Now, while studying anatomy, is it okay to also do some doodles in a cartoon manner? And doing that, would I just be simplifying lines? I ultimately want to do comics but I know drawing anatomy in a realistic style helps more with that. But I was wondering if doing both at the same time would hinder, and if it's just simplifying that makes it cartoon-y or something else.
I swear, I'm going to make a thread in here one day. I just need to stop being a chicken shit about it.
You can doodle whatever you want, you definitely shouldn't feel like you have to stop 'having fun' just because you're taking art seriously. But do remember that when you draw you're reinforcing both muscle memory and mental links. That means if you spend an hour doing anatomy studies from life, but then two hours drawing say, lopsided anime faces, you're strengthening the neuronal pathways that lead to lopsided anime faces more than the ones that remember what real people look like.
That said, to answer your question, you can definitely do cartoony stuff while you study. In fact, cartoony stuff IS studying. Particularly if you eventually want to do comics, doing cartoon doodles is a great way to develop your linework, lines of action, character design - so much! Posting your doodles in here (meaning the AC) is also a good idea, because we can see your process and maybe catch things that go off-track early on.
Basically I'd say no time drawing is ever wasted, but drawing thoughtfully (in whatever style) will generally get you somewhere faster than careless noodling around.
are there particular cartoon study tutorials I should be checking out?
I do plan to do more anatomy studies than doodles. I think this week I'll spend time doing some drawings and hopefully on the weekend start my thread. As scared as I am, it's gonna have to happen at this point.
@Tidus53 I know of Proko, i'll watch more of his videos. And I already have a pinterest account
I see some good ones floating around tumblr sometimes, but @Iruka and @Angel_of_Bacon and @Fugitive and @Tam and all the other guys I can't be bothered tagging would probably have links closer to hand.
Uhh... there's a lot I'd like to address here but I'll settle for the last sentence: being competitive about art can be beneficial up to a point, but if you focus too much on it you'll probably learn less in the end. If you have to choose somebody you want to surpass, choose yourself. Otherwise you're likely to end up the shadow of whichever "single person" inspires you, and more importantly you'll probably forget to widen your tastes. Just have fun, set goals, work to reach them.
You definitely put it a lot better than I did.
Sorry for going off again guys. I won't hold against anyone who wants to delete my post.
are there particular cartoon study tutorials I should be checking out?
I do plan to do more anatomy studies than doodles. I think this week I'll spend time doing some drawings and hopefully on the weekend start my thread. As scared as I am, it's gonna have to happen at this point.
@Tidus53 I know of Proko, i'll watch more of his videos. And I already have a pinterest account
Going back to my own mad rambling (it's the PC-peh), cartoon=stylization and stylization=your own style.
There aren't really "cartoon" studies you could find (at least when I went looking), cartoons are sort of compact representations of men and women; they're simplified to the point of being recognizable and charming. Definitely look I could be wrong--the last few days have been pretty humbling for me--but if you were to find a cartoon study it could be in someone else's style, not yours; or someone's analysis of generic and common attributes. Again, I can be wrong talk to one of the big dogs here, they'll def know more. (They're like an army of Iron Shieks,"[THEY] MAKE [ME] HUMBLE!")
I'd say find and look at the art of others that you think match the pictures in your head, but don't copy them. Let 'em have an influence, everyone here has someone they follow and use as reference when drawing (or at least I do).
People who have a "toony" style that is freaking jaw-dropping and totally original are guys I find on dA. I'd say take a look at Jollyjack and ShoNuff44: Jollyjack is pretty much a freelance jack-of-all-paths in his long career and ShoNuff's art is pretty recognizable at a glance. I also need to give a shout out to the now-defunct webcomic Hana's Not A Boy's Name; at the zenith of it's popularity, it was incredibly popular, well-drawn, and well-written.
Though I can't say anything concrete until we see what you have or tell us of an artist that does influence your work.
Again, if going by TES skill levels, I'm barely a mid to mid-high novice. So be careful with my words.
are there particular cartoon study tutorials I should be checking out?
@Mim
For stuff that's online, these Glenn Vilppu (a drawing instructor at Disney for...forever) articles about life drawing and how they relate to the needs of animation are solid. (First read them literally 17 years ago- which is basically 1700 years in internet time- and they still hold up. And now I realize I have to go update all these links in the OP.)
John K's (AKA The Ren and Stimpy guy) blog has a lot of good stuff, which unfortunately buried in between a lot of stuff that is irrelevant or just angry ranting about things. Check the labels on the sidebar for things that sound useful (ie: construction, functional drawing, etc.) to help sift through it. http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/
This goes over some useful things that may get glossed over in more traditional life drawing books/lessons, such as exaggeration, iterating on the design of a pose for more effect, and how to bring across the ideas of force, weight, and torque in a character pose. I don't know what your level of traditional drawing is, so some things here might be a bit difficult to carry off effectively or understand if you don't already have a firm grasp on perspective or construction. It covers one piece of a much larger puzzle.
These books are really just a compilation of handout sheets that Walt Stanchfield (another Disney drawing instructor) had made for his lectures over 20 years. Mostly, they cover the importance and approach to gesture, simplification, and acting- really important aspects of making an animated character feel 'alive'.
However, like Force, I am almost hesitant to recommend it without knowing your drawing level, because the examples given are mostly crude ballpoint pen gestural drawings, and without having a broad awareness that these are not "how to draw" lessons full-stop, and are really just an exercise to focus one's attention on a very specific aspect of drawing, you may get a false impression of how much you should focus on this one thing rather than all the other matters that make up good drawing. These sheets were aimed at people that were good enough at drawing to get a job working at Disney in the first place, and thus were very well versed in life drawing to begin with. Great information for people with existing drawing skills, but potentially dangerous if you're not already well-versed in life drawing.
