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[SOLDIER]

I would strongly recommend that you take this very short free course, Learning How to Learn, before investing any serious time in art practice. The knowledge and techniques you'll gain will be so valuable going forward. You'll be equipped to make substantial progress in a matter of months rather than years.

So how does this work? Is it taught live, at a set time? Seems you enroll in it as if it were a college course, but it's free?

I'm interested in the subject matter, since it seems to help with learning other creative arts (including writing). I'm just wondering if I can look at the material at my own time once I enroll in it.

 

[gaiages]

So how does this work? Is it taught live, at a set time? Seems you enroll in it as if it were a college course, but it's free?

I'm interested in the subject matter, since it seems to help with learning other creative arts (including writing). I'm just wondering if I can look at the material at my own time once I enroll in it.

Not sure about this one, but most online courses of this nature allows you to do the lessons and whatever else at your own pace. Most don't usually have deadlines/tests like online college courses. And on top of that, most of the ones that do you have to pay for and usually offer some sort of a certification.

 

[hey_monkey]

Those instructions are too aimless. They're right to start you off with exercises that build your ability to control the pencil, but you also need to be developing specific skills like drawing straight lines, C curves, S curves, and later, ellipses. These are the basic components of all flat shapes, and all forms in perspective. Of course you can doodle as much as you please in between your focused sessions.

Your goal for now should be to get the pencil to do what you want it to do. Go to DrawABox.com and spend a lot of time on the earliest exercises. Drawing straight lines point-to-point with the ghosting technique, drawing multiple intersecting straight lines through a single point, drawing arcs through a series of points, and accurately drawing over any of the lines in these exercises multiple times. Do these whenever you have a spare minute.

The purpose of all this is grow comfortable laying down the lines and shapes you'll need to draw from life. You shouldn't even begin to worry about accurate measuring, correct angles, or anything else until you can handle a pencil or pen without having to try really hard to keep it under control.

The basics you should learn, in this order, are:

1) Clean and accurate straight lines (parallel and intersecting), C curves, and S curves

2) Clean and accurate squares and ellipses

3) Clean and accurate basic forms in 1-point perspective (always drawing through a form as though it's a wire frame model or a glass paperweight): boxes, cones, pyramids, cylinders, spheres (with an ellipse on the horizontal axis, and another on the vertical to get your 4 hemispheres, which define the sphere's orientation in space)

4) Contour line practice on the basic forms mentioned above, and also lots of random squishy blobs with bands and nets of contour lines all over to give a good firm sense of their shape and weight. (DrawABox.com has lessons for this, and the later lessons show you how to apply the forms and blobs to drawings of actual things.)

This might sound like a lot of tedious nonsense, but it's super important to nail this stuff down so you can draw from life without struggling with the basics. Trust me, you can waste a lot of time if you skip ahead without putting in the work to figure these things out.

Once you get your hand trained and you're good at drawing lines and forms, drawing real things befomes a relatively straightforward matter of building objects out of basic forms and then sanding down some edges and softening plane breaks where appropriate. You work out the scaffolding, then layer on some surface finish that conforms to the contours. But good line drawing is really about good construction.

This feels like really good advice for me because I can't visualize so it's incredibly hard also for me to break things down into shapes. So maybe this will help me in my quest to learn to draw. I've been on the struggle bus.

 

[Monocle]

So how does this work? Is it taught live, at a set time? Seems you enroll in it as if it were a college course, but it's free?

I'm interested in the subject matter, since it seems to help with learning other creative arts (including writing). I'm just wondering if I can look at the material at my own time once I enroll in it.

It's a self-paced thing with pre-recorded lessons. You get dropped into a study group with completely optional participation. It's really just a forum for you to interact with other students if you want. If you care about getting the certificate for some reason, you'll have to do some light homework and watch your weekly deadlines. If you fall behind you can transfer to the next study group with a click or two, no problem. Otherwise, the already minimal homework is optional. I'd take some notes for yourself anyway though. Summarize the key concepts in your own words for later reference. You're also free to download any lecture or lecture transcript right there on the page.

The course is broken up into 4 weekly segments. You could easily power through it in one since the whole thing takes maybe 8 hours.

This feels like really good advice for me because I can't visualize so it's incredibly hard also for me to break things down into shapes. So maybe this will help me in my quest to learn to draw. I've been on the struggle bus.

