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Ya already have some excellent advice but I thought i'd pop in with some recommendations. First, there's a book called The Keys To Drawing by Bert Dodson that was maybe the most valuable book I bought on helping me take up drawing. It starts you out with the most basic stuff, but you sound a bit like me when I began and being told how an artist does something as simple as draw a line and how how to think about it really helped me. The book isnt too expensive and i've read a bunch since but that one helped me the most. A tip if you do buy it- do each exercise twice! Stick with the exact same subject, just do it again. You'll be amazed at how much faster and how much more accurately you do it! I'd also recommend learning about perspective. Its not something to start on right away but learning the rules helps you draw things that look right, as if they actually occupy the space they do. So you can do things like take the size of a person next to you and place them anywhere in your picture and know they are the correct size, and also why they are. Im sure there's a bunch of youtube videos out there but I find learning from books easiest, so for that i'd recommend Perspective Made Easy by Ernest Norling (a good intro to perspective, but isnt especially deep) or Successful Drawing, by Andrew Loomis (much more detailed, filled with illustrations). A third thing is a trick you can do, which is to take a picture turn it upside down, then draw that as you see it. The logic goes that often when you see something you assign it a name, like an eye or a hand. When you turn it upside down, your brain can no longer easily see these things, you instead see the lines that make them up much more easily. Drawing is, in a sense, just making lines (I know it seems like much more when you start out) that end up resembling what you drew. A big skill in drawing is to see these lines and how they relate to each other, so instead of drawing a hand you're drawing the lines that define the hand. There's a book that goes into more depth on that called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain but tbh I cant really recommend it beyond the one useful exercise. On a final note i'd like to say that no matter how bad you think you are, you do have the ability to get to where you want to be. I think it was Van Gogh who was told in the first week to quit art school and if you saw the stuff I made before I began you'd wonder why I even tried. but the thing is nobody is innately good at art of any kind- it's a skill like anything else and when you see some amazing piece of work you dont see the countless hours the artist spent practicing and refining to get there. You have a long road ahead of you (so dont get discouraged by any number of setbacks) just keep at it and you will get there!
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Aug 15, 2023 18:42
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 16:34 |
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Its actually a little scary how much you remind me of myself, only a little younger! I took up drawing at the age of 30 after I decided to quit smoking weed and needed something to do. Just know that the road infront of you is a long and hard one- I dont say that to discourage you but to reassure you. I found myself at times getting frustrated with how slow I was progressing and it really helped to know there are no quick fixes or things I was missing, just that I needed to practice lots more! Worrying about these things isnt silly, I and many others do too. But I frame it to myself as I can either spend time worrying or spend that time practicing- sometimes the anxiety wins but heck as long as it doesnt always win its something. As for the Loomis books, I think I actually have them all so I might aswell write a lil' about them. Drawing the Head and the Hands- an excellent book that gets you thinking about heads and features occupying a physical space. It focuses greatly on construction and not so much on the individual features. I'd recommend it, but drawings heads/ faces is one of the hardest things (imo) with regards to technical skills so it takes a lot of practice, but also is something you might find a different method/ approach works better for you. Figure Drawing For All Its Worth- p much the same as head and the hands, is excellent but also requires a lot of dedication. Successful Drawing i've already talked about, in short its good. Creative Illustration- this book is frankly insane. Its huge and contains info on so, so much. I havent worked through it yet but its definitely worth picking up eventually. Fun With a Pencil- this one i cant recommend sadly. Its kinda basic, but almost a little too basic. Almost kinda patronising? Or for someone who wants to draw doodles but not someone who wants to seriously study art. I only gave it a once over a while ago so maybe theres something of interest somewhere but tbh i'd skip it. My real recommendation is to not get any right away, just stick with Keys to Drawing and work your way through that. Loomis' work is a lot more specialised and havig a broad foundation which i think keys to drawing gave me, will help a lot more when it comes to tackling these other books later on. Loomis sorta writes to beginners but tbh he makes a lot of assumptions about the knowledge you have. Another reason is simply that buying books is easy but when you have all these huge books to work through it can be a bit daunting! There's also the v easy trap to fall into of having all these books and reading them instead of actually drawing, as a fellow adhd-haver I can tell you there'll be times where picking up the pencil is a struggle, but no amount of reading books is a substitute for that. The books arent going anywhere so you can always buy them at a later date and you'll find more immediate use from spending a bit more to get some nice paper or pencils or whatever materials you decide to use. Best of luck to you buddy EDIT: another reason I caution against going al in on the books is you might discover your interests lie elsewhere, in landscapes instead of figure drawing for example. AFistfulOfBitcoins fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Aug 16, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2023 18:41
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