This may just look like a bigger version of one of those dopey "How to Draw Cartoons" books that everyone hates on first blush- draw 4 circles and PRESTO you've drawn Bugs Bunny! But unlike those ones, this is a book that every animator I've ever known has had on their shelf. Sure it's illustrated in a 1930's-50's cartoon style and perhaps that doesn't interest you, but the points about keeping your character construction simple, employing a line of action, and the principle of moving three-dimensionally remain relevant.
You may notice that a lot of this winds up looping back around to being awfully close to "Real Ass Drawing" rather than just being purely about "Cartoon Drawing", and that's not a coincidence or me trying to push an agenda back towards a more realistic style. It's just that a great cartoon drawing may seem totally different and irrelevant to a great realistic one to the layman- but an experienced cartoonist realizes that there's only maybe a 5% difference between the two, and it's the really 95% of the things that they hold in common, the core foundation aspects, that make them great.
I'm going to spend this week putting together some drawings and definitely posting a thread next Saturday. I just want to have some stuff you guys can look at.
I'm terrible right now, so I'm prepping myself for a lot of crit, but here's hoping I can improve.
Hey guys, my 9 year old nieces' birthday is coming up and I was thinking of getting both of them an art book(s).
Ever since I came back from TAMU and began spending more time drawing, my nieces have been sort of invested in what I've been drawing, one of 'em more than the other. For a while now she's been saying that she tries to draw my favorite hero and wants to show it to me. She tries to show off her perfect 3D boxes and owls and things, and I want to encourage it, if I can. I don't know if it's just to impress me or they do like it, but I'd like to see where this may take them.
I know that after all the recent discussions a lot of you guys have had with me that the key to growth and development as an artist is studying the fundamentals and drawing from life, but a pair of 9-year old children don't really have access to a lot of ,eyrm... "life drawing reference" and I'm sure my step-brother and sister-in-law would not appreciate that kind of content.
So I'm asking you guys if you have any good recommendations for a pair of beginner artists? I was thinking about Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Posing or Andrew Loomis Figure Drawing for All it's Worth and Force: Dynamic Life Drawing, but all of 'em seem a little too advance for a pair of kids, but I also don't want to buy them like "How to draw manga" or something low-level (even though my nieces are low-level).
If not books than maybe I should introduce them to a couple of YouTube tutorial channels and posemaniacs?
Anything you have I'll take and I really thank everyone here for what they do and what you'll post. If not, than thank you anyway guys.
I'd probably suggest How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. I know the title makes it sound identical to all those other terrible "how to" books out there, but this particular one was drawn by John Buscema, which means it actually has good illustrations and information- it's cut down to be appropriate for a younger audience, but the information about perspective, construction, and gesture is solid. Also it doesn't have nudity, which I'm sure her parents will be happy about.
You may also try Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain- the bulk of the text may be over her head, but the exercises (the actual useful parts) should be easy enough to follow. I think there are version that come with workbooks just going over the exercises, which may be worth looking at. (I've actually soured on the book over the years because it gives the false impression that it's all you need to know, which couldn't be further from the truth- but the exercises themselves remain useful, especially to a beginner.)
Beyond that, there really aren't too many books that of much worth on drawing that don't either contain nudity (life drawing is essential to learning that it's hard to get away from-if their parents want to support her they're going to have to deal with the fact, maybe not right now, but certainly in her teenage years) or would be overwhelming at her age. I mean, Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" book is a fantastic and thorough book for someone wanting to know perspective and industrial design- but would a 9 year old appreciate it, I don't know. Maybe if you think of it less as 'buying it for her now' and more 'making sure she has access to it when she's ready for it', that would be a good buy.
edit: Maybe Glenn Vilppu's Sketching on Location Manual would be good as well. It also helps to imply good practice for getting life drawing experience without access to formal nude posing- get your nieces, give me some sketchbooks and pencils, head down to a park or beach or a mall that has a lot of people walking around, sit down on a bench and draw them people. It's a good habit and a fun activity.
Hey Armigos (Art+aMIGO? I am so funny! I'm really not, I'll go lobotomize myself to keep myself from such terrible jokes in the future)
First off thanks for all the advice on gesture drawing and Proko, everything feels different and my art actually does start to look better. Right now the percentage of stick figues to actual figures is unevenly stacked, but it definitley feels much more lively and has I guess "character".
Which leads me to my next question, and I know a lot of you guys may look down on me for asking. You guys all learned to develop outside of the fundamental figure drawing style, right?
I mean you all learned figure drawing, in and out and are now qualified to teach it to someone's chil'ren, but are you still doing all the "steps"?
How do I put this... Were you ever taught how to do something one way, but over time you found better and more efficient ways to do the thing? I'm not ungrateful, everything I've learned now has made things awesome, I just hope that if I keep doing this enough that I can just do it quickly.
I know a lot of you guys are pretty annoyed about be submitting questions about basic stuff, but I've never really had formal teachers. Know it or not, you guys are the closest thing I've ever experienced to a teacher. So I thank you for your patience, your honesty, and encouragement. And thank you for that dose of reality every now and then to make me step up my game.
yes, professionals have some shortcuts, but they still do the foundation work. Practice is really the #1 thing that enhances speed and accuracy, and the best practice is not to cut corners early on in the hopes of quick gains when your aim is for long-term success.
I mean you all learned figure drawing, in and out and are now qualified to teach it to someone's chil'ren, but are you still doing all the "steps"?