Yeah form construction is the way to go here. That combined with observational drawing will give you a versatile toolset that doesn't depend on visual memory. The DrawABox.com lessons would be especially useful to you I think.

After those, Scott Robertson's How to Draw and How to Render books would be well worth your time.

 

[Lightning_Roller]

Thanks again for the advice monocle. I have been trying to find the right way to begin drawing and looking for anything to help me. But thanks to you, I might have finally found the path to help me become a good drawer. Thank you.

 

[hey_monkey]

Yeah form construction is the way to go here. That combined with observational drawing will give you a versatile toolset that doesn't depend on visual memory. The DrawABox.com lessons would be especially useful to you I think.

After those, Scott Robertson's How to Draw and How to Render books would be well worth your time.

you are a saint

 

[Monocle]

Thanks again for the advice monocle. I have been trying to find the right way to begin drawing and looking for anything to help me. But thanks to you, I might have finally found the path to help me become a good drawer. Thank you.

Glad to help!

Even if you have absolutely zero initial talent for drawing, you can become a great technician and virtually nobody will know the difference. You're dealing with well defined principles in a field where all the major questions about why the world looks how it looks to us have been solved. If you understand formal perspective, the principles of light, and color theory enough to accurately represent realistic objects or scenes, you can go any direction you want from there.

As you learn and practice the technical principles, your eye will get sharper and you'll start to notice how those principles were applied in other people's work. Style is a matter of selecting, exaggerating, simplifying, and interpreting from a realistic starting point. It's interesting to look at how something was stylized and be able to see if the artist did it on purpose. You'll notice a lot of gaps in people's knowledge of the fundamentals. The real fun starts when you can see the choices that skilled artists have made and decide what to use in your own art. You'll be surprised how the world of art opens up to you the more you get a handle on the seemingly dry elements of constructive drawing.

The basic exercises I've discussed are about building the hand skills you need for any kind of draughtsmanship, and getting comfortable with the standard components of informal perspective, which is a precursor to formal perspective where you're actually plotting your vanishing points and working out how a scene would look from a specific height and angle of view. Your form building skills can be developed quite thoroughly in the more forgiving framework of informal perspective, where you're just using simple facts like "if you can see the top of a box that's parallel to the ground, you must be above the box" to make the things you draw look right.

When you do make the jump to full scenes in formal perspective, you'll see how everything has a set relationship to the viewer and the other items in the scene. That larger context will give all of your work new dimension and help you to avoid frustrating errors, because you'll understand what makes things look how they ought to if they existed right there in front of you. One of the great gifts of formal perspective is the way it eliminates aimless guesswork.

The road to technical proficiency is long, but full of fun and interesting discoveries. The main thing is to have a direction and keep your eye on the big picture as you struggle. I hope this thread helps with that.

 

[AdanVC]

First time posting on this amazing thread. It's so nice to have this artistic community on GAF! I like to do artsy stuff too so I want to share this. Just a few days ago I finally decided to get a bunch of those famous Copic markers since they were at discount. This are the colors I choosed:

And this is my first test with them, drawing Arale is very fun!

The problem now is that the store I bought this markers from, don't have too much selection of colors and as you can see on the first pic, most of the colors I got are kinda saturated so doing light washes of color or applying pastel tones is pretty much impossible so now I'm kinda down about that because that means I need to get more light tones and that means more money and that means me being broke Copics are going to ruin my economic life haha

 

[Lightning_Roller]

Started the drawabox tutorials. Man I'm drawing a shit ton of lines. But gotta start somewhere.

 

[enzo_gt]

First time posting on this amazing thread. It's so nice to have this artistic community on GAF! I like to do artsy stuff too so I want to share this. Just a few days ago I finally decided to get a bunch of those famous Copic markers since they were at discount. This are the colors I choosed:

And this is my first test with them, drawing Arale is very fun!

The problem now is that the store I bought this markers from, don't have too much selection of colors and as you can see on the first pic, most of the colors I got are kinda saturated so doing light washes of color or applying pastel tones is pretty much impossible so now I'm kinda down about that because that means I need to get more light tones and that means more money and that means me being broke Copics are going to ruin my economic life haha

Copics are absolutely wonderful (and nice little picture!), but yeah, you're often at the mercy of whatever retailer near you that offers discounts' selection. Pretty much every time my local Michaels has 50%+ off coupons I run there to get a single copic to add to my collection. It's also difficult to get into because of the cost, so you have to be really picky or strategic (and do research, in some cases, because there are so many damn colours) with what colors you buy next as to ensure they fit into one of your blending groups. And yeah, you can't really do washes with Copics, you have to always work from light to dark (going back with lights to blend the darks you apply back in).

