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I've been working through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (which got mentioned before, and is a really excellent book). My big question is: What should I be aiming to do after I finish it to improve my drawing? I'd eventually like to try my hand at something like a graphic novel (a very distant goal, at this point, but one I'd like to keep working towards), so learning anatomy, perspective, etc., are all important. Is it simply a matter of doing something like picking up anatomy books/going to public buildings and drawing what I see continually, or are there other resources that people would recommend?
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# ¿ May 18, 2024 18:46 |
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To that end, starting out with something simple like a highly reflective metal ball with a single light that very clearly shows the change in shading can be useful. Practice with heavy/softer pencil marks to get the desired smoothness in the shading. Once you get comfortable with that, focus then on a harder subject with multiple changes in shadow/light (like the rabbit picture).
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Juanita Xtreme posted:How do you get over bouts of anhedonia/loss of motivation with art? Honestly? There's unfortunately no One Weird Tip that you can use to psychologically motivate yourself to work on a piece of art. That moment where the muse firmly grasps you and pulls you headfirst into the river of creativity happens far too rarely to actively rely on it to allow you to get projects done. My personal recommendation is for you to read Get It Done When You're Depressed. Even if you don't have clinical depression, the strategies in the book are broadly applicable, especially if you find that your biggest block with your work isn't, "I don't have enough time for this," but is instead, "I think my work is rear end/I don't feel motivated." The essentials of it boil down to: 1) Because motivation is internal (a feeling obtained after you start work) rather than external the majority of the time, it's absolutely vital to set yourself a schedule of work. Ensure you're consistently working for a set period of time every day. Make it into such a habit that you no longer need to think about whether you "feel" like you're motivated to work on something or not. (As an example: I never wake up in the morning wondering if I "feel" like having a shower or not. If it's a work/school day, I have a shower, regardless of whatever I'm feeling.) Setting a consistent schedule and doing it regardless of whatever your brain is telling you will help to keep you going even on the bad days. 2) Learn to question everything negative your brain tells you. In psychological parlance, this is typically referred to as cognitive behavioural therapy (or CBT). If you're looking for a good resource for this, I almost always recommend The Feeling Good Handbook, which is a fantastic resource that teaches you all of the essentials for combating negative thinking. What you're essentially trying to do with it is to reorient your patterns of thinking in order to get rid of the lies your brain is telling you. (For example: When your brain tells you, "This loving sucks! I can do better!", you can use your training in CBT to question the truthfulness of this statement. Does it actually "loving suck?" What does that mean? Why is it important that you could "do better?" Does everything you do need to be a flawless masterpiece?) It should be noted, of course, that CBT is a skill like any other and does require some practice, but it helps immensely when you're confronted by negative, self-defeating thoughts. Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jul 30, 2013 |
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Any recommendations on the best way to practice motor skills and observation? As a beginner, I'm still struggling to try and get lines to go the way I want them to. Is there anything I should be specifically focusing on (doing contour or gesture drawings, specific types of objects, etc.), or is it literally just "draw poo poo until it looks right"?
Vermain fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Aug 3, 2013 |
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soapydishwater posted:Does anyone have tips for actually finishing drawings? I can't ever finish anything I start, because I feel like I screwed up somewhere and just scrap the whole drawing. The reason you feel like that is simple: you're scared. I know this because I literally have had the exact same problem in the past. You don't want to try and finish it because, at the end of the day, it might not look as good as you want it to (which, in the case of a lot of people, is some unrealistic vision of "perfect"), and you have some vague, unnerving feeling that this would be terrible. What you've absolutely got to do is challenge this assumption. Why would it be bad if it doesn't look perfect? Does it have to be perfect? What will happen if I don't make a perfect picture? I think you'll find that a lot of your reluctance is simply negative self-talk that's buzzing away at the back of your brain and preventing you from actually finishing a picture. Check my post history in this thread if you want to know a little about how to talk back against those negative thoughts. As well, set a deadline for yourself. If you have infinite time for a project, it becomes insidiously easy to meander around on it, adjusting some of the shading, or adding in another flower, or whatever. A hard deadline will encourage you to focus on quickly and efficiently coming up with composition and filling in the relevant details and will help to distract you from the nervousness of making a complete drawing.
