Advice on drawing

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I often/sometimes feel frustrated when trying to draw something like a human, and I don't know what to do about it. I also don't really draw a whole lot after school since I just want to retreat to my room and isolate myself to talk to my friends online. Can somebody give me some advice about improving my drawing skills/reducing frustration while drawing, and maybe to spend more time drawing?

Thanks,

-LegoMaster2149 (Written on January 29, 2018)

You could try charcoal sketching...just a thought I found I was a lot better at that than, drawing with like a pencil. My grandpa paid for me to go to a class for it so that is where I learned it. I haven't really done any since the class even though I was pretty good...just doesn't interest me that terribly much. But yeah for that I just did faces, but you could probably sketch a whole person or an animal and landscapes that way to. You'd have to look up some techniques on youtube or google search, it would be too hard to just describe how you do it. Basically though I found it was a lot easier to get the shapes and lines I wanted than with regular drawing.

What are the main areas you struggle with? Facial features and fine detail or full body and symmetry?

I agree with the charcoal sketching. That was the way I started and it helped me a lot in learning how to properly shade. Also, sometimes with people the areas left untouched give more definition than actual color/ink/charcoal/etc,...

Hello! I'm a children's book illustrator (which means that I have to be able to draw almost everything) and I'm given this question a lot. Here's what has worked for me, and I know has worked for many other artists as well:
One thing that is really important is to know your subject. So if the subject is a human, it is extremely helpful to know a bit about human anatomy and the proportions. Some mistakes that I made for a long time, and see other artists struggle with as well, is making the head too big, and the arms too short. I know there are many drawing styles where you mess up the proportions, like in anime where heads are huge, eyeballs take up half the face, and bodys are either much too big or too small. But to be able to break the rules, you have to know them first.
I could suggest drawing photos of people, or whatever subject you want to practice. You can even start by tracing an image, to get the feel for it. I sometimes tape a paper to the computer screen and trace.

For me, I have big struggles with drawing architecture. But since I started forcing myself to go out and draw the houses in my town, I can now come up with a decent building from my imagination, just because I've gained a bigger understanding of how they're constructed.
I've done the same for drawing animals, humans, plants, water.. just any subject that I want to get better at drawing. Just keep on drawing it until it's not so hard anymore. But it's hard to do without a reference, so google images are my biggest resource.

There are also a huge amount of youtube tutorials that takes up pretty much every subject there is. Those can be really helpful.
Here's one from another illustrator that takes up the human form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3NclCn8e7g It's pretty simplified, but he does teach the correct proportions, and I think it could be really helpful in nailing down the basics

Practice your art. Pick up that pencil (or whatever you use to draw) and draw something - anything at all. It doesn't have to make sense or look awesome. Just draw.

The main idea is to take it upon yourself to draw every day. Every single day. That's the only way you'll master whatever you want to master.

Both.

I've been drawing for many years, and while I'm no expert, I'll share some of my tips with you:

- Look up diagrams that break down human face and body proportions, and try to memorize where everything is supposed to go (for example, eyes should generally be one eye width apart, and the elbows are parallel to the bottom of the ribcage).

- You should also try to mentally break down the components of your subject into general shapes. For example, I find that female characters are much easier to draw than males because the generic hourglass body shape is basically just several trapezoids stacked on top of each other (though once you are confident drawing that then you can adjust the proportions to suit your needs.)

- I would highly encourage you to focus on learning anatomy/proportions more than faces/hair in the beginning. My biggest mistake/regret as an artist was putting all my effort into learning how to draw pretty faces and hair and shying away from anatomy/proportions in the very beginning. Over the years I've paid a terrible price for that by being able to draw characters with decent-looking faces and hair but bad anatomy/proportions. I often wish I could time-travel to the past and smack my younger self silly for ever daring to believe that decent faces/hair could possibly compensate for poor anatomy/proportions, because they obviously can't!

- Once you have a basic grasp of anatomy, try using Google images for references for more complex poses. Try to use real people as references as often as you can.

- As others have suggested, using charcoal can help with learning some techniques. For example, I used to have a lot of difficulty understanding the concept of shading until I started experimenting with charcoal, and then it suddenly made sense.

I hope you find these tips helpful. Happy drawing!

I’m do art as a living. I mostly use reference images then I create something from that. I started by copying something I was super interested in. Then kept doing it. Maybe start by using a reference photo that you like or something you are super interested in. A lot of artist use reference images as a starting point. If you like faces start by using a reference photo of someone or something you like, maybe someone famous you admire? I started with super heroes :0D Start basic then go from there. Keep practicing. There some of my art https://theavengerartist.deviantart.com/gallery/

Amazing portraits! I'm super impressed by the lighting in the batman painting.

Pinterest is also a helpful source for reference photos & drawing tutorials.

Depends on what you are trying to achieve drawing art. Do you want to design something or do illustration? Either way starting with drawing boxes in different angles and perspective is important for constructing the human figure or face. After that you should study the human body, learn basic anatomy, how to draw the face. Use reference when drawing, and don't copy lines but learn to understand the shapes. An easy way to know if you understand the shapes of the face is by rotating your drawings and draw the same face from different angles. Try to stay away from photo realism, photo realism is the art of copying. It doesn't translate well into drawing from imagination.

See if your local library branch allows you to access books online. That way you can take out instructional books from home and work that way. I had one book that really helped me with starting to get the hang of sketching the human form, maybe you'll find one that works for you.

Last bumped by LegoMaster2149 on 12 Feb 2018, 9:36 am.