Protip: Store your Copics horizontally so the nibs last longer and the alcohol doesn't pool on one of the nibs but not the other.

 

[AdanVC]

Copics are absolutely wonderful (and nice little picture!), but yeah, you're often at the mercy of whatever retailer near you that offers discounts' selection. Pretty much every time my local Michaels has 50%+ off coupons I run there to get a single copic to add to my collection. It's also difficult to get into because of the cost, so you have to be really picky or strategic (and do research, in some cases, because there are so many damn colours) with what colors you buy next as to ensure they fit into one of your blending groups. And yeah, you can't really do washes with Copics, you have to always work from light to dark (going back with lights to blend the darks you apply back in).

Protip: Store your Copics horizontally so the nibs last longer and the alcohol doesn't pool on one of the nibs but not the other.

Absolutely! I actually spent a whole day investigating and carefully choosing all the colors I was going to get lol, but the vibrance and quality of this markers are totally worth it. I knew it as soon as I was painting that Arale drawing because of how well and easy is to color things with this markers and get super vivid and lovely tones applied to the paper without hazzle. I fell in love I tell you, lol. The only issue is yeah, the fact that you need to buy a lot of them in order to make proper blends. The store where I got them (Hiperlumen, in Mexico) used to have a way bigger selection of colors just a few months ago but it seems they decreased it due to low sales :'( But oh well, I think those colors I bought are a nice starter set. Will keep practicing with them in the meantime

Also, thanks for that tip! I was actually asking myself yesterday if I should store them vertically or horizontally. Will store them all horizontally now

Edit: I actually went to the store today to get some paper and took a pic of their selection of Copic markers, as you can see, not that big

 

[DEATH™]

Edit: I actually went to the store today to get some paper and took a pic of their selection of Copic markers, as you can see, not that big

Why dont you just save up and buy the big sets? Thats what imma do once I get set after moving.

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Also guys are u all interested in doing a ArtGAF discord? Or is it much more preferable to have discussions here?

 

[Lightning_Roller]

Why dont you just save up and buy the big sets? Thats what imma do once I get set after moving.

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Also guys are u all interested in doing a ArtGAF discord? Or is it much more preferable to have discussions here?

Would be nice to have one place to discuss and share art whenever we feel like it. I mean this is a nice thread but a discord would suffice as well.

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So I'm gonna begin the ellipsis tutorials and the box tutorials today in drawabox. I'll look at the other reference material monocle suggested then continue my journey through drawabox.com.

 

[enzo_gt]

Edit: I actually went to the store today to get some paper and took a pic of their selection of Copic markers, as you can see, not that big

My local retailers have about the same variety, with most of those empty or having ~4 in each slot at the most (I'm in Canada; online retailers suck here too), so you're lucky! Then again, there are hundred of options, I think most people just go online to get stuff that isn't stocked. From my research a lot of people use dickblick.com but they're all Americans.

Why dont you just save up and buy the big sets? Thats what imma do once I get set after moving.

Sets can also be good so long as the color selections line up for what you need, but you don't want to pay up all that money and have a bunch of duds, and usually the sets aren't that much of a discount on buying them individually

Spoiler

in one retailer near me it is actually more expensive to buy a set for some stupid reason

 

[Wulfric]

Also guys are u all interested in doing a ArtGAF discord? Or is it much more preferable to have discussions here?

This would be amazing. I'm subbed here, the digital art thread, and the drawing-a-day thread. Having one place to talk is nice and it brings everyone together regardless of the threads they usually post in.

Back on topic, what are some good books to jump into oil with? I heard Alla Prima is good, but it's quite expensive.

 

[Monocle]

This would be amazing. I'm subbed here, the digital art thread, and the drawing-a-day thread. Having one place to talk is nice and it brings everyone together regardless of the threads they usually post in.

Back on topic, what are some good books to jump into oil with? I heard Alla Prima is good, but it's quite expensive.