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:I think my biggest problem is it feels directionless. Here's my suggestion: do a very brief pre-plan of what you want to draw. I'm talking that you literally pencil in a stick figure in a pose and maybe do some rough scenery around the area. What you want to do is set down the initial "form" of what you're trying to draw before you start drawing in the face, body, etc. and then wondering what to do next. This is a part of drawing, as well: figuring out what you're going to draw (picturing it in your mind's eye) and then making it appear on the canvas. Don't be terrified of the fact that it's not exactly as you imagined it when you do draw it out; that art of translation is entirely a learned skill. It might help if you have some sort of goal you're working towards when it comes to the drawings (although you will still ultimately have to do a lot of sketching in order to focus and refine those skills). Have you considered trying to do your own comic? It might sound silly if you have no plans on showing it to people, but it gives form and structure to what is otherwise a series of disconnected sketches. Even if that isn't your goal, a comic can include a lot of diverse elements (composition, perspective, anatomy, etc.), and it can be a challenge to figure out how to fit them all together in a logical way. Plus, since you're not trying to paint a masterpiece, you don't have to worry about each panel coming out "perfectly" - you can just use it for practice and move on without spending ages dithering around with it.
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Lumpy posted:I liked this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHewz3JbKrQ ProkoTV is my go-to for any specific anatomy features I may be struggling with. Make sure to check out the rest of his videos if you have the time.
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I've been trying to sit down and do at least a few gestures nightly in order to try and hammer home the fundamentals. Would anyone mind giving me some critique? I picked two pages out of the lot that I thought were fairly decent:![]() ![]() So far, I think I'm mostly struggling in getting the flow down (I still tend to focus a little too much on the anatomy, especially around the chest) and in my line confidence (there's a few spots where you can see me quickly contracting lines back in or doing a two-stroke line). Any other comments would be appreciated!
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neonnoodle posted:What is your goal? Can you give an example of what you'd like to be able to draw like? I'm definitely interested in learning a sort of Western comic book/graphic novel style - something akin to Watchmen, for example. My assumption was that it's first best to just learn how to draw realistically as best as one can before attempting anything more stylized, though.
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JuniperCake posted:advice Thanks a ton for your critique! It gives me a lot to work with. I'll give your advice a shot with my next gestures. I've been trying to draw from life whenever I can for the majority of things, but human beings are unfortunately a sticky point, since I haven't yet been able to find any figure drawing classes within my area. I might be using the wrong search terms, though; I can definitely understand how crucial being able to see actual volume is for getting a drawing "right."
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The thing that makes me keep practicing is the scoring of small victories. I'll finally do an eye correctly; or I'll manage to make a fairly rounded circle on the first go; or I'll realize that the head curves like this instead of that; or I'll get the perspective on one piece of the drawing down pat. Focus on the elements that you did well and keep trying to improve on the ones you didn't do very well.
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vseslav.botkin posted:Hey everyone! I was looking at some older posts and saw that questions about grip came up a lot, so I thought I'd share this new Proko video: Thanks for the link! In terms of Proko videos, I thought I'd share another great one in case people in the thread haven't seen it: a drawing demo by Glenn Vilppu. He goes through the methodology of actually laying down the basic sketch lines and building on the drawing from those. I found it useful, since it gives me a sort of "guide" to work with when trying to do my own figure drawing of how to best construct objects before moving onto things like tone and texture.
