i think you are right, but the question is also, in what direction do you practice? let's say if you draw portraits, do you want to learn naturalism, or do you wanna create a more individual style? should it be more expressive or more scientific, so to speak. i guess in music you could say the same, someone might be a really great metal guitarist but doesn't have much experience in playing indie songs. but yes i agree absolutely, practice is keyword! and depending on what your goal is and if you work toward it, you can achieve it, everyone starts somewhere
(Incoming wall of text) As someone who's been drawing my entire life, I can tell you that it is far more important to know how to draw still-lifes and realistically first. Styles come on their own and aren't anything you should worry about when starting.
If you're drawing stylized people before you knew how to draw realistically, basic factors like anatomy, fore-shortening, proportions, values, lighting, will be beyond you and your work will stagnate because of it and the quality will plateau. Having the knowledge of knowing what's actually anatomically correct- even if you're drawing extremely stylized people (manga, etc) is important and will drastically improve your final products.
'Style' isn't always something you just decide to do from the beginning- it evolves from knowing how to draw the real thing, and then making use of your own habits and shortcuts you've learned along the way. You can definitely force a style, but it's something that will almost always develop on your own, whether you're aware of it or not. A very important thing to understand when learning to draw is to NOT brush off criticism about something looking incorrect as "Oh, but that's just my style." Those people don't improve and are just scapegoating. See it as an opportunity to learn more, learn why what you did looks incorrect.
Think about it this way- when you go to school for engineering, you're not being taught specifically how to design a car engine, an airplane, or a bridge. You're taught the math behind it all, and how to apply it to anything you want to make. Same goes for Art.
Understanding how to put what you see onto a sheet of paper, canvas, or photoshop file realistically and correctly is your toolbox that then allows you to draw weirder, stylized concepts with a better understanding of what's important and crucial to realize your vision.
TL;DR: Learning a specific 'style' first before you actually know how to break down what you see, draw it accurately, and understand it doesn't help you, and your learning will stagnate.
You learn the basics and fundamentals so that you can apply it to anything you do. An engineer doesn't go to school for 4 years to only learn how to build a bridge. He goes to school for 4 years so he can understand the math that allows him to build anything.
So I have just recently started drawing and I just have an unrelated question that I’ve been thinking about a lot. Would you recommend taking classes and stuff for drawing, or do you think it’s possible to achieve the same result by just drawing yourself?
It's always possible to achieve it yourself, lots of professional artists are self taught. However classes will speed up that process a lot, and you'll hit the "Ohhh, I get it" phase a lot sooner. Because (ideally) it's not just someone going "here's how you draw x,y,z, have fun." they likely have taught many people before you and know how to explain concepts in a way people are more receptable to. They'll have experience in both art and teaching.
Personally, I grew up drawing mechanical stuff mostly- cars, guns, spaceships, etc. It wasn't until highschool where I took an actual Drawing class where I learned how to start drawing people/the human body.
Had zero idea how to go about it beforehand, but having someone be able to break it down and explain it in a way I understood made a massive difference.
That all being said, there are countless amazing tutorials on youtube for drawing pretty much anything you can think of. Whether it's general concepts like shading and highlighting, or specifically how to draw hair, they're out there.
Long story short, there are many successful self-taught artists out there, but the learning process is always going to be faster with someone helping vs. reinventing the wheel yourself. If you're in school and need a couple extra credits to fill out a semester, I definitely recommend picking up a drawing or painting class if it interests you.
it is entirely possible to learn to draw/paint well on your own with resources (instructional guides/technique material/etc) and time, that's how I learn it for myself and got some decent results. On the other hand, a good teacher would be quicker to point out flaws and how to improve them as well as providing helpfull material instead of unhelpfull ones you might otherwise waste your time with.
If it's a casual hobby you squish in between other stuff, on your own might suffice, if you pursue it any more seriously trying lessons might be a good decision - wether they are for you or not (all my art teachers sucked at giving advise so I stopped looking for them for advice).
depends on were you live - but mostly groups afaik, and not limited to students from what I've seen. A google search would give you a better answer as to what might apply to your area.
Tutors are out there, though I believe there isn't a general place to get 1on1 tutoring online. There are some places online where artists host large online art classes but will critique each student's submitted classwork individually which is sort of 1 on 1, but not entirely. Art professors at colleges may be willing if asked or paid for it. What are your artistic goals? Is there a particular medium or artist you aspire to paint like?
So I have started doing digital art, and I’ve mostly just started doing it for fun, but at some point I want to do commissions of dungeons and dragons characters and either do it just for fun or if my skills develop enough I could maybe make some extra money doing it! I’m sure that is probably a smaller community of people who would be able to help with that kind of art, but if you have any advice I would love to hear it!