Alla Prima is probably the single best book on painting I've read. Best as in most substantial, full of practical advice you can apply immediately at any skill level (though intermediate students will find it especially helpful). It organizes and clarifies the complicated process of painting, and a good deal of its content can apply to drawing too.

The author has credibility. Richard Schmid is a living master whose work speaks for itself.

I'd go so far as to call Alla Prima essential for the serious artist. Consider it an investment that will dispense invaluable advice for years to come.

 

[DEATH™]

Would be nice to have one place to discuss and share art whenever we feel like it. I mean this is a nice thread but a discord would suffice as well.

This would be amazing. I'm subbed here, the digital art thread, and the drawing-a-day thread. Having one place to talk is nice and it brings everyone together regardless of the threads they usually post in.

Back on topic, what are some good books to jump into oil with? I heard Alla Prima is good, but it's quite expensive.

I might create it sometime in the future, but I need to be sure that everything goes well on that launch or it will get inactive like some of the art discords I frequent. I also need to ask all of you if its gonna be a GAF exclusive or do we welcome others.

Sets can also be good so long as the color selections line up for what you need, but you don't want to pay up all that money and have a bunch of duds, and usually the sets aren't that much of a discount on buying them individually

Spoiler

in one retailer near me it is actually more expensive to buy a set for some stupid reason

That's super weird lol.

Alla Prima is probably the single best book on painting I've read. Best as in most substantial, full of practical advice you can apply immediately at any skill level (though intermediate students will find it especially helpful). It organizes and clarifies the complicated process of painting, and a good deal of its content can apply to drawing too.

The author has credibility. Richard Schmid is a living master whose work speaks for itself.

I'd go so far as to call Alla Prima essential for the serious artist. Consider it an investment that will dispense invaluable advice for years to come.

One problem I had with Alla Prima (aside from the price, which is ridiculously expensive), is that its mostly centered in oils. He pretty much admitted tho in 1 chapter in the book that he ain't particularly good with watercolor. So it can be justified. So in the end, as much as he teaches great painting fundamentals, I still need to get a instructor/get a book that teaches things medium-specific.

Spoiler

(Obviously I'm also looking for watercolor books right now.)

 

[Monocle]

One problem I had with Alla Prima (aside from the price, which is ridiculously expensive), is that its mostly centered in oils. He pretty much admitted tho in 1 chapter in the book that he ain't particularly good with watercolor. So it can be justified. So in the end, as much as he teaches great painting fundamentals, I still need to get a instructor/get a book that teaches things medium-specific.

Spoiler

(Obviously I'm also looking for watercolor books right now.)

I didn't find the focus on oils to be a limitation. I feel like the info on fundamentals is far more valuable than any advice on technique with a specific medium. They're called fundamentals for a reason. Technique is useless without them, and should rarely take priority.

Now, if you're really struggling to achieve simple effects with watercolor, it wouldn't hurt to search out some books that describe the working methods of masters like John Singer Sargent. You might also look for process videos on Youtube.

 

[Lightning_Roller]

Alla Prima is probably the single best book on painting I've read. Best as in most substantial, full of practical advice you can apply immediately at any skill level (though intermediate students will find it especially helpful). It organizes and clarifies the complicated process of painting, and a good deal of its content can apply to drawing too.

The author has credibility. Richard Schmid is a living master whose work speaks for itself.

I'd go so far as to call Alla Prima essential for the serious artist. Consider it an investment that will dispense invaluable advice for years to come.

Hey Monocle, do you think that it would be best if I continue learning from drawabox.com after learning from the other material you suggested?

 

[Monocle]

Hey Monocle, do you think that it would be best if I continue learning from drawabox.com after learning from the other material you suggested?

I see no reason not to go through the full set of lessons. They're full of great exercises and approaches to drawing, distilled from classes by some of the best entertainment/industrial design teachers working today.

For anyone who's heard more experienced artists say you should carry a sketchbook everywhere and use it all the time, well, there's not much benefit to that if you're just scribbling away, trying to copy what you see with no real plan. It's important to have a reliable process that lets you focus less on technique and more on analyzing your subjects so you can internalize their forms and build your visual library. The Draw a Box lessons are great for developing this type of analytical thinking because they break down drawing into logical steps that help you to think through what's going on with the forms.