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TwoQuestions posted:Should I just connect dots an inch apart until I can hit the second dot most of the time, or should I do something else to practice straight lines? That's a good method to practice with. The trick is that it's very hard to draw a straight line from any angle. Generally, the angle that works best for most people is to draw the line in a "northeast" direction (that is, drawing a line that moves towards the top-right of the paper), but feel free to experiment until you find the one that produces the straightest lines for you. The secret is to then simply rotate the paper so that you're always drawing the line in a northeast direction. A quick illustration: ![]() Draw a line in the direction of the red arrow (northeast). Then, flip the paper 90 degrees to the left, so that it looks like this: ![]() Then, draw a second line the same way, in the direction of the green arrow. You can keep repeating this until you eventually construct a box/cube/whatever straight-edged object you're drawing. It's a lot easier than trying to contort your arm into a weird pose to get a line down. Vermain fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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mutata posted:I wouldn't worry about it. You'll get better as you draw more and you'll never be perfect at it, so if you're just sketching, wing it and if you're doing something final, just use a ruler. Would you say the same thing for ovals/circles (using a compass)? I've been doing my damndest to practice them but it's really hard to get a proper representation of a more "perfect" circular form (like a machine-crafted cup or such) just doing it by hand.
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What're people's thoughts on formal methods for head drawing? I've been working on the Loomis method, and it seems quite promising (that is, I can tell that I'm looking at a simplified form of the head and can identify volume, etc.), but I'm not sure if it's best to learn a formal method like this and then work on actually drawing heads using it, or vice versa.
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Thanks for the advice! The Loomis method has definitely helped me with regards to initial composition, in that I can generally set up the volume a lot more easily, but I still end up screwing around with the basic shape and contour a lot. I think the most helpful thing so far has been doing landmarking and angling a lot more with my faces, since it helps me to keep everything relatively proportionate. ![]() Still have a long way to go (especially with line cleanliness - I'm so loving nervous when I draw!!! Augh!!!), but I'm definitely starting to see some improvements, which is what I've always been aiming for! I'm enjoying learning how to draw a tremendous amount if solely because it's both very easy to see improvement and very easy areas to keep working on.
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That's a good point. In all honesty, I haven't been finding it to be a complete panacea to drawing the head - I inevitably end up mucking around with the size of the cranium and the placement of facial structures after the initial ball's down (especially when hair is present, since it necessarily requires a certain amount of guesswork). The use of Loomis' method for me right now is in helping to visualize the rough three dimensionality of the head and in helping to provide a good placement of the initial landmarks (brow ridge, nostrils) that I can then base the rest of the drawing around. Edit: Actually, since we were just discussing it a few posts above: is the Loomis method one case where using a compass is fine, since it's purely for construction lines/landmarking? Apologies if this is an annoying question; I'm unsure of how important having "perfect" circles is compared to ones that are reasonably round for something like this. I can generally get one on the third or fourth try now. Vermain fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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pandaK posted:Yeah, but I'd generally say that you should consider drawing in the circle unassisted as practice instead of resorting to a compass. Your initial sketches will look marginally worse off, but you'll be building a much better foundation for the future in doing so That's a good point - thanks for the advice.
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What I like to do is intersperse my short sketches with long drawings, at a fairly high ratio (like, 20 sketches for every 1 long drawing). The value of longer drawing is that it really helps to drive home what parts you're struggling with that you might've been kind of glazing over in your sketches (or which might've looked better with less-clean lines), and it also gives you a nice benchmark as to your progress.
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If you can spare the dollars, Proko's premium content is fantastic. His portrait series has two long videos that show complete portrait drawings, both of which were highly useful for me. What it helped to show me was the methodical way in which an artist approaches a drawing. It's not just "start drawing"; it's plotting out the area you want to fill, defining large shapes, defining volumes and angles, etc.