How do I put this... Were you ever taught how to do something one way, but over time you found better and more efficient ways to do the thing? I'm not ungrateful, everything I've learned now has made things awesome, I just hope that if I keep doing this enough that I can just do it quickly.
The simple answer is yes, the experienced pro still does all the "steps"- yet can also accomplish things quicker.
But the gains in speed are not really a matter of "better techniques" or "learning shortcuts"- it's a matter of gaining the experience to:
- Make fewer mistakes, so there's less rework and rechecking to be done. They've already worked so much that they've made every mistake there is to make 1000 times over, so they're easier to dodge.
- Having a full command of one's dexterity, not having to grapple so much without being able to draw the line you want, or get the line weight variation, or struggling with the medium.
- Knowing the processes backwards and forwards from having done it so much, not having to remember the last tutorial or lesson that they just saw. To bring back the language analogy, it's the difference between someone who speaks a language fluently, and someone having to look up words in their traveler phrasebook every other sentence.
- Having the confidence to depend on those processes to pull one through, rather than spending much of one's mental energy second-guessing everything or trying to figure out how to tackle a problem. The beginner spends an incredible amount of their brainpower when they realize they've made a mistake by agonizing over them, thinking about how far behind they feel in this drawing session or as a artist in general, making excuses for the state of their drawing, etc...the pro just says, "oh, that's off", figures out logically why that is, and fixes it- without needing to invite their emotions over for a debate. They've made mistakes a million times before, they'll make mistakes a million times in the future- nothing to do but to real with it rationally. Saves a lot of time, gets better results, is mentally healthier.
- Being able to do some of the work in one's head, rather than needing to put down measurement lines/construction lines etc. To a beginner it may look like this is someone 'skipping steps' to gain speed- to someone with a little drawing knowledge it may seem like a magic trick, pulling lines out of thin air- but it's not. All that work still needs to be done, but more of it can be done internally, can be done with more confidence. However, this is something that comes from years, if not decades, of experience, and even the best artists will often still need to do this work on the page rather than in their head.
When I see really advanced artists draw in a drawing session, usually what I see is someone where each stroke is laid down quite slowly and deliberately, with every mark put down given a good deal of thought and diligence- they seem to be in no rush.
When I see less experienced people work, they're often scribbling things in, rushing their lines, rushing their measurements, and generally trying to get as much done as possible in the time given. However, this sloppiness generally leads to bad drawings or having to erase so much that it wind up being incomplete, for all their efforts- while the more advanced artists accomplish not just better results, but get more done in the same amount of time, as a result of taking it slow- both in that particular drawing, and their artistic development as a whole.
Ultimately, it takes longer to get a bad drawing by trying to be fast, than it does to get a good drawing by being patient about it.
Be patient and do it right and you'll acquire the ability to work at speed.
Try to acquiring the ability to work at speed as a goal in itself, and you'll ultimately be slow to get the results you want.
It's like Gene Hackman's character says in Unforgiven:
Daggett: Look son, being a good shot, being quick with a pistol, that don't do no harm, but it don't mean much next to being cool-headed. A man who will keep his head and not get rattled under fire, like as not, he'll kill ya.
Beauchamp: But if the other fella is quicker and fires first...
Daggett: Then he'll be hurryin' and he'll miss...That's why there are so few dangerous men around, like Ol' Bob, and like me.
I mean you all learned figure drawing, in and out and are now qualified to teach it to someone's chil'ren, but are you still doing all the "steps"?
How do I put this... Were you ever taught how to do something one way, but over time you found better and more efficient ways to do the thing? I'm not ungrateful, everything I've learned now has made things awesome, I just hope that if I keep doing this enough that I can just do it quickly.
Ultimately, it takes longer to get a bad drawing by trying to be fast, than it does to get a good drawing by being patient about it.
Be patient and do it right and you'll acquire the ability to work at speed.
Try to acquiring the ability to work at speed as a goal in itself, and you'll ultimately be slow to get the results you want.
It's like Gene Hackman's character says in Unforgiven:
Daggett: Look son, being a good shot, being quick with a pistol, that don't do no harm, but it don't mean much next to being cool-headed. A man who will keep his head and not get rattled under fire, like as not, he'll kill ya.
Beauchamp: But if the other fella is quicker and fires first...
Daggett: Then he'll be hurryin' and he'll miss...That's why there are so few dangerous men around, like Ol' Bob, and like me.
How do I put this... Were you ever taught how to do something one way, but over time you found better and more efficient ways to do the thing? I'm not ungrateful, everything I've learned now has made things awesome, I just hope that if I keep doing this enough that I can just do it quickly.
It's pretty much always 3 stages: understructure, line, value. Some people are better at hiding their homework, I'm shameless with it. All the aspects of life drawing are tools and it just depends on the situation what tools you'll utilize.
Find the one person whom you find to be the best artist at your life drawing session who knows what they're doing and sit next to them. I sat next to someone I thought was amazing for 2 years and watched their process and picked their brain- it's one thing to read about the process, and it's another to actually watch it and see how it all comes together. Watching him get to the value stage on a 30 second pose floored me. After drawing I would go home feeling pretty beat up and give it a day, and then go back, look it over, and try to improve on things I messed up. He used conte so I switched and tried it out and initially it was very unforgiving and I wanted to go back to a security blanket but now I absolutely love it, it's fantastic for line and value and fast, and you can't bullshit with it. Conte is a harsh but loving mistress.
Eventually you start to find your flow and aspects you enjoy- I like swoopiness, I like S curves and exaggeration. And this, I think, is the beating heart of personal style.