It's a process that takes a lot of the frustration and uncertainty out of drawing. Block in 2D shapes to establish placement and proportion - > turn the 2D shapes into 3D forms (paying special attention to long axes and sections) -> add surface finish that enhances the dimensionality of the forms, describes materials, and draws attention to your focal point(s). Simple and effective.

 

[Lightning_Roller]

I see no reason not to go through the full set of lessons. They're full of great exercises and approaches to drawing, distilled from classes by some of the best entertainment/industrial design teachers working today.

For anyone who's heard more experienced artists say you should carry a sketchbook everywhere and use it all the time, well, there's not much benefit to that if you're just scribbling away, trying to copy what you see with no real plan. It's important to have a reliable process that lets you focus less on technique and more on analyzing your subjects so you can internalize their forms and build your visual library. The Draw a Box lessons are great for developing this type of analytical thinking because they break down drawing into logical steps that help you to think through what's going on with the forms.

It's a process that takes a lot of the frustration and uncertainty out of drawing. Block in 2D shapes to establish placement and proportion - > turn the 2D shapes into 3D forms (paying special attention to long axes and sections) -> add surface finish that enhances the dimensionality of the forms, describes materials, and draws attention to your focal point(s). Simple and effective.

Awesome to hear, thanks dude.

 

[Jintor]

this is probably a dumb question but do you guys keep seperate sketchbooks for sfw and nsfw art

i probably should do that huh

 

[Wulfric]

this is probably a dumb question but do you guys keep seperate sketchbooks for sfw and nsfw art

i probably should do that huh

Well if you're gonna show it off to people, then yeah. But I draw the latter so rarely that I just use single pieces of Bristol board instead.

 

[BotoxAgent]

Yeah, copics are so pricey. I spent 300 on a bunch of them last week T_T

I have Scott Robertson's books on drawing and rendering....good stuff. My rendering and my understanding of shadow and lighting is really underdeveloped and Scott breaks down a lot of the fundamentals and terms very nicely and organized.

But I hate drawing perspective lines, esp when the vanishing points exist outside of the paper ugh.

 

[gaiages]

Why dont you just save up and buy the big sets? Thats what imma do once I get set after moving.

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Also guys are u all interested in doing a ArtGAF discord? Or is it much more preferable to have discussions here?

I'd join that not that I'd be helpful in answering questions lol

All I ask of it is can NSFW pictures have their own subchannel or something? I browse Discord a lot at work, so yeah >.>

 

[LegendX48]

an art gaf discord would be pretty sweet

 

[Iva Demilcol]

Hi GAF, first time posting here.

I've been drawing since I was a kid and I still make pictures for fun. I don't practice that often because my actual major is not related to art like... at all. Anyways, it's a secondary hobby, I'm never satisfied with the quality of my pictures but I suppose that that must be common... right?

These days I've been using Sketchbook Pro and I kind of like it. What's your opinion of it, btw? The past few months (let's say six months) I've been struggling trying to find the right "coloring" technique that fits my style. I'm always changing how I do the lineart on my pics, most of the times I like it, I guess, but it's the colors where I mess up most of the time. Ironically, some people like it when I use tons of layers, tons of effects and so on. But I think they are too busy and too colorful and I kind of made a promise to myself to restrain a little, and that's why I've been searching for the right technique that complements my style. I've tried many things (using airbrushes, softer colors, solid colors), I've been searching for the perfect set of brushes too, since I'm clueless how to make my own. The little time I have for drawing don't allow me to go deeper than the default sets and stuff you can download everywhere.

Anyways, I made something quickly to show you more or less how messy can be my style. I'd like to show you more but that would get me banned xD.

I really don't know exactly what can I expect from showing you this, but even if you don't have any suggestions at least I can get some kind of criticism, which is always good.

Thanks.

 

[chekhonte]

Trying to learn to draw life sized figures in underglaze on porcelain. Still stiff with janky shading.

 

[DEATH™]

snip

What I can say is to not be afraid of changing your brush size. there are areas where you can easily use a bigger or smaller brush. (But then it's a quick sketch relatively speaking)

snip

How do you paint that in porcelain? airbrush?

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@monocle THANK YOU VERY MUCH ON THE LEARNING HOW TO LEARN COURSE. Seriously. It really helped.


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https://discord.gg/gdHXPnW ARTGAF DISCORD EVERYONE! Invite everyone

Spoiler

inclding non-GAF artists if you guys like

 

[hey_monkey]

accidentally posted this in the wrong thread!