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Pimpmust posted:Oh yeah, Proko's head and hair drawing guides are really excellent and quick little things. He's helped me immensely. I've been focusing on faces with his guides as a help, and it's day and night how much I've improved. This is what my face drawings looked like in June of last year, when I first picked up Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and decided to give this a crack. ![]() Euuugh. Embarrassing, but very necessary, both then and now. It gives me a fantastic benchmark for seeing how things have been going. This is one I did today: ![]() I'm proud of this one, especially, since it was done entirely from the imagination after spending about two weeks working solely on drawing the face. I've still got a long way to go, but the fact that I can do something like this - where I'd struggle to even make something that looked human-esque before - is highly motivating. Never give up!
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A lot of the hard part of drawing good circles/lines/ellipses is figuring out a good rhythm for your arm and shoulder and learning to replicate it consistently. Try holding the pencil/pen a few different ways and drawing from different angles on the paper to figure out what works best for you. Don't forget to warm up before trying to draw an actual circle for a more complex drawing, either. My circles tend to look a lot better after even just five minutes of doing some basic practice circles beforehand.
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I'd definitely recommend the Figure Drawing premium stuff (the videos have a lot more instruction packed into them, along with downloadable diagrams for things like proportions), but the Portrait Drawing premium stuff is a bit iffier. Its only major advantage is that it comes with two 1 hour-ish a piece videos that show two complete portrait drawings, which can be useful to see how he brings them all together. Other than that, though, you're not getting much for the purchase price. Highly recommend his stock, also. You end up getting a huge number of images (the one I've been practicing on recently, Veronica, has 433 images!) for really cheap, and they're all professionally lit with an excellent selection of different poses.
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Yeah, just going out and viewing things is the best way at getting better at drawing them. Do the same basic exercise with everything you're trying to learn to draw: figure out how you can reduce it down to a few basic cubes or spheres and go from there. My human drawings improved by a loving load once I started doing insanely simple oval ribcages and pelvis bowls (along with a lot of observation and practice).
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Hey, it's a hell of a lot better than the first self-portrait I did for that book. v![]() As per usual, I'll recommend Stan Prokopenko's channel to take a browse of once you've finished up Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Edwards' book is good for introducing some of the basic concepts like measurement, angle-checking, etc., but Prokopenko goes very in-depth with regards to capturing three-dimensionality on the paper. You may also want to browse through George B. Bridgman's Drawing from Life, which, while not filled to the brim with new material over the other two, goes over the idea of the planes of the face, the use of which has immensely helped my own portraiture. Importantly, don't be too orthodox when it comes to picking up drawing techniques. The method that works best for, say, drawing the head is going to differ from person to person (and, sometimes, from pose to pose), so it would behoove you to try out different techniques and find the elements from them that work best together.
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Noxville posted:Nah I didn't actually because I'm real bad at planning. Definitely will try and get the composition down before I start doing anything with any detail next time. Planning is the number one most important thing for drawing accurately, even if you're drawing from imagination. I tend to do something like: 1) Establish the start and end points of an object in the drawing (e.g. the top of someone's head to the bottom of their feet). I check the width compared to the height and add rough bounding lines for the side. 2) Subdivide the "line" between the start and end points based upon critical landmarks that will help me to better establish rough proportions. If I were drawing a human body in an upright, neutral pose, for example, I would first mark the division between the upper and lower body (typically at or just above the iliac crest, about halfway between the two points), then mark further key landmarks based on those subdivisions (like where the elbows will be, where the knees will be, and so on). 3) Begin sketching in the rough, initial shapes, focusing entirely on outlines over fine details. Using large circles/ellipses or simple line clusters is best here, because all you're aiming for is a correct silhouette that's proportioned properly to the specifications you set out. The objective should be to make sure that it "looks right" before you get into the nitty gritty of form, shadow, and so on. It seems like a lot of busywork, but it makes doing the final drawing so much loving easier. You don't need to waffle around wondering if the proportions are correct, if the knee is in the right place, and so on, because you've already confirmed that. It lets you focus on making sure the details are accurate. This stage also takes minutes to do once you get good at it, which means that you can easily make corrections at the time when it's easiest to do so.