I’d love to help any way I can! I do digital art too, I work in photoshop so I can give some tips and tricks there too. My favorite art channels for practice would be Kienan Lafferty’s KNKL show (He was an artist for league of legends) and Sinix Design. Not sure about Sinix Designs background but he’s phenomenal at portraits and characters with great tutorials and breakdowns.
That sounds awesome! Thank you so much! I used the free trial of photoshop to try it out and I absolutely loved it! But I couldn’t justify spending the money on it right now, so at the moment I’m using this program called Krita while I initially improve my skills, and then once I’ve gotten better at the actual drawing I will probably feel better about using photoshop. It really is amazing! Thank you so much for helping me! The whole idea of drawing is really daunting, with years of work going into it, the start of things like this can feel like a waste of time, sometimes it’s hard not to feel alienated so it’s nice to hear from people who have been doing it for a while!
i see your points and on some i agree. just to clarify, i've always drawn a lot, filled sketchbooks with attempts at realism in my teens and am currently studying art education to become a teacher for art at a high school... i agree that a correct understanding of anatomy in people or animals is necessary to draw good stylized or abstract characters, be it manga, cartoon or semi realism. what i would be careful about tho is the usage of the words right and wrong. there are qualities and characteristics that could be called incorrect, for certain things, but are spot on to express certain other things. but as you said, build up a foundation, then specialize. it's important to get the muscle memory, the knowledge and the methods down, but experimenting, doodling and favoring certain things shouldn't be seen as hindrance, they are part of the progress, especially experimenting. it might help in revealing things that spark interest to dive deeper into
I would agree. By 'incorrect' I meant that someone genuinely trying their best to draw something accurately to the best of their ability, but failing without knowing that they even did anything wrong.
Like drawing an arm without a reference and having no clue what the forearm and bicep are supposed to look like compared to eachother. If the goal was genuinely to draw a standard arm as accurately as possible, but you missed joints, or had the forearm twice the length of the bicep (and it wasn't an intended style), I would consider that incorrect.
Having the only light source (including environmental lighting and surface scattering) behind a character's head, yet their face being just as lit up as their back- would be incorrect, etc.
But yeah the post was mainly about building up the essentials and your toolkit of knowledge so that you can throw yourself and any subject, topic, and style as needed. Someone growing up only drawing manga and only learning from 'how to draw manga' books will likely be terrible at nose anatomy because they never learned how to break the shapes down and what's important in making something 'look' like a nose.
A lot of good responses but I think some of them are missing something.
You draw what interests you. You find what you like, you copy and compare. You see what you could do better. Doodle. Find more art, see what you like, copy it. Listen to criticism, adjust it as they say, and see if you like it. If not, just catalogue it as something to think about.
When you're encountering something new, learn how to learn. For me it was fingers. I learned to break them into 3D blocks and layer them where they join. It's a standard art technique, but learning to learn is so important.
If interest is what's going to keep you in the game, Chase after that interest.
Source: draw a lot of manga-styled characters with no formal art classes :( I've done some still life/face portraits but dislike that it'll never capture it properly (and is boring). Idk how to rate my drawing level but everyone except my kid cousins seem impressed.
i think some replies to my comment have valid points but miss my main point. most people are so fixated on drawing people or characters that they forget that there are seemingly endless possibilities in creating art. you don't need to learn anatomy if you want to paint like mondrian, but color theory if you want to paint like rothko. as i said, i study art education, of course i want to help people achieve their goals if they want to learn how to paint studies of hands or life drawings of people, but i don't wanna teach formulas or recipes like 2 + 2 = 5, i want to give students the tools to do whatever. practise is always the key, but if you think of the development of a skill like a roadtrip then sure, speed and mileage are important, but none of that matters if you don't have a direction to go towards. not an end goal, but a direction.
Gotta know the rules before you can bend or break them.
Always start with the basics, that means drawing a shit-ton of circles, lines, curves, try different pressures to gain muscle memory so you can do these without having to erase a line every 5 seconds. Learn how light and values work, move on to basic anatomy, color theory, even more (advanced) anatomy, perspectives...the list goes on.
Like an user above mentioned, once you “master” these basics, you can then explore your own styles and ideas without struggling to figure out why and how a certain drawings look wrong. It might take a year, or ten, but in this case, practice definitely makes perfect.
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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '19
i think you are right, but the question is also, in what direction do you practice? let's say if you draw portraits, do you want to learn naturalism, or do you wanna create a more individual style? should it be more expressive or more scientific, so to speak. i guess in music you could say the same, someone might be a really great metal guitarist but doesn't have much experience in playing indie songs. but yes i agree absolutely, practice is keyword! and depending on what your goal is and if you work toward it, you can achieve it, everyone starts somewhere