perspective. Feedback would be welcome (because CA.org are just full of asshats these days)