Alright, one more for everybody and then I'll disappear for a week (for practice's sake, and because I feel like I'm bugging everyone (anybody know how to diagnose anxiety?)):
How do legs gesture drawing? Real talk right now? THIS has been the thing that confuses me about gesture drawing. I can understand gesture drawing when it comes to constructing the upper body, SUPER EASY (or at least, easy to layout after several weeks/months/years of practice). It's just the legs that confuse me? I mean with the arms you have tubes and prisms that connect to something, but the legs are kind of just "Floating"(?) in orbit near the pelvis, and the pelvis doesn't really look like it connect to the legs.
I get that with the pelvis it's divided down the middle by a triangle that becomes the groin, and the space on either side becomes the hips/upper leg. Does anyone have a link or even have learned a cheat for this that they could teach? This has been confusing me for so long here. Thank you guys again.
The legs connect to the pelvis and hip joint, just like arms connect to shoulders. I'm not really sure what you mean when you say the legs are floating. Look at skeletons and anatomical breakdowns if you don't understand how bits of the body connect or interact. You might find tools like zygotebody.com (free with registration) helpful here.
the best thing to do when you have an issue like this is to show us what you're drawing, and perhaps what you're trying to achieve (in your own thread, probably). Text just isn't going to be as clear. And once again, there are no 'cheats'. There are standard anatomy features which can help you judge if things are in proportion, like elbows tend to sit at waist height when your arms are down, that kind of thing. But there's no such thing as a shortcut to getting good - there are, however, loads of shortcuts which will help you be bad.
The legs connect to the pelvis and hip joint, just like arms connect to shoulders. I'm not really sure what you mean when you say the legs are floating. Look at skeletons and anatomical breakdowns if you don't understand how bits of the body connect or interact. You might find tools like zygotebody.com (free with registration) helpful here.
the best thing to do when you have an issue like this is to show us what you're drawing, and perhaps what you're trying to achieve (in your own thread, probably). Text just isn't going to be as clear. And once again, there are no 'cheats'. There are standard anatomy features which can help you judge if things are in proportion, like elbows tend to sit at waist height when your arms are down, that kind of thing. But there's no such thing as a shortcut to getting good - there are, however, loads of shortcuts which will help you be bad.
This is what I mean by "floating" and also about 4:35 in this video. The cylinders that form the legs just seem to be there and I don't really understand it. I mean with the arms it sort of fits together like the toy gundams you used to build as a kid.
The legs though are just sort of hard for me to get. I know this sounds weird, but could it in anyway relate to something like architecture and distribution of weight? I don't know it's just sort of hard to get for me.
I'm still not really sure I understand your question, but if you're looking at mannequin figures to understand how joints fit together, you're not going to get a very accurate picture. They're a crude tool meant to help establish the most basic sense of form and perspective, but there's a lot of information missing.
As far as legs attaching to the hips specifically, I don't have much more to tell you than what Tynic already said. The Femur connects via socket joint on opposite sides of the Pelvis. Look at skeletons and muscle diagrams. The mannequin figure that Andrew Loomis uses in his figure book relates a lot more to the skeletal structure here.
if you are scanning a black and white thing make sure to set the scanner to greyscale, or else you will get unwanted colorization from the light on the scanner, to make the image look darker and clearer do that in photoshop and not the settings on the scanner itself. in PS you can easily make the image darker and the lines more clear or watever you need.
Hey, does anyone know a good scanner for art? I think mine is too bright and even fiddling with the settings still gives me the same result.
Also, make sure that your scanner software doesn't add any "image effects/corrections" after scanning. For some reason, every scanner I've worked with has that on by default, and it always results in an awful image. I think it's for people who want to scan documents, not art, though.
So I started studying at a good art school (Julian Ashton) few months ago. It's a very traditional school, which mostly does figure drawing, figure painting, cast drawing, etc... Until recently it was the only real art school in Sydney.
I've learned a lot from studying there, but it's entirely unstructured. I find I need to adopt completely different techniques in every class to keep each teacher happy. There's no homework or lectures, and feedback consists of teachers coming around maybe two or three times each class to point out a couple of things that you could do better.
Recently a new art School opened up in Sydney (productionartdepartment.com), which is much more oriented towards the kind of art I'd like to do. It's structured like a typical tertiary course, with homework and lectures. I've had several recommendations from friends, but the school is still new.
My question is whether or not you guys think it'd be a good idea to jump ship to the new school now. I feel like I learn much more effectively in a structured course, but even though the new school has classes in anatomy/figure drawing I'm concerned that I might miss out on some valuable knowledge. I already have an interview booked with the new school tomorrow so we'll see what they have to say about my portfolio.
That's really difficult to say without us having any personal experience with either school, or having seen much of your current school work, or knowing precisely your career goals.
What I would say is that your concern about getting ahead of yourself by jumping ship makes sense, broadly- if this new school has less foundation drawing/painting work, the work you produce in more design/narrative courses may not be all that great, because it may turn out you would need more of that foundation work to really pull it off- not an uncommon situation among art schools, catering to courses that are very exciting in concept, but don't focus enough of the meat and potatoes work to really pull those exciting things off well. Or maybe they've got a great foundation program and are great at personal mentorship and will push you in the right direction, I don't know.
What I might suggest is- these schools look pretty close to each other. At least one of them lets you do ala carte, the other says it's ok to go part-time. It may be worth trying to take classes from both concurrently, or choose one per term to attend, rather than committing totally to one or the other for all time. See what there is on offer.
