December 20 Progress: Art Background and things I already “know”

December 20, 2018

Background

-I’ve always been interested in drawing. As a youngin’ I would watch cartoons and try to draw my favourite characters (ahem, Sailor Moon!). I didn’t practice drawing that much growing up which is a shame for me now! But when I hit middle school, the anime phase started! I met some really talented/skilled artists who would drawing amazing art of all my favourite anime characters. They would doodle in my planner and I still have those drawings today.

Starting off, this may seem unrelated, but… when I was younger I just liked lying there (especially when I first wake up and would be too lazy to get up even when my bladder was bursting) and just *look* at things. For some reason I liked to outline shapes and objects in my head. Looking back I think it may have helped in my understanding of drawing. But I digress…

When I started anime, I guess the hours and hours of staring at anime characters, my art suddenly had a “leap”. I could kind of imitate the artwork (not as nicely as my skilled friends, which totally helped my confidence as an artist :p Young me didn’t understand how much practice would go into learning how to draw. And most of my friends also had some form of formal art training as well…). Still I didn’t pursue it more, mainly due to motivation, procrastination, and just self-esteem towards my art. But I still dabbled from time to time.

I tried to take art more seriously from time to time but always fell out of practice. I watched many tutorials, speed paints, read guides and what not, but still could not wrap my head around how to learn how to draw. I think a part of the roadblock was also trying to learn it “fast”, to catch up for “lost time”. But over time I realize it’s a mix of effective learning and also just grinding things out, it’s unavoidable.

As a self-learning/teaching artist, I’m always curious about how to learn and what path to take as I have not had any formal training. So I will document my process, my challenges, mistakes, and thoughts, as I figure this all out.

There is such a wealth of information now in the internet age it’s hard to look at where to start. So I hope this journey can help someone else as I carve a path out for myself (with the help of many resources) as I improve over time (so long as I keep practicing).

Artistic Progress before starting now:

I think it’s good to summarize what I already know and what my strengths and weaknesses are!

Before this current day, I have doodled a bit growing up and have tried some more “formal” practicing using online resources. And I think they have helped me improve in certain aspects. Well drawing at all usually helps I think.

(I’m mainly including the more “intense” studies I did and anything I feel that contributed to my skill today on a impactful level besides “I drew everyday” WHICH HELPS but it’s not helpful in understanding more how I got here.)

1…..Jetty Jet Anatomy practice: It helped my brain more naturally understand how “long” a body part should be and what it should look like. I still struggle with proportions still. Also having a set “proportion” in mind makes it more difficult to be flexible with different body shapes that are not big boobed models.

2…..A random helping of body part tutorials. Usually eyes, or hands. These turtorials were found on deviantart or tumblr for example.

3…..I liked doodling chibis and eyes a lot. My chibi skills didn’t improve until I started practicing anatomy. So besides helped me have better brushstrokes, chibis didn’t help me learn much. But drawing eyes and following tutorials well… have me drawing eyes better. But these skills alone I don’t think helped much or transferred much to other “topics”. I know it sounds silly but generally, you get good with what you practice. But In this case anatomy helped with simple drawing like chibi. The fundamentals!

4…..When learning how to draw body parts. I would sometimes spend a full day just studying how an arm/leg/hand looked and drawing it over and over again using many refernces. My understanding and drawing skills of it are still rudimentary, but it did get my out of straight stick legs and chicken fingers. Obersving intensely where I went wrong helped me start seeing how to draw, but ultimately besides analyzing, it’s a matter or drawing it over and over until you get it right (I will have to test this hypothesis further!). Sometimes I could trace the hand and draw over it again and again to help me get used to how long a line was, where the hand curved etc. After I draw a hand I would analysze which part had issues.

5…..Watching people draw (back in the olden day, ratemydrawings or something like that xD)

6…..Watching speed paints (gave me a passive understanding of where artists put shadows. But it isn’t until I started REALLY watching and comparing did I start truly seeing.

7…..Studying other artists’ work. If I was confused about how to shade a face portrait, I’d look at how the other artists’ placed their shadows on the cheek, forehead, nose, etc. Different artists had different styles too so they did not always shade the same was as another would. So I would look up a lot of different artists to see how the “saw” and placed things. Though this method may be risky because they artist may not always have proper hightlights/shadow in relation to th light source and I’m too much of a newbie to really be able to tell if it is right or wrong, which may lead to bad habits.

8…..From anatomy I “graduated” to sketching poses

9…..At some point I was into drawing chibis and comics which helped me use the tablet better.

10…..Andrew Loomis

-Fun with a pencil: helped me look at heads differently, making them more diverse. I had a “same-face” problem with cartoon characters and Fun with a Pencil helped me play around with facial shapes more and just getting more comfortable drawing with a pencil!

11…..Reading drawing with the right side of the brain book. I learned how to SEE from the author’s perspective. I did not read the full book.

Roadblocks Interlude

-How to learn “fast” (I constantly feel like I have to find shortcuts to learn faster, but that probably is not the way to go about it and will if anything slow me down with worry.

-Developing a lesson plan

-With a billion how to videos out there, step to step guides in how to draw an eye… where so I start? What is the lesson plan?

-I started off with anatomy but then I was like: I should learn fundamentals. So I tried reading “Successful Drawing” which talked about the fundamentals. But for my foggy brain is was very hard to parse the information to something useful (I still plan to revisit this book), and my plans to complete this book when out the window. There was also a lack of exercises for me to work on.

Continuing on with my art experience…

12…..Draw a Box: Lots of fundamentals with goods exercises. And I could see how certain exercise can help with drawing. So this is like a refined version of Andrew Loomis’ book I feel. I made it up to the rotating boxes before I kind of got sick of the grind.

13…..P00se shows how these blocks can come in handy. A lot of artists explain proportions through blocks as well. So it could help understand form and how the light hits a box (which is less complicated to grasp than the multiple muscles on the human body). But at the same time I suck at boxes… back to draw a box I suppose?

So I was stuck, how do I learn the fundamentals without getting burned out? And to learn it in a understandable applicable way.

Quick Summary of my “Art Background”

-Trying to draw cartoons I enjoyed as a kid

-Anime phase and trying to draw anime

-Watching a lot of speedpaints for a while

-Random doodling of chibis and eyes during class

-Some more “intense” studies on anatomy and basic principles here and there

-Drawing little comics with cartoon characters

Plans/Things I think I should do

-Learning how to see

-Learning to not be so self-critical

-When having to something “boring” (like drawing boxes or studying perspective)…Do the boring thing and the draw what I enjoy for a break!

-Getting what I see on paper: Part of learning how to draw is being able to reproduce what I see onto paper/digital paper. It’s harder than it sounds. Lets just say you can put the stroke where it was meant to be. What is the pressure like? Are you using the right tools? Getting the correct effect is a struggle of mine.

I don’t know if this is the “correct way to learn” but I will document the changes I have observed and reflect whether or not it is the best path to take. A well balanced diet of topics may not help me improve fast, but it will probably not burn me out. And being able to see how fundamentals can help interact is useful to keep motivated.

A lot of the posts will likely just be a bunch of questions!