Goal: go from crappy to awesome artist in 10 years. [itt he's pretty much there now]

[wickdaggler]

the improvement you've made in such a small time is awe inspiring 0.0

[Sarenji]

Thanks for the comments, guys, it means a lot!

My hand is pretty tired from all this sketching. I tried one of those 1 hour long "lessons" in wick's link which turned out just to be several 30-second figures then 1-minute then 5/10/30. You can pretty much tell which is which.

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Other practice:

some random 1 min figure practice the previous day

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bad latias

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nami from one piece with an arm condition. this is me sketching the same picture from prem's avatar. one thing i learned about this is that manga women have incredibly exaggerated features! i kept drawing this 'wrong' and redrawing it before realizing i was drawing it 'right'.

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Gonna do a piece with color this weekend.

[Luketastic]

Im no artist but one doesn't have to be to see the improvement you have made.

[ssbbm]

damn boy that latias is amazing

[prem]

honestly sarenji that latias isnt worse than the nami drawing lol

[Swaggersaurus]

nami from one piece with an arm condition. this is me sketching the same picture from prem's avatar. one thing i learned about this is that manga women have incredibly exaggerated features! i kept drawing this 'wrong' and redrawing it before realizing i was drawing it 'right'.

this is why you really shouldn't learn to draw subjects from other people's stylised interpretations of them!

there's nothing inherently wrong with drawing in this style, but as you noticed, trying to do so from the ground up doesn't teach you anything about proportions and body shapes etc, which you really need to hammer down from drawing real life, boring, normal breasted and hair-coloured people

sorry!!

[Sarenji]

Originally Posted by Fat Swaggersaurus

this is why you really shouldn't learn to draw subjects from other people's stylised interpretations of them!

there's nothing inherently wrong with drawing in this style, but as you noticed, trying to do so from the ground up doesn't teach you anything about proportions and body shapes etc, which you really need to hammer down from drawing real life, boring, normal breasted and hair-coloured people

sorry!!

I guess I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I made this thread to document my journey in illustration, which is mainly practicing the fundamentals. That's why there are so many more drawings of "boring" people than there are of stylized people. I was sketching Nami on a friend's request and because I wanted to sketch Nami, not because I thought Nami would make a good study of the female body or whatever. I put what I said about her anatomy as an observation I had while sketching her. Hope that clears things up!



So in the interest of showing my whole journey, here are some cringe-worthy (IMO) representations of Purugly and Spike from Buffy. One thing I definitely need to work on is keeping proportions exact because apparently tracing Spike's face is fine.

'Cute' Purugly. Cat/animal anatomy is something to work on! (For Ritter)

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Spike from Buffy. Looking at this picture gives me embarrassed laughter because of how awkward it is.* But it's okay, I need practice! Details/proportions/shapes are lacking here.

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Meowth doing what Meowth does best. Used Photoshop, and I'm trying out one of the brushes NJ/wick suggested.

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* NJ told me that I should try looking at the shapes that negative space makes to help me with proportion and drew her criticism (lines/shapes are color-coded). Seeing the shapes/lines drawn out this way really helps make it obvious where I went wrong. I'm putting her criticism here for posterity in hopes that it'll help someone else reading this thread.

[ssbbm]

I guess I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I made this thread to document my journey in illustration, which is mainly practicing the fundamentals. That's why there are so many more drawings of "boring" people than there are of stylized people. I was sketching Nami on a friend's request and because I wanted to sketch Nami, not because I thought Nami would make a good study of the female body or whatever. I put what I said about her anatomy as an observation I had while sketching her. Hope that clears things up!

oh i think what az was saying was that like by learning to draw the human body it'd be easier to draw nami because nami is merely a caricature of the human body with blown up proportions (BIG BREASTS); therefore, by understanding the anatomy of regular people it'd be easier to understand how to draw nami well while simultaneously learning how to draw regular people too haha

oh and your human anatomy (im commenting on the buffy pic now) isn't *that* bad for a beginner, haha. my main critique is with the hair: hair is often drawn strand by strand by beginners, which is actually a mistake: hair is easier to draw, imo, when seen as a giant blob of color from which details are gradually extracted through detailing (highlights and using small brushes), rather than individual strands. hopefully that makes sense haha.

also, learning like the proportions of the faces helps for sketching: so like for the spike pic you could have drawn the cross (which i'm sure you've heard of by now), then drawn the eyes in order to get more realistic proportions.

[Feathers]

ssbbm summed it up pretty well.

have you ever met someone who has drawn anime for years, but wants to learn realism, and they have an incredibly hard time with it? it's because they learned incorrect proportions to begin with and have a hard time doing anything else, mostly because it doesn't look right to them. it's fun to draw them but it's important to try and stick to the boring basics when you're just starting out.

my situation was having not drawn humans very often at all, and i only just started practicing around a year ago. though i was experienced in other forms of drawing, i started with the basic frame of circles and squares whenever i wasn't drawing from life. it's been really helpful so far. :)

http://lackadaisycats.com/howtodraw.php

this might be for anthro cats but it's one of my favorite guides, and the cats have guns anyway. everyone could use a healthy dose of lackadaisy.

i do like the progress though, there is already so much improvement!