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painted bird posted:Just posting here to attest that Proko's anatomy videos are goddamn magic. I've been watching them and drawing the structures of the face as he simplifies them and I'm making a lot of strides. The Loomis method helps a lot when you're just starting out, although I also borrowed a few elements from Bridgman (specifically, the hard facial angles, especially for the eye sockets) to good effect. Eventually, I think you'll find yourself starting to need the Loomis method less and less. I generally draw based off of a simple ball and cross (indicating the position of the eyes and bridge of the nose) and work from there these days, although the only reason I'm able to comprehend where the chin should go is because of doing the Loomis method a whole bunch. I mentioned it before, but he also has a lot of cheap, well-lit stock in a wide variety of poses for when you start doing body anatomy. I paid about $10 or $15 for the Veronica set and got 433 high-quality poses to draw from.
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![]() It's been about two years since I first picked up drawing. Something like this would've been unthinkable for me to even start on two years ago. A wacky series of medical complications laid me low in that time, but doing even this simple art gives me tremendous pleasure and a drive to keep going strong. Without much better to do, I'm angling to try to turn this into a real career. Getting to this point isn't something I could've done alone; this thread was my big jumping-off point. A big ol' New Years thanks to everyone for constant advice and recommendations. Hope y'all keep your art going!
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Ccs posted:Not trying to be a jerk, but what kind of art career are you thinking of pursuing? Selling drawings/paintings? Portraiture and paintings, along with commissions, with possibly something further down the road. It's mostly going to be supplementary for the moment; I haven't got starry eyes about my prospects, but I'd like to give 'er a go nonetheless. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia late last year, and my health's kinda gone in the shitter. I was previously angling towards something more word-related, but I'm struggling post-illness with reading and writing (I can get maybe an hour in before I've got to go lie down, and I'm having trouble with mental processing - especially things that involve logical chains - a lot of the time). I've mostly just been looking for something that I can actually do consistently, and I've found that spatial, creative work (like drawing) doesn't cause me nearly as much trouble. Vermain fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jan 1, 2016 |
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regularizer posted:I bought "Figure Drawing For All It's Worth" by Andrew Loomis, but it's a bit more advanced than what I'm capable of. Is there a good introductory book or online resource for figure drawing? I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I really cannot recommend Stan Prokopenko's video series enough when it comes to figure drawing. You'll want to look at and fully grasp his drawing basics series (although the materials aren't quite as important; I started learning how to draw with a pink eraser left over from high school and a spooky Halloween #2 pencil), as understanding three-dimensional forms and being able to draw them intuitively on a two-dimensional surface is key to good figure drawing. As neonnoodle said, try your best to ensure that you learn from live drawing as much as possible, as this will help to hone your skill at turning 3D into 2D. Since a photograph is already 2D, it can become very tempting to simply copy lines as you see them, rather than grasping the underlying structure of the figure. If you do use photographs to practice from, try to make sure that they come from someone like Stan who has their shots adjusted to downplay the various quiddities of photography (the distortion of a camera lens being one of the big ones) so that your analysis of the figure will be more accurate.
