So I've been drawing this and that, and I figured this would be a good place to get feedback. I might post things here from time to time.

I drew this last night. Because of the angle that I was drawing it at, the perspective of the guy seems to have come out kinda wonky, but I believe if you sort of tilt your head so that you're looking up at the screen it looks better. I dunno. There's supposed to be grass to either side of him but it hasn't come up especially well in the scanner.

I feel like I'm on my medication when I look at that.

Nice imagination and potential, but practice, practice, practice, practice. It will come.

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'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...' - Dr. Evil

'Secondly, I don't see why "income inequality" is a bad thing. Poverty is not an injustice. There is no such thing as causes for poverty, only causes for wealth. Poverty is not a wrong, but taking money from those who have it to equalize incomes is basically theft, which is wrong.' - Typical Randroid

'I think it's gone a little bit wrong.' - The Doctor

Right dudes, I need to keep myself occupied for the next three months, and I guess part of that involves drawing everything all the time, mostly of people so I can get down the human form.

So that I don't keep drawing the same poses, I'd like people to suggest things to draw. There is no limit to what you can suggest! Last month I drew King Office Worker defending his realm! What might tommorrow bring? A game of limb poker? Someone streaking through a game of pro golf? Who knows? Not me!

Start very specific and work your way up. If you try to draw the entire human body from the start, you'll probably not pick up the specifics quickly if at all. The eyes are the main focus of characters in general, so you should attempt to learn to draw those well first. From there you could learn facial expressions while you learn to draw the nose and mouth, then move on to an actual head (hair takes a while and demands special attention), and so on. For the body, start with a bust rather than the entire anatomy. Spend some time getting your necks and shoulders and chest areas right. Move on from there; hands and feet also require special attention, as does getting down the idea of correct limb length. Different clothes conform to the body differently, so there is a lot to learn with that as well.

Don't try to draw straight out of your imagination right from the start. Amateur artists who try to do so are working with a pipe dream. Use references like hell. Straight copy the shit out of styles you like, but don't claim them as your own when you show them to others. Find how to draw books that focus on abstract concepts like head heights and anatomical correctness, as opposed to how to draw books which focus on how to draw specific characters. For heroic characters, there is How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. For anime/manga, there are several out there, and a lot of them are actually outdated but still decent for the abstracts. Deviantart has nice tutorials which you can search for that focus on any topic you can think of. For cartoonish styles, while it's true you can do whatever the hell you want, you still need to focus on consistency and making the cartoons look appealing.

So my suggestion is of course to start from the top. Make some eyes or at least drop it down to drawing some heads. See if you can perfect your ability at doing that.

Look pal, if you think I drew King Office Worker to demonstrate my understanding of appropriate limb length, you are mistaken. For your information, I have been doing basically all of those things. That's not what my post was about, and it's frankly a tremendous groove-cramper for you to jump in here with your posts that aren't related to zany scenarios in any capacity.

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, then. Since I'm lost, never mind. FWIW, I was trying to be helpful, not be an ass.

You had the power to stop this



Now it is too late for all of us.

I feel like on different medication when I look at this one. What is in that mind of yours, Zablorg?

Draw a man strung up from a tree like a pinata, being beaten by blindfolded children. He vomits candy.

STEP

RIGHT

UP

Is he on stilts? You're still drawing weird looking people, but at least you're improving relatively quickly and your third guy looks more solid. Have you got or heard about art books like The Complete Book of Drawing and How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way? Also, if you want to draw anime/manga looking stuff check up Mark Crilley over on YouTube.

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'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...' - Dr. Evil

'Secondly, I don't see why "income inequality" is a bad thing. Poverty is not an injustice. There is no such thing as causes for poverty, only causes for wealth. Poverty is not a wrong, but taking money from those who have it to equalize incomes is basically theft, which is wrong.' - Typical Randroid

'I think it's gone a little bit wrong.' - The Doctor

Anatomy books and practice.

Yeah, I've got a book a while ago that I'm just now starting to really study from. I know where I need to improve and all that jazz. Before now I've just been trying to get to a point where I can translate my ideas onto the paper/tablet fairly readily. For me that required getting up to a fairly basic understanding of anatomy, but I'm comfortable now to begin refining it in earnest.

It's the book you recommended me some time ago actually; Dynamic Anatomy. It's pretty awesome, so thanks for that.

Glad you got it and like it.

Dynamic Anatomy is definitely a great book.

Also, one of my drawing teachers brought up a good point, which is kind of the opposite of what was mentioned earlier in this thread. Always work from general to specific; work on the overall 'shape' and motion of a drawing before working on the details. Build your forms, and make sure they have weight and solidity to them, then start to add things like faces, clothing, and the like.

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I don't like being a bastard, but they leave me no choice.

-Marshal Law, "The Hateful Dead"

It's totally a great book, although I do wish the pictures included were of a bit more help in terms of drawing the actual stuff. But I get the impression that the book's not specifically for drawing, so it's all cool.

Hav was right; my drawings are rapidly becoming better since getting a better understanding of anatomy itself. I've actually completed a couple of more intermediate stuff recently that I don't want to show because in retrospect the anatomy is all fucked up and it makes me go cringe when I look at it. But I'm told that's a fairly common feeling when it comes to improving skills and looking at one's own work.

While it's only recently that I've begun drawing fairly regularly, I've studied the theory of effective drawing from a very early age, so the practice of sketching out the flow of the piece, then filling in the shapes, etc, has always been part of my process. Getting an entry level tablet has actually helped that process a lot, too, because putting that sort of planning onto physical paper made it messy when I'd have to rub it out afterwards.

om nom nom

Much better. I also dig it.

Another way to improve forms, especially if you are interested in bodies, is to study bodybuilders. Both male and female. It is a great way to see how muscles go together and how they work. All that normal body fat isn't in the way, obscuring things. It also over exaggerates the muscles obviously, so you get to see the ones that you never knew were there.

That's a good idea. I think bodybuilders are kind of funny anyways so drawing them should be a fun exercise.

I've decided that at some point I want to draw some Silver Age comic bullshit.

Developing my speed is something I'm very interested in, because I rarely have as much time on my hands as I do now. Something I use as a metric of how I'm doing is to see how quickly I can churn out a quick sketch that I could concievably turn into something cool looking if I was up to it.

I present to you:

The Shiftiest Barman in the West

or

Lower Your God Damn Voices

Yo Hav,

I was looking around for other tutorial books about anatomy and perspective and colour and junk, and it turns out that Burne Hogarth is considered to be a bit of a maverick when it comes to his anatomy. Which is fine, because I was never planning on learning from one source anyway. But with that in mind, what aspects of his style in particular would you say are... distinctly Hogarth? What should I aim to take away from studying his stuff?

Gosh... I'd have to go deep into the memory banks for that info. I haven't even looked at one of his books for years. What they did for me was make stuff "click". Like he took me to another level. I wouldn't say that I learned everything I know from his books, but the helped me immensely. Specifically, I would have to get the books in my hand and flip through them to jog the grey matter on what exactly I saw where I was like "OOOOoooh. That's how that should look!"

There is another good source for studying anatomy that you will NEVER get in any class room and pretty much NO ONE is going to suggest and I have met like only two other people that have ever even considered the idea...

I don't dig up corpses anymore.

PORN!!

I know it sounds fucking silly, but there is no other source that is gonna have human bodies in the varied positions you see in the dirty movies. It really gives you a good sense of how bodies move and work. It is also a good source for showing bodies interacting together.