Yeah, this means you may end up with duplicate work or in a class that is more advanced than you thought; that's not a waste of time. If it's duplicate, well, the basics are always worth practicing- if it's too advanced, it will work to inform you what classes you need to take next. Maybe you take a class on character design, but find that while you understand the workflow there, you can't pull it to a finish because you haven't had enough time practicing long-form figure drawing- so you take that class next at the other school. Or maybe you find your anatomy knowledge isn't quite there to pull off imagined figures in a storyboarding class, so next term you might take anatomy classes at both schools to shore it up. A teacher is off doing their own thing and you don't like their work and don't like the work their students are producing? Drop their class like a bag of doorknobs. Find a teacher that really knows their shit but you always think at the end there is more to be gained from their class, take their class 6 times in a row if it keeps yielding fruit.
Maybe you need to take half your courses at one school and half at the other for one term, the next just at one school, the next just at the other, depending on how you're trying to develop, and in response to what you feel your main weaknesses are at any given time. Maybe this new school ends up fulfilling all your needs, maybe not.
Now, this may seem even more unstructured than your current situation; sure, it'd be nice if there really was a one-size-fits-all linear path towards getting to where you want to go- but despite what any school might tell you, that's not really ever going to be the case. I'd suggest if you go to this new school you make a point over the course of the class of asking your teachers (who I presume may have jobs/skillset more along the lines of what you want for your career), what skills you need to work on going forward to get where you want to go- and make sure to keep the conversation on "what skills" and not "what courses", because of course any school is going to try to sell themselves as being the silver bullet solution- but to develop that skill you may be better off studying it elsewhere instead or in addition.
Thanks Bacon, that clarifies things. Because I only found out about this new school (PAD) about a week ago, I'm already committed to at least one semester of part-time at the old school (Ashton's), so if I do enrol, I'll have to do the two simultaneously for a while anyway.
I just talked to a friend who's studied at both schools. In her opinion, PAD is better for fundamentals, and for beginners. Apparently they teach anatomy quite extensively, but they expect you to do observational drawing in your own time. It seems like I'll be doing less figure drawing at the new school, but that's something I can seek out elsewhere I guess (maybe even doing a session a week at Ashton's).
So I think I'm leaning towards PAD, but I'll have plenty of questions at the interview tomorrow.
I'm not familiar with how the Australian education system works, but I still want to ask, is getting a degree important to you, or just developing your visual art skills? I think Bacon's suggestion to maybe do both here and there would be good IF you can afford the cost of schooling* and the extra time it would take you to finish.
*Note: I am an American and tuition here for art schools is the stuff of nightmares.
I already have a degree in graphic design, this is purely to develop my skills (although I would be getting another certificate out of PAD). From a financial perspective, it makes a lot of sense to study at the new school, because I can get a small amount of government assistance. Also I've been saving for ages, so I can afford to pay the tuition up-front (it's nowhere near as expensive as American tuition).
So I think I'm probably going to go with what you said: the new school, with maybe a class or two a week at the old school to make up whatever is lacking in figure/observational drawing.
Why do some artists do studies in their own style? Is it bad to do it that way? Should you always aim for realism in your studies?
It depends on what you are doing a study of and what you hope to glean from it. If you are doing a color/lighting study you could hypothetically play with proportion in a way that didn't interfere with what you are trying to learn. If you were doing a study of shape and form, you could possibly play with color. The more knowledge you already have, the easier it probably is for you to separate these out. The less you know, the more you are served by doing a study of the whole. If you are still learning the fundamentals, you don't know what you CAN modify without losing the purpose of the study.
Alternatively, you could also be doing a study on style and trying to push what you are able to stylize in your own manner.
I have a question but it pertains more towards crafting then it does art persay (it has to do with fabric.) would this be the right thread to ask it in? Or is there another I should go to?
Posts
My bad guys. Mim listen to Iruka and tynic, they've been at this longer they know more.
But I stand but the doodle thing.
are there particular cartoon study tutorials I should be checking out?
I do plan to do more anatomy studies than doodles. I think this week I'll spend time doing some drawings and hopefully on the weekend start my thread. As scared as I am, it's gonna have to happen at this point.
@Tidus53 I know of Proko, i'll watch more of his videos. And I already have a pinterest account
You definitely put it a lot better than I did.
Sorry for going off again guys. I won't hold against anyone who wants to delete my post.
Going back to my own mad rambling (it's the PC-peh), cartoon=stylization and stylization=your own style.
There aren't really "cartoon" studies you could find (at least when I went looking), cartoons are sort of compact representations of men and women; they're simplified to the point of being recognizable and charming. Definitely look I could be wrong--the last few days have been pretty humbling for me--but if you were to find a cartoon study it could be in someone else's style, not yours; or someone's analysis of generic and common attributes. Again, I can be wrong talk to one of the big dogs here, they'll def know more. (They're like an army of Iron Shieks,"[THEY] MAKE [ME] HUMBLE!")
I'd say find and look at the art of others that you think match the pictures in your head, but don't copy them. Let 'em have an influence, everyone here has someone they follow and use as reference when drawing (or at least I do).
People who have a "toony" style that is freaking jaw-dropping and totally original are guys I find on dA. I'd say take a look at Jollyjack and ShoNuff44: Jollyjack is pretty much a freelance jack-of-all-paths in his long career and ShoNuff's art is pretty recognizable at a glance. I also need to give a shout out to the now-defunct webcomic Hana's Not A Boy's Name; at the zenith of it's popularity, it was incredibly popular, well-drawn, and well-written.
Though I can't say anything concrete until we see what you have or tell us of an artist that does influence your work.
Again, if going by TES skill levels, I'm barely a mid to mid-high novice. So be careful with my words.
@Mim
For stuff that's online, these Glenn Vilppu (a drawing instructor at Disney for...forever) articles about life drawing and how they relate to the needs of animation are solid. (First read them literally 17 years ago- which is basically 1700 years in internet time- and they still hold up. And now I realize I have to go update all these links in the OP.)
