Learning to draw, books, online, sketching, videos?

[Photosynthesis]

i draw manga

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[Tophius]

Incoming wall of text!

From my observation it seems that whenever a question like this is posed that people like to bring up practice a lot. While of course practice is fundamental to learning anything, it becomes absolutely useless when you don't know how to practice, or how to put your time to actual use. To begin with, you can't draw a non-referential piece and say you're "practicing". You have nothing to base your work off; there is no information to be studied, no reference to learn from. If you're not basing your work off any information from life, then you're not learning anything; you're only using what knowledge you already have - and if you don't learn, you don't get better.
   That said, if you're making a study of a scene from life or a photograph, be weary - there's a reason it's called a study. When drawing a study from life it is not your goal to produce a perfect replica of the subject, your goal is to break the subject down as far as you can so as to understand it. You are not drawing what your eyes see, or what you think you see; you are drawing what there is, plain and simple. To elaborate, say you make a study of a human figure. Ask yourself: do I know where and how forces are being exerted on the figure and what forces the figure is exerting? Do I know how the figure's weight is distributed through the body? Where the centre of gravity is? How it maintains its balance? If I were to draw the figure as if I were looking at it from another direction, would I be able to? Do I understand the scene spatially, and where the points and lines of perspectives lie? Do I know where the trapezius is? Is it tensed or not? What about the other major muscles? How is the figure's ribcage orientated in relation to the hips, and where are its lines of action? Where are the light sources coming from, and how large are they? How intense are they? Where is the reflected light coming from? Why are those shadows so smooth, while those other ones so sharp? Your eyes cannot see most of these components simply by looking at your subject, but they are still in place - they exist.
   There are no doubt loads of other factors involved that I've neglected to mention, factors which are not only constrained to figure drawing either. The world is full of them - these are the things which build up everything we see, if you fail to understand them, then you will fail to depict them. stuff, even I don't know enough about half the things listed, but it's a continuous learning process, and only through dedication will you begin to understand them.

I will assume that you've never held a drawing pencil in your life, that the concept of art is completely alien to you as far as skill is concerned. In such a case (assuming your goal is the ability to really and fantastically paint or draw anything conceivable), I would advise that you begin by understanding life, before moving on to anything stylistic. Not that you can't do anything stylistic at all - as you begin gathering some basic, fundamental knowledge it's great to try and adapt that into your own visual style, but if your goal is to learn, then you learn from life. Learning how to incorporate life into a visual style is another category altogether (one which I haven't really looked into very deeply, actually).
   If I had one important fundamental to advise you of, one very simple, basic concept that I see a lot of beginners neglect and one that even I have been guilty of neglecting, it's this: our world consists of three spatial dimensions. Not two, three. This means that whatever you put down on paper, even though the paper itself is two-dimensional, must be three-dimensional, must look three-dimensional. None of these flat, cardboard limbs with no coherent three-dimensional orientation. If I'd ask you to begin with something, it would be to study and understand how to render 3D masses on a 2D plane. Understand that everything you draw (realistically), consists of 3D masses. Nothing is ever truly 2D, or orientated in 2D space.

As for resources, books are probably still the most fantastic objects of knowledge available. The internet may contain some good guides but nothing ever beats the comprehension and reliability of a damn good book, in my opinion. Books will contain abundances of information for you to read and learn from, and will save you the trouble of having to figure these things out yourself. Unfortunately, I don't think that I can recommend any solely for beginners, but its fairly easy to just browse them online yourself - remember to do some research on the author/artist too, for the sake of perspective.

Just my two cents. I'm not a professional, and I don't think that my work is barely worthy of any inkling of professional quality, but I thought I'd share my personal thoughts thus far.

If you ever want to ask anything else, don't be afraid to PM me!

[Bloxxed]

Art Guide, by Artist Bloxxed.

The only way you are going to get better at drawing is to copy and replicate stuff, and remember, drawing is putting shapes together, literally.

For example, if you want to make a head, you first draw a Egg-like shape, then you start adding ovals rectangles for the nose and eyes, then you get down the most important features then put in details, remember, don't immediately jump into drawing shadows and stuff, practice. I always get annoyed at not being able to draw certain stuff when I was about 9-10, I kept throwing away stuff and kept crying for getting annoyed, but obviously if you want to be good you can't rush something, remember, every piece of art has to have a meaning.

Lets base it off of Blockland for a second, when you first joined Blockland, you probably built a red square house, when you join other servers you find other nice builds and you get inspiration, inspiration is the key to success, so when you saw that build and thought "Wow, let's make that!" you start to make it and it's not going to be a red square, it's like Blockland, when you start to get older and older and you start to see more interesting builds, you think "Wow, I'll take a bit of that, and that aswell, and compile it together."

I stopped playing Blockland a while after I built so much stuff, that was back 1 year ago, and when you start building or drawing stuff, you start to get bored, normally you can just play a game and just get inspiration like a click. I'd say get inspiration and LOOK at drawings, copy them and replicate, have fun with them, ever heard of Caricatures?

Artists everyday just sit themselves down and draw stuff, they mess about with stuff, they can make features of people bigger or smaller, take a look at this:



Look at the details on what they have done if you see this is from a TV show,(I forgot) one day this artist probably got inspiration from this TV show and decided to make a Caricature of this person, they decided to get a proper picture of this person and they sized up the features, look at his head, they decided that he has a big head so they'll supersize that, look at his mouth and other features, the only way you are going to get better is to mess around with stuff, supersize them, shrink them, put the nose on their chin, do whatever, experiment!

Let's have a look at a another subject, lets take architecture.



Here, is Big Ben, and in the background, you can see the London Eye and a building to the side, if you can see you can see little tiny indents that make it unique, if you're going to make a Building in Blockland, would you make a 10 high red cube or a 20 high different styled building? Things like this make people go "Wow" and that's what you are aiming for, the best part about this is because it's night time, it's shadowy and you can see there's a light shining on the building. This is also the hardest part as Shadows, you're not trying to shade in stuff, you're trying to make it darkened, not shaded in.



Look at this Big Ben, a nice clear picture and just a nice dark background, great, now the only way you can make it illuminated is to use Paint or colours, paint is the best thing I personally use as it's brilliant, but it's in your own opinion.

Also, another thing, try doing 2d objects first then try and experiment with 3d, you're better off starting simple, don't go into shadows immediatly, try replicate a celebrity and make it as basic as you can, I suck at art and I love making Caricatures, that is the funny strange looking photos, you know.

By the way, Caricatures are basically to mimic and make fun of a persons personality of some sort, look at this.

Meet Simon Cowell.



Simon Cowell is known for his snobbishness and his huge white teeth and his meanness, someone didn't like him and decided to make features of him bigger, and he always wears a black shirt, anyone noticed that?

I personally think you should start on replicating 2d objects then go onto Caricatures, it's a really fun subject to do and if you mess up their nose, you can say it's meant to be in there, they have a big nose!


I'm pretty much finished here, experiment and explore, look at websites, google images, look at architecture or even try and print a picture of a celebrity out and replicate it on a piece of paper, the only way you are going to get better I keep repeating is to copy and experiment, make features bigger or smaller.

[Uncle Bengs]

the only practice i've gotten is doodling
doodle stuff everywhere, anytime