Okay, so I started digging into some very basic lessons per advice and I have been dutifully sketching away to the point that I'm even gonna get a sketchbook to keep with me but man, drawing is hard. Hard and wearing on the hands. But also I am able to create things more easily than I thought. Does that make sense? I mean it's easier to get further than I thought I would quickly, but also it's difficult to make things how I want them to be even so. Still, it's progress. I'm not nearly ready to post anything but after lessoning and practicing, I was able to mimic something in a book to a point that I was happy with (I mean, it was quite simple, don't let me oversell this) so I'm able to see real and actual progression here. It's nice. Thank you so much for the advice and resources, GAF.

fake edit: and I did buy a sketchbook, which like, who am I even - feelsgoodman

 

[Monocle]

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@monocle THANK YOU VERY MUCH ON THE LEARNING HOW TO LEARN COURSE. Seriously. It really helped.


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Great! That course is easily one of the best educational resources I've ever come across. The info applies to literally any complex skill or subject a person might want to learn. It's so valuable to understand how to make your studies stick.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

Copic markers are so beautiful. I almost want to get back into drawing.

 

[LiK]

I'm getting back into drawing. Haven't really drawn much in years and I'm rusty as shit. I've doodled off and on with a Cintiq and Apple Pencil/iPad altho I've felt more at home sketching on paper. But I want to get into digital coloring again. Been checking out some Japanese artist's art and it's been very inspiring.

 

[chekhonte]

How do you paint that in porcelain? airbrush?


https://discord.gg/gdHXPnW ARTGAF DISCORD EVERYONE! Invite everyone

Spoiler

inclding non-GAF artists if you guys like

The surface of the drawing are slabs made of solid, fired porcelain. I use pencils made from underglaze and crosshatching. They are then fired to about 2100 degrees F. At that temperature the underglaze vitrifies and becomes fused to the porcelain. You can run them through the dishwasher.

 

[RuinerPrime]

I haven't drawn a thing in 6 months. its really getting to me. Since I was a little kid I wanted to be an artist. So this drought is really getting to me. My lack of motivation & depression has certainly put a big wall in front of want I wanna do. I've been thinking of just going back to basics and do some relearning in DrawABox.com (super helpful site) and maybe that will spark something in me.

 

[kaskade]

I've always wanted to learn to draw, I think I'm finally going to take the plunge. Kind of got the idea because drawing on the iPad Pro seemed like so much fun but I want to get the fundamentals pencil to paper first before I dive headfirst into drawing on a tablet.

I spent a little bit last night watching some youtube stuff with a pen and paper (didn't have any pencils at home) and even that really opened my eyes. I always did symbol drawing. I would have this picture of some 3d object and basically make a (bad) 2d representation of it. I ended up drawing a few things in the room and my legs since I was sitting with my feet crossed over the arm of my couch. It was a good drawing but it felt good having something actually look kind of like what I wanted it too.

There's a lot of good resources online, I've heard about drawing with the right side of the brain so I thought about getting that. I just don't know which one would be best to commit to first.

 

[SOLDIER]

Now that I've got a four day weekend to mess with, I decided now's the perfect time to attempt this whole drawing thing. I've got a basic sketchpad and some HB pencils ready, so I'd like to start drawing a little each day and see how I progress up to the fourth day (and whether I have the patience to keep going from there).

This should have been my first question from the start, but as someone who wants to start from, let's say, level 0, what should be my first resource? I'm talking about learning from absolute scratch, hasn't so much as scribbled in years, and probably couldn't do a straight line at gunpoint. Calling me "Beginner" would be a stretch.

Anyway, I would just like to know which material is ideal for drawing dummies like me, and would have me practicing within minutes. People mentioned the Draw A Box site, so I'm wondering if I should start from there or if there's something a bit simpler (and maybe less repetitive) to digest.

 

[DrBo42]

Anyone know what the most straightforward 2d animation program is?

 

[mrklaw]

Now that I've got a four day weekend to mess with, I decided now's the perfect time to attempt this whole drawing thing. I've got a basic sketchpad and some HB pencils ready, so I'd like to start drawing a little each day and see how I progress up to the fourth day (and whether I have the patience to keep going from there).