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/never-underestimate-power-life-drawing
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-gesture
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-spherical-forms
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-box
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-introducing-material-and-proportion
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-drawing-ellipses
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-general-specific
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-landmarks-anatomy
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/vilppu-drawing-online-seeing-anatomical-masses
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/seeing-figure-2d-object
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/using-tone-draw
http://www.awn.com/animationworld/getting-handle-direct-lighting
John K's (AKA The Ren and Stimpy guy) blog has a lot of good stuff, which unfortunately buried in between a lot of stuff that is irrelevant or just angry ranting about things. Check the labels on the sidebar for things that sound useful (ie: construction, functional drawing, etc.) to help sift through it.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/
I'd also recommend picking up some books:
Force: Dynamic Life Drawing For Animators
http://www.amazon.com/Force-Dynamic-Life-Drawing-Animators/dp/0240808452/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
This goes over some useful things that may get glossed over in more traditional life drawing books/lessons, such as exaggeration, iterating on the design of a pose for more effect, and how to bring across the ideas of force, weight, and torque in a character pose. I don't know what your level of traditional drawing is, so some things here might be a bit difficult to carry off effectively or understand if you don't already have a firm grasp on perspective or construction. It covers one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Drawn to Life Vol. 1 + 2
http://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1421625380&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240811070/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
These books are really just a compilation of handout sheets that Walt Stanchfield (another Disney drawing instructor) had made for his lectures over 20 years. Mostly, they cover the importance and approach to gesture, simplification, and acting- really important aspects of making an animated character feel 'alive'.
However, like Force, I am almost hesitant to recommend it without knowing your drawing level, because the examples given are mostly crude ballpoint pen gestural drawings, and without having a broad awareness that these are not "how to draw" lessons full-stop, and are really just an exercise to focus one's attention on a very specific aspect of drawing, you may get a false impression of how much you should focus on this one thing rather than all the other matters that make up good drawing. These sheets were aimed at people that were good enough at drawing to get a job working at Disney in the first place, and thus were very well versed in life drawing to begin with. Great information for people with existing drawing skills, but potentially dangerous if you're not already well-versed in life drawing.
Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation
http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Animation-Collectors-Preston-Blair/dp/1560100842/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421625803&sr=1-1&keywords=preston+blair&pebp=1421625806198&peasin=1560100842
This may just look like a bigger version of one of those dopey "How to Draw Cartoons" books that everyone hates on first blush- draw 4 circles and PRESTO you've drawn Bugs Bunny! But unlike those ones, this is a book that every animator I've ever known has had on their shelf. Sure it's illustrated in a 1930's-50's cartoon style and perhaps that doesn't interest you, but the points about keeping your character construction simple, employing a line of action, and the principle of moving three-dimensionally remain relevant.
You may notice that a lot of this winds up looping back around to being awfully close to "Real Ass Drawing" rather than just being purely about "Cartoon Drawing", and that's not a coincidence or me trying to push an agenda back towards a more realistic style. It's just that a great cartoon drawing may seem totally different and irrelevant to a great realistic one to the layman- but an experienced cartoonist realizes that there's only maybe a 5% difference between the two, and it's the really 95% of the things that they hold in common, the core foundation aspects, that make them great.
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I will definitely look over this stuff.
I'm going to spend this week putting together some drawings and definitely posting a thread next Saturday. I just want to have some stuff you guys can look at.
I'm terrible right now, so I'm prepping myself for a lot of crit, but here's hoping I can improve.
Ever since I came back from TAMU and began spending more time drawing, my nieces have been sort of invested in what I've been drawing, one of 'em more than the other. For a while now she's been saying that she tries to draw my favorite hero and wants to show it to me. She tries to show off her perfect 3D boxes and owls and things, and I want to encourage it, if I can. I don't know if it's just to impress me or they do like it, but I'd like to see where this may take them.
I know that after all the recent discussions a lot of you guys have had with me that the key to growth and development as an artist is studying the fundamentals and drawing from life, but a pair of 9-year old children don't really have access to a lot of ,eyrm... "life drawing reference" and I'm sure my step-brother and sister-in-law would not appreciate that kind of content.
So I'm asking you guys if you have any good recommendations for a pair of beginner artists? I was thinking about Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Anatomy and Dynamic Posing or Andrew Loomis Figure Drawing for All it's Worth and Force: Dynamic Life Drawing, but all of 'em seem a little too advance for a pair of kids, but I also don't want to buy them like "How to draw manga" or something low-level (even though my nieces are low-level).
If not books than maybe I should introduce them to a couple of YouTube tutorial channels and posemaniacs?
Anything you have I'll take and I really thank everyone here for what they do and what you'll post. If not, than thank you anyway guys.
You may also try Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain- the bulk of the text may be over her head, but the exercises (the actual useful parts) should be easy enough to follow. I think there are version that come with workbooks just going over the exercises, which may be worth looking at. (I've actually soured on the book over the years because it gives the false impression that it's all you need to know, which couldn't be further from the truth- but the exercises themselves remain useful, especially to a beginner.)
Beyond that, there really aren't too many books that of much worth on drawing that don't either contain nudity (life drawing is essential to learning that it's hard to get away from-if their parents want to support her they're going to have to deal with the fact, maybe not right now, but certainly in her teenage years) or would be overwhelming at her age. I mean, Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" book is a fantastic and thorough book for someone wanting to know perspective and industrial design- but would a 9 year old appreciate it, I don't know. Maybe if you think of it less as 'buying it for her now' and more 'making sure she has access to it when she's ready for it', that would be a good buy.
edit: Maybe Glenn Vilppu's Sketching on Location Manual would be good as well. It also helps to imply good practice for getting life drawing experience without access to formal nude posing- get your nieces, give me some sketchbooks and pencils, head down to a park or beach or a mall that has a lot of people walking around, sit down on a bench and draw them people. It's a good habit and a fun activity.