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a hole-y ghost posted:you need to get a good feel for rendering objects in a 3 dimensional space. Basically just draw a lot of big pages (at least 24"x18") totally full of cubes at different angles. This way you see them all on the page and keep trying until they look right (I say use a big page and fill it up because as you're drawing you can still see all the good and bad ones you made). Also, lots of big pages of circles, and lines. I'll second this. "Drawing" really refers merely to the ability to create three-dimensional form on a 2D surface (like a piece of paper or a computer screen). Once you learn how to do that and get an intuitive grasp of it, you've learned how to draw. Everything else past that point is just "knowledge": understanding the volume of an object in order to draw it accurately on paper. It sounds odd, but there's a certain point you'll eventually hit if you do this where you can begin to "feel" the three-dimensionality of objects as you draw them. Even if I'm not drawing something that's exactly shaped like a cube or a cylinder, I can visualize the rough volume of it with the use of things like contour lines. Ideally, you should be able to draw boxes, spheres, and cylinders from any angle. Challenge yourself to fill an entire sheet with boxes that are all at completely different angles. I recommend, of course, Stan Prokopenko's video on this, as well as the other videos he has on his page. Start out by using a horizon guide for drawing the boxes, and then start trying to draw them purely based on instinct. Futaba Anzu posted:who cares, draw on anything you want. paper is like the least important part in the learning process The only reason I would advise to not draw on lined paper is because it can make practicing confusing, since the intersecting lines muddy the drawing and can make it challenging to discern if it really looks "correct" or not. There's no need to go and purchase expensive Moleskines or whatnot, but you can go to any local arts and crafts store (or even big box office supply stores) and pick up giant pads of cheap newssheet for a couple of bucks easily. edit: i for sure know what a moleskine is and i'm not an idiot Vermain fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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It should be noted that drawing from imagination is something that I've found to come naturally out of simply grasping three-dimensional form when drawing and then gaining sufficient knowledge about a subject to be able to visualize its 3D elements. There's a lot of helpful guidelines out there, like the proportions of the head/body/etc., but you need to ensure that you have a fundamental grasp of volume first or else you'll find yourself struggling a lot with things seeming "off" about your drawings (like I used to, and still sometimes do).
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InevitableCheese posted:So I've been poking around in the OP and in other threads looking for good videos/courses to learn fundamentals (perspective, form, proportion, etc) with. Does anyone know any good online courses or videos that are decent quality? So far I have looked at stuff like Pencil Kings, Drawspace, and CTRL+Paint, but I'm reallllllly picky on spending my money on a course without knowing how good it is. I don't mind spending a subscription fee or anything, or shelling out $100 for a large online course, but don't want to spend poo poo tons of Subscription-wise, I would recommend the New Masters Academy. They have an absolutely massive video library from dozens of instructors (featuring luminaries like Glen Vilppu and Steve Huston) covering just about every aspect of drawing/painting/sculpting you could want, as well as a huge collection of photo references.
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Argue posted:What's the quality of these lessons? The instructors' skills are obviously not in question here, but I'd prefer stuff that's got actual lectures with fewer demos, like Proko, as opposed to paying just to watch several weeks of a guy draw and occasionally comment for 2 hours. They have a free head drawing lesson from Steve Huston out that I would say is fairly representative of the rest of the lessons available. There's usually a lecture section, followed by a demonstration and commentary section, followed by practice and an instructor demonstration after. Vermain fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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InevitableCheese posted:Well hot drat those look amazing for $30. They really put those lectures and assignments in well, and it's got some amazing instructors. I'll have to give this a test run soon! Unfortunately, no. Where to start depends a bit on your skill level, but I'd personally recommend Huston's "An Introduction to Art," "Components of Drawing," and "Essential Three Dimensional Drawing." After that, both Huston and Vilppu have extensive lessons regarding gesture drawing, which is where I'd go to next if you're primarily interested in doing figure drawings for the moment. Sheldon Borenstein's entire catalogue is also a good area for beginners, although his manner of public speaking rather grates on me; you might enjoy it, however. One of the nice things about art is that you benefit a lot from looking at different approaches and watching different artists performing the same basic procedure. I've learned a lot from seeing both Huston and Vilppu doing gesture drawing compared to if I had only seen one of them doing it. Don't be afraid to browse around all of the artists they have and see how they choose to do a certain procedure over the other.
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# ¿ May 18, 2024 18:46 |
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Does anyone have any good rules of thumb for light/shadow colors, especially with skin tones? I usually go lower saturation with a slight push towards blue for shadows and higher saturation with a push towards yellow for lights, but it never quite feels like the colors gel together, even when doing simple cel shading.
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