This should have been my first question from the start, but as someone who wants to start from, let's say, level 0, what should be my first resource? I'm talking about learning from absolute scratch, hasn't so much as scribbled in years, and probably couldn't do a straight line at gunpoint. Calling me "Beginner" would be a stretch.

Anyway, I would just like to know which material is ideal for drawing dummies like me, and would have me practicing within minutes. People mentioned the Draw A Box site, so I'm wondering if I should start from there or if there's something a bit simpler (and maybe less repetitive) to digest.

Draw a box gets recommended a lot. And other places have similar 'drills' so that must be a good grounding.

As such, I’d be careful of setting expectations. Those drills are designed to be slow burn and not a 'get a beach body in 7 days!' - I only say that to avoid disappointment and not to put you off

If you look at the draw a box page the basic drill homework is a few pages of lines of different types. Doesn’t really get simpler than that (but they are repetitive). Not sure how long that would take but it would be a whole day (anyone done those exercises and can give a guide to how long the homework takes?) so maybe you could do those as a baseline, and then with spare time try out some other exercises or just copy something for fun.

Also several places recommend a fine liner not a pencil, so you’re not tempted to erase mistakes. I guess it doesn’t really matter if you use a pencil as long as you don’t correct mistakes.



Couple of questions myself:

I'm just starting out and have an iPad Pro so I want to use the pencil even though sites recommend not to. Anyone tried learning from scratch digitally? If so, what’s a good tool to use? I was starting with draw a box exercises using medipaint bang. Or if you really insist, I’ll get some paper.

Also when doing the shadow lines, how do you get around your hand and pencil obscuring the end point? If I hold the pencil at about 45 degrees it’s not too bad, but at 90 degrees I can’t see the end point until I’m on it.

Never been particularly artistic, but used to love the technical drawing class at school with the drafting table

 

[Xun]

Anyone know what the most straightforward 2d animation program is?

The best (in my opinion) is TVPaint.

Nothing else comes close for me.

 

[DrBo42]

The best (in my opinion) is TVPaint.

Nothing else comes close for me.

Thanks! I'll look into it

 

[Xun]

Thanks! I'll look into it

No problem!

It's essentially a digital version of traditional animation.

 

[Jintor]

do we have a pixel art thread by the way?

i'm just mucking around with programmer art

 

[DrBo42]

Little more work on Cavill and Gadot. Cavill is looking more like a Skarsgard right now, lol. Messing with head proportion on Gadot after tweaking the face for so long. Still needs to be bigger and move down on the neck/clavicle placement is maybe a little low.

do we have a pixel art thread by the way?

i'm just mucking around with programmer art

Other than the drawing thread I don't like we have specific ones.

 

[Huw_Dawson]

I can heartily recommend KKNL on Youtube for really terrific art vids.

First ever finished speed painting.

 

[Sibersk Esto]

I didn't really know where else to ask this without making a thread, so I was wondering if someone here could help me out.

I was going through my artistic influences and I came across a curious phenomenon with one of my formative interests, the DC animated universe. In it, I noticed a habit, particularly around the 'redesign' era, where certain reds and greens were replaced entirely with blacks, with the corresponding color reduced to a streak across it.

In this way, the color seems implied rather than actually being filled in. At first, I thought it was purely an RGB thing, but I can find no examples of it being done with the color blue. Is there a name for this technique?

 

[NandoGip]

this thread is pretty sweet, how have I not come across it before.

 

[VoxPop]

My friend got me a set of Copic markers while she was in Asia back in the day. She told me that the new old lady cashier said "whoa no way these markers are $125(?)" and said it must be a mistake and sold her the entire box for $12.50 haha. I've had them forever but I never considered them to be anything super special in my experience.

 

[Jintor]

My friend got me a set of Copic markers while she was in Asia back in the day. She told me that the new old lady cashier said "whoa no way these markers are $125(?)" and said it must be a mistake and sold her the entire box for $12.50 haha. I've had them forever but I never considered them to be anything super special in my experience.

?!>!>!>!??!?!?

 

[Wulfric]

My friend got me a set of Copic markers while she was in Asia back in the day. She told me that the new old lady cashier said "whoa no way these markers are $125(?)" and said it must be a mistake and sold her the entire box for $12.50 haha. I've had them forever but I never considered them to be anything super special in my experience.

This never happens to me.

Although I did get some Grumbacher cadmium red tubes for $8 the other day...