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sorry
First off thanks for all the advice on gesture drawing and Proko, everything feels different and my art actually does start to look better. Right now the percentage of stick figues to actual figures is unevenly stacked, but it definitley feels much more lively and has I guess "character".
Which leads me to my next question, and I know a lot of you guys may look down on me for asking. You guys all learned to develop outside of the fundamental figure drawing style, right?
I mean you all learned figure drawing, in and out and are now qualified to teach it to someone's chil'ren, but are you still doing all the "steps"?
How do I put this... Were you ever taught how to do something one way, but over time you found better and more efficient ways to do the thing? I'm not ungrateful, everything I've learned now has made things awesome, I just hope that if I keep doing this enough that I can just do it quickly.
I know a lot of you guys are pretty annoyed about be submitting questions about basic stuff, but I've never really had formal teachers. Know it or not, you guys are the closest thing I've ever experienced to a teacher. So I thank you for your patience, your honesty, and encouragement. And thank you for that dose of reality every now and then to make me step up my game.
Seriously, I love you guys.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
The simple answer is yes, the experienced pro still does all the "steps"- yet can also accomplish things quicker.
But the gains in speed are not really a matter of "better techniques" or "learning shortcuts"- it's a matter of gaining the experience to:
- Make fewer mistakes, so there's less rework and rechecking to be done. They've already worked so much that they've made every mistake there is to make 1000 times over, so they're easier to dodge.
- Having a full command of one's dexterity, not having to grapple so much without being able to draw the line you want, or get the line weight variation, or struggling with the medium.
- Knowing the processes backwards and forwards from having done it so much, not having to remember the last tutorial or lesson that they just saw. To bring back the language analogy, it's the difference between someone who speaks a language fluently, and someone having to look up words in their traveler phrasebook every other sentence.
- Having the confidence to depend on those processes to pull one through, rather than spending much of one's mental energy second-guessing everything or trying to figure out how to tackle a problem. The beginner spends an incredible amount of their brainpower when they realize they've made a mistake by agonizing over them, thinking about how far behind they feel in this drawing session or as a artist in general, making excuses for the state of their drawing, etc...the pro just says, "oh, that's off", figures out logically why that is, and fixes it- without needing to invite their emotions over for a debate. They've made mistakes a million times before, they'll make mistakes a million times in the future- nothing to do but to real with it rationally. Saves a lot of time, gets better results, is mentally healthier.
- Being able to do some of the work in one's head, rather than needing to put down measurement lines/construction lines etc. To a beginner it may look like this is someone 'skipping steps' to gain speed- to someone with a little drawing knowledge it may seem like a magic trick, pulling lines out of thin air- but it's not. All that work still needs to be done, but more of it can be done internally, can be done with more confidence. However, this is something that comes from years, if not decades, of experience, and even the best artists will often still need to do this work on the page rather than in their head.
When I see really advanced artists draw in a drawing session, usually what I see is someone where each stroke is laid down quite slowly and deliberately, with every mark put down given a good deal of thought and diligence- they seem to be in no rush.
When I see less experienced people work, they're often scribbling things in, rushing their lines, rushing their measurements, and generally trying to get as much done as possible in the time given. However, this sloppiness generally leads to bad drawings or having to erase so much that it wind up being incomplete, for all their efforts- while the more advanced artists accomplish not just better results, but get more done in the same amount of time, as a result of taking it slow- both in that particular drawing, and their artistic development as a whole.
Ultimately, it takes longer to get a bad drawing by trying to be fast, than it does to get a good drawing by being patient about it.
Be patient and do it right and you'll acquire the ability to work at speed.
Try to acquiring the ability to work at speed as a goal in itself, and you'll ultimately be slow to get the results you want.
It's like Gene Hackman's character says in Unforgiven:
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Well done bringing it all back to Unforgiven.
It's pretty much always 3 stages: understructure, line, value. Some people are better at hiding their homework, I'm shameless with it. All the aspects of life drawing are tools and it just depends on the situation what tools you'll utilize.
Find the one person whom you find to be the best artist at your life drawing session who knows what they're doing and sit next to them. I sat next to someone I thought was amazing for 2 years and watched their process and picked their brain- it's one thing to read about the process, and it's another to actually watch it and see how it all comes together. Watching him get to the value stage on a 30 second pose floored me. After drawing I would go home feeling pretty beat up and give it a day, and then go back, look it over, and try to improve on things I messed up. He used conte so I switched and tried it out and initially it was very unforgiving and I wanted to go back to a security blanket but now I absolutely love it, it's fantastic for line and value and fast, and you can't bullshit with it. Conte is a harsh but loving mistress.
Eventually you start to find your flow and aspects you enjoy- I like swoopiness, I like S curves and exaggeration. And this, I think, is the beating heart of personal style.
How do legs gesture drawing? Real talk right now? THIS has been the thing that confuses me about gesture drawing. I can understand gesture drawing when it comes to constructing the upper body, SUPER EASY (or at least, easy to layout after several weeks/months/years of practice). It's just the legs that confuse me? I mean with the arms you have tubes and prisms that connect to something, but the legs are kind of just "Floating"(?) in orbit near the pelvis, and the pelvis doesn't really look like it connect to the legs.