[Sarenji]

Ah. Yeah, that makes sense, ssbbm. So it's probably a good idea to practice some still life/basic spheres/cubes. (I just noticed I haven't really drawn any.) As for the hair -- if you see the picture in this post, I sort of did what you said on the last woman. Let me know if I'm in the general area or not!

Feathers, that guide is pretty awesome.

Thanks for the criticism/kind words! I'll try doing some faces when I can. My quality goes up and down since I draw different subjects with different levels of skill, but I do think there's been improvement overall.

Probably NSFW. Another one of those hour-long lessons. 30 sec sketches, then 1 min/5/10/30. The last pic here was supposed to take 30 min, but I didn't really know where to take it after 24 mins, so I attached the real photo here.

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[ssbbm]

damn you're learning how to draw really quickly haha

and yeah, that hair is better!though i'd use a larger brush to block in before putting in highlights :x

[Sarenji]

Okay, I skipped a bunch of days but I'm making up for it now! More later.

fundamentals

30s-1m drawings

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longer ones. yeah i know i screw up proportions a lot :( i'm proud of the last one though

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Face sketches

Any tips on making the person not look retarded? I think it's the combination of teeth/mouth/wide-open eyes. I'm going to try some more faces and pay special attention to those areas.

retarded zuckerberg. it's okay to laugh. i did.

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my friend. oof.

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pkmn

duskull. my first okay coloring - but i dunno how to get smoother colors. tips? it actually looks okay if you zoom out like 50%

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sketch for above

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gulpin + girl. and no. the gulpin is not sucking on the girl's boob. also the girl's face is manly. how do i make it more feminine? somehow the sketch was better than the lineart. no references for this one though!

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colored gulpin

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blocky persian

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rando

eyes

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I need to figure out how to do line art better :-/

[Al_Alchemist]

YESS you drew one of the bird ladies! They were so awesome lol, good job!

[PK Gaming]

I've noticed some improvement. Little by little you'll become an ace eventually.

So inspirational ;_;

[Sarenji]

I'm really glad I'm inspiring people. That's one of the other goals I hoped to accomplish by making this thread. :)

I figured out why my faces looked retarded: proportions. So I need to practice proportions specifically, and faces seem like a really good way to do that (?) (and I get better at drawing faces.)

Indy.

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Harrison Ford.

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Michelle Trachtenberg. Adjusted this for a while to get the proportions right, and it's still not right.

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(adjusted from http://i.imgur.com/9FeC5.jpg and lol http://i.imgur.com/WQxm6.jpg)

Buffy. I got the vertical proportions fairly correct but totally forgot to do the horizontal, so her face is a little squished.

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Harrison Ford again.

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[RitterCat]

In reference to th colored ones two updates back: they're good but work on shading would help. e.g. on Gulpin, the yellow spike is shaded but the shading stops as soon as it reaches the green body. When shading, don't think about shading each differently colored section, but the piece as a whole and how certain body parts would fast shade etc. really it's just practise for that
:)

[nada somos]

such a rad project, for reals.
you can like, see tha difference

[Sarenji]

For those who want to keep count, this is day 27.

I'm having trouble capturing the person -- the sketch looks good, but it isn't the person. I guess that probably comes with practice though.

faces

Took me a few tries before realizing I should try sketching the shapes rather than the outline the entire body made. I'm gonna say that the first one is an alien and the second one is a shrunken head.

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This was supposed to be Sylar. Instead, it's a random good-looking guy.

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This was supposed to be Marilyn Monroe. Instead, it's a drug-addled bimbo.

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pkmn

New Purugly for Ritter. I wanted to give it another chance. The walking posture is wrong though.

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Numel spewing fire for Furosuto. I dunno, how'd I do? Lineart needs work for sure and the fire is kind of weird.

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rando

sketch of a girl reading a book in a library. i'm proud of doing this without references. 20 min

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cleaned up sketch

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[Pocket]

Man, the girl in the library really shows how much you improved over the month :0 Her face and her hand is very well drawn.

And the Poke-Art sketch is adorable - Numel <3

For flamethrower were you trying to draw something similar to this:

[RitterCat]

Purugly so stately and regal~
Your improvement in the bits of faces is amazing! The girl in the library looks great, especially without references. Maybe while still working on what you've been doing, some shading study on the side would help - Shading cubes, spheres, pyramids etc.
I love this thread :)

[Nastyjungle]

so proud... (these are very nice, the improvement is very noticeable, you are so strongth)

[PK Gaming]

Your new batch is top tier.

Sarenji I feel that you're slowly approaching a delicate period. You've improved tremendously, and no i'm just saying that, but if you wanna make it as an artist you can't stop ever. Hopefully you keep it, and get better and better and better and better and better and better.

[NatGeo]

You got this far in 4 weeks? Man

Your improvement so far has been incredible, and your latest pieces are actually really really good! Do you think you could do an Eevee or an Umbreon? I would like that :D

[Furosuto]

Numel looks great man.

[Steamroll]

I think the name of this thread should be changed to six months instead of 10 years. Such huge progress for one month.