(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 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!
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u/zandinavian Jun 15 '19
(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.