I get that with the pelvis it's divided down the middle by a triangle that becomes the groin, and the space on either side becomes the hips/upper leg. Does anyone have a link or even have learned a cheat for this that they could teach? This has been confusing me for so long here. Thank you guys again.
the best thing to do when you have an issue like this is to show us what you're drawing, and perhaps what you're trying to achieve (in your own thread, probably). Text just isn't going to be as clear. And once again, there are no 'cheats'. There are standard anatomy features which can help you judge if things are in proportion, like elbows tend to sit at waist height when your arms are down, that kind of thing. But there's no such thing as a shortcut to getting good - there are, however, loads of shortcuts which will help you be bad.
This is what I mean by "floating" and also about 4:35 in this video. The cylinders that form the legs just seem to be there and I don't really understand it. I mean with the arms it sort of fits together like the toy gundams you used to build as a kid.
The legs though are just sort of hard for me to get. I know this sounds weird, but could it in anyway relate to something like architecture and distribution of weight? I don't know it's just sort of hard to get for me.
As far as legs attaching to the hips specifically, I don't have much more to tell you than what Tynic already said. The Femur connects via socket joint on opposite sides of the Pelvis. Look at skeletons and muscle diagrams. The mannequin figure that Andrew Loomis uses in his figure book relates a lot more to the skeletal structure here.
Also, make sure that your scanner software doesn't add any "image effects/corrections" after scanning. For some reason, every scanner I've worked with has that on by default, and it always results in an awful image. I think it's for people who want to scan documents, not art, though.
I've learned a lot from studying there, but it's entirely unstructured. I find I need to adopt completely different techniques in every class to keep each teacher happy. There's no homework or lectures, and feedback consists of teachers coming around maybe two or three times each class to point out a couple of things that you could do better.
Recently a new art School opened up in Sydney (productionartdepartment.com), which is much more oriented towards the kind of art I'd like to do. It's structured like a typical tertiary course, with homework and lectures. I've had several recommendations from friends, but the school is still new.
My question is whether or not you guys think it'd be a good idea to jump ship to the new school now. I feel like I learn much more effectively in a structured course, but even though the new school has classes in anatomy/figure drawing I'm concerned that I might miss out on some valuable knowledge. I already have an interview booked with the new school tomorrow so we'll see what they have to say about my portfolio.
Thoughts?
What I would say is that your concern about getting ahead of yourself by jumping ship makes sense, broadly- if this new school has less foundation drawing/painting work, the work you produce in more design/narrative courses may not be all that great, because it may turn out you would need more of that foundation work to really pull it off- not an uncommon situation among art schools, catering to courses that are very exciting in concept, but don't focus enough of the meat and potatoes work to really pull those exciting things off well. Or maybe they've got a great foundation program and are great at personal mentorship and will push you in the right direction, I don't know.
What I might suggest is- these schools look pretty close to each other. At least one of them lets you do ala carte, the other says it's ok to go part-time. It may be worth trying to take classes from both concurrently, or choose one per term to attend, rather than committing totally to one or the other for all time. See what there is on offer.
Yeah, this means you may end up with duplicate work or in a class that is more advanced than you thought; that's not a waste of time. If it's duplicate, well, the basics are always worth practicing- if it's too advanced, it will work to inform you what classes you need to take next. Maybe you take a class on character design, but find that while you understand the workflow there, you can't pull it to a finish because you haven't had enough time practicing long-form figure drawing- so you take that class next at the other school. Or maybe you find your anatomy knowledge isn't quite there to pull off imagined figures in a storyboarding class, so next term you might take anatomy classes at both schools to shore it up. A teacher is off doing their own thing and you don't like their work and don't like the work their students are producing? Drop their class like a bag of doorknobs. Find a teacher that really knows their shit but you always think at the end there is more to be gained from their class, take their class 6 times in a row if it keeps yielding fruit.
Maybe you need to take half your courses at one school and half at the other for one term, the next just at one school, the next just at the other, depending on how you're trying to develop, and in response to what you feel your main weaknesses are at any given time. Maybe this new school ends up fulfilling all your needs, maybe not.
Now, this may seem even more unstructured than your current situation; sure, it'd be nice if there really was a one-size-fits-all linear path towards getting to where you want to go- but despite what any school might tell you, that's not really ever going to be the case. I'd suggest if you go to this new school you make a point over the course of the class of asking your teachers (who I presume may have jobs/skillset more along the lines of what you want for your career), what skills you need to work on going forward to get where you want to go- and make sure to keep the conversation on "what skills" and not "what courses", because of course any school is going to try to sell themselves as being the silver bullet solution- but to develop that skill you may be better off studying it elsewhere instead or in addition.
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I just talked to a friend who's studied at both schools. In her opinion, PAD is better for fundamentals, and for beginners. Apparently they teach anatomy quite extensively, but they expect you to do observational drawing in your own time. It seems like I'll be doing less figure drawing at the new school, but that's something I can seek out elsewhere I guess (maybe even doing a session a week at Ashton's).
So I think I'm leaning towards PAD, but I'll have plenty of questions at the interview tomorrow.
*Note: I am an American and tuition here for art schools is the stuff of nightmares.
So I think I'm probably going to go with what you said: the new school, with maybe a class or two a week at the old school to make up whatever is lacking in figure/observational drawing.
It depends on what you are doing a study of and what you hope to glean from it. If you are doing a color/lighting study you could hypothetically play with proportion in a way that didn't interfere with what you are trying to learn. If you were doing a study of shape and form, you could possibly play with color. The more knowledge you already have, the easier it probably is for you to separate these out. The less you know, the more you are served by doing a study of the whole. If you are still learning the fundamentals, you don't know what you CAN modify without losing the purpose of the study.
Alternatively, you could also be doing a study on style and trying to push what you are able to stylize in your own manner.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/153583/what-are-you-making-artsy-farts-and-craftsy-asses/p1