Drawing! Need some tips

[Kadayi]

If your goal is to become Better at Drawing, you really do have to start with basics, in my opinion. Observational drawing is key.

^This.

Developing the ability to be able to simply obverse and draw that which is in front of you with a degree of accuracy not in terms of photorealism (which is a bit of a blind alley), but in conveying the weight and structure of objects, as well as their spatial relationship to the world around them is invaluable if you want to be able confidently draw from your imagination. Have a look at these Giacommeti sketches: -

http://drawingowu.wordpress.com/2011...de-giacometti/

Very simple, but you get a sense of a solidity to the objects (particularly in sketch 2) despite the fact that in reality it's just lines of a piece of paper, they convey a sense of the space.

Just get to grips with the basics and then evolve your own style from there. If you attempt to ape others without getting the basics down your work will just come across as derivative rather than innovative.

[Voon]

Searched around the web and found a video of idrawgirls guy making a colouring tutorial using photoshop


So, when I start colouring my sketches, I have to do a few layers do I?

[Kadayi]

So, when I start colouring my sketches, I have to do a few layers do I?

Basically draw by hand on a piece of paper. Far easier than drawing using a graphics palette tbh (use the palette for the painting side of things) plus a lot easier to move around. Then scan grey scale (@300 DPI), go to levels and adjust to remove the inherent grayness of the paper (I normally pull back to about 230 from 255). Set the layer to multiply and lock it, and then make some layers underneath to paint on. Sometimes it's worth giving yourself a background colour of some kind to work with. Also explore assigning blending modes (like overlay, softlight and multiply) to brushes to see how they interact, as well as tweaking brush settings like opacity and scattering etc.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58657528/Bru...I%20020212.jpg

Pretty much all of those colours are resultants of overlays brushes for example.

[DaftPunk]

See you are already on photoshop yet you can draw lol. First practice basics like other said,leave PS for later..

[Althea]

With regards to colouring, can I suggest something? Save it for later. Focus on your line work.

Some artists do both colours and lines (The Luna Brothers, Phil Noto, Sana Takeda and a number of others), whereas some artists focus on one or the other (e.g. how Morning Glories is done. Joe Eisma does the lines, Alex Sollazzo does colours; also how a number of B.P.R.D. comics are done - one artist (e.g. Tyler Crook, Cameron Stewart, Guy Davis) does lines whilst colours are usually done by Dave Stewart). I'd say get one thing down reasonably well before you try to do both.

[Voon]

How did I do? The hand's probably my weakspot aside from feet.

So, I'll just concentrate on my line art before colouring then! Practice... Practice...

[Keep]

The fingers are a bit stubby, but the thumbs are really good (and thumbs are a bitch)!

[Voon]

Now that you mention it... Gotta work on those fingers

[Althea]

Don't worry about perfect. If you're doing cover art, sure, but for interiors or practice? Perfect will just hurt.

I've seen professional comics with characters with facial features missing, such as this panel of B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered - which is blown up quite a bit due to me using the iOS app.

[DaftPunk]

I don't remember that panel and i just recently read

B.P.R.D. and Hellboy series.

[Althea]

If you haven't read B.P.R.D.: The Dead Remembered (collected in Being Human), then you won't.

[Chaz]

I would say don't worry too much about getting perfect proportions etc, as long as it look OK to you on the page, then it will pass. People in real life are all sorts of odd shapes and proportions, short legs, long narrow torsos, wide hips etc.

Whilst a night class and life drawing tuition are good if you can afford it, if you can't you can always practice on friends and family, or just sit in front of a mirror and draw yourself. Do lots of light scribbly lines then gradualy hone them down.

Personally I'd say try and stay away from doing comic book stuff too early on and just try and stick to doing natural scenes. Practice when you can but most importantly when you want to. Don't force yourself, you'll do much better work when you're enjoying it.

Don't struggle trying to draw stuff from memory, use lots of reference pictures. Observe from real life. Nearly all the great masters had studios with life models and dressed them up with costumes props and scenery and lit the scene, they didn't just pull stuff out of their head. Many comic book artists used to do the same thing and have actors and models pose for their frames, and many current well known artists still do.

But yeah practice and patience, and do it because you enjoy it. Trust me, you certainly won't be doing it for the money.

[Voon]

Done a little practice on shading. I'm not using a regular pencil, so it's a bit hard to shade. And I've just noticed that I just made her left eye larger...

Here's the other

[Xercies]

Also and this is a good trick I find with perspective, if you have a problem with perspective draw the vanishing lines, I always find it helps me a lot to be honest.

[Voon]

Yeah, I have a little trouble with perspective so, I'll try that out. Thanks

[Voon]

Grainy, grainy..... grainy. Oh, I was talking about the quality of the picture I took, my latest sketch. What do you think?

And thanks again for the tips, guys. You all have been a big help.

[Xercies]

Yep that's definitely improving, your making me want to improve my skills as well :)

[Voon]

Heh, I know that feel bro. It's good motivation.

[Berzee]

Basically unrelated and no slight against your own pic-a-choors, but this thread reminded me of this comic
http://buttersafe.com/2007/06/28/the-cat-drawing/
and then I posted it

[Kannaaashi]

actually line art is pretty easy.. coloring suck balls esp when you want to attain something different heres one of my old line art, still can figure what coloring style should I use. So I end up having them "black and white"

I don't like drawing real humans figure.. a bit too easy..since you can always see a reference*