Some Advice

Okay, so I'm well convinced my art is... pretty much an abomination. An affront to all good taste. Can never seem to get the hang of anatomy or proportion no matter how much I study, can't draw animals at all, can't draw anything realistically, can't handle foliage or architecture, often hear complaints about my style being "too angular", etc.

I tried to just completely give up and stop drawing a while back, but every time I try to get out, they keep dragging me back in I keep getting contracted for projects by friends that, with varying degrees of begrudging-ness, I accept. And then fuck up.

I'm thinking I need to just start over from scratch, relearn everything.

Can anyone offer me any advice on where to start? Please, something beyond the basics of "draw from life" and "study anatomy", I've gotten that advice constantly since day one, it's pretty well ground in there by now. >_>

It may help if you provided links to your older art.

Mm. Give me a minute and I'll scrounge some of it up.

Original art. One-off from a webcomic I did.

Self-portrait. On my troper page.

Fanart I did for a friend.

Further excerpt from the webcomic I mentioned.

Project I started as a joke and never finished.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Fanart.

...Never do a Cheeky Mouth ever again, for starters.

Okay, what else?

Your noses are too long. At least the Engarde nose is.

If you want to make something appear full of motion, like in said Engarde thing, try making things at a 3/4th view, and have things overlap each other to create perspective. Exaggerated perspective is also good.

Balls, I have to work on my perspective, too.

Perspective is not as hard as it looks, once you get the hand of it. It just takes a lot of guesswork. Try taking pictures of yourself in a pose, or look at a pose for reference to try and see it.

But that's only if you want to do action.

Well, I wanna do action.

OK then.

Unfortunately, I don't have any good guides. I also suck at drawing, so the only visuals I can really give are ones I did trying to learn the same thing.

This is a good example of relatively simple perspective◊

The fist and the foot being up front. He already looks ready to move because of the way his body is positioned. Try and learn how arms and legs look at angles like that (and trust me, when you draw it, you will be asking yourself where the fuck half the arm went) and you'll be half way there.

Foreshortening always gives me problems, since my sense of proportion is way off from the get-go. I see what you're getting at there, though.

IMO your figures don't look like they're in enough motion. I have the same problem, and I suspect it goes away with practice.

I'd suggest making your figures simpler. Simpler doesn't necessarily mean easier to draw, and it'll be hard figuring out how best to distill a character down into a few basic visual parts, but I think that'd help you draw action better.

Maybe the stuff I linked wasn't really representative, but I always thought I was pretty decent at action.

Oh well. I'll admit, it needs more work.

edited 10th Jun '11 1:08:32 PM by Blackmoon

It looks Bleachy.

So, I don't like it, personally, but it's not THAT bad. Better than what I can do, anyway. But I have REALLY low opinions of Bleach's fight style. It's up to you whether that's a legit crit or just a personal opinion.

Well, I'd rather not be like Bleach, so...

Can anyone offer me a place to start as far as re-educating myself in how to draw? Websites with tutorials, books, that kinda thing?

edited 10th Jun '11 1:17:55 PM by Blackmoon

The key, as far as I can tell, to a manga-ish art style (if that's what you're going for) is:

• Simple character design, which I'd say you have down pretty well, although it could be simpler.
• Backgrounds that are either hyper-detailed or just speedlines/splashes/dots - so I'd work on realism in backgrounds.
• The left-to-right rule. (Or right-to-left, if your language reads in that direction.) Characters moving the plot forward are on the left side of the screen, facing right. Manga artists don't keep to this rule nearly as much as Western comic artists, but I'd call it a good rule to live by.
• Put the important part of the panel in the centre. Again, mangaka are more likely to not follow this instruction all the time, but it's a good rule of thumb. If you're introducing a new element to the scene, put it in the middle. Hell, if you're introducing the fact that an element is gone, put the place where the element used to be in the middle to accentuate its gone-ness.

That's what I've gathered from reading Scott McCloud's Making Comics (which you should own, or at least read, if you haven't already) and a volume of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha. So I'm totes an expert on this sort of thing, you guys.

edited 10th Jun '11 1:23:18 PM by AirofMystery

here is an artblog with some very good advanced-comic-making tutorials somewhere in the archive. I call it advanced-comic-making because it assumes a certain level of drawing ability and builds from there. It's not a long archive at all, and certainly worth clicking through.

Dunno if this falls under "drawing from life", but it's not bad to draw from reference pictures. Use yourself or get someone you know to pose, take a picture, and use that as a reference yes I've totally done that. It doesn't have to be exactly the same, but similar enough for you to get an idea of what your thing should look like, approximately.

I'm not the best artist, but I've found that helps me a lot.

edited 15th Jun '11 12:56:04 AM by melloncollie

Well, thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. I'll... do my best to not suck, then.

I'll come back when I've improved. Which means I'm never coming back, I guess.

I've used myself as a reference for tricky poses a few times

edited 15th Jun '11 1:28:40 AM by LoniJay

^^ I don't know whether this really counts as advice, but don't just leave! Keep posting stuff here or in the critique thread once you finish it, since it's often hard to tell what you've been improving on and what you still need to practice when judging your own work.

And I am a huge hypocrite for saying that because I almost never post stuff. I should probably fix this.

I found the actual tutorial bits, so you don't have to read the rest of the blog.

intro

settings and backgrounds contd...

characterization through pose and body language

gesture—hands in particular

focus

effective visuals

panel layout (I love this one)

And three about character design.

it's not about re-learning or un-learning. Just learning more.

Mess with the way you fundamentally understand the things you see. Instead of thinking in terms of shapes of given proportions that fit together a certain way, think more in terms of motions. Not just for things that are moving; Even things that are at rest have flows of pressure and stress propping them up. Proportions and shapes are a fine thing to study, but they take up way too much space in every "How to Draw X" book out there. Look up as much as you can about fast gesture drawings, then do a lot of them. Lots and lots and lots; Fill pages with curvy blurs, don't worry about the final outline of any characters, though you could fill in some of those stick figure-like skeletons once you get started. Listen to any kind of energetic music that makes you want to move rather than detail while you practice.

HEY GUYS I found this thing on faces and lighting today. Not very indepth but it looks helpful.