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@dimiclaudeblaigan asked for a tutorial on how to begin drawing. Good news! If you can draw a funky looking stick man, you have already started!

I think that stick people are a great starting point for artists because of the things you can learn from them that will be important later on.

If you are able to draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can easily put together a stick person.

Congratulations! You have started to draw. :)

A stick person is a very minimal artistic representation of a real life person. It is simple yet recognizable, and is widely used in art, media, and signage.

But what can a stick person teach us about drawing people that look more like… well, people? Lets have a look!

By simply adding a few more lines, we can add a pair of eyes and a mouth. Maybe even a little triangle nose! Or half circles for ears. We can now draw a face, which provides a basis for all sorts of expressions.

These simple additions can allow us to explore the wide range of human emotion and individuality.

This may seem like the basics of the basics. But that is what we want! In order to get to the point where we are able to draw complex, elaborate representations of humans and objects, we will need to start with simple shapes like lines and circles and build our understanding from there.

For instance, lets give our stick person some cool new features, such as hands and feet. I chose little squiggly circles to represent hands, and triangles to represent feet.

We can go a step further and modify the body of the stick person to include shoulders, hips, elbows and knees. These parts of the human body are quite complex in real life But here, all we need to do is add a few simple lines and dots to our stick person.

The lines provide some additional structural elements to our stick person's body, which are the shoulders and the hips. The dots indicate the points of articulation - elbows and knees, the places where the arms and legs bend!

Now we can use our stick person to show us an even wider range of human movement, action, and expression.

Our little drawing of a human being is evolving! All it took was adding a few more lines and shapes here and there.

By elongating some of the existing lines and making the head an oval instead of a circle, we can give our stick person proportions that resemble that of a real life human.

By this point, we have managed to add more complexity to our stick person simply by using our ability to draw lines, circles, and other basic shapes!

These basic ideas are the building blocks that will enable us to create more complex shapes.

The next part may be a considerable step up if you are absolutely new to drawing, but I have decided to include it in order to show you how complex objects like the human body can be built from shapes that are a bit more complex than circles and lines.

For example. Two ovals and a rectangle can be combined to create a cylinder.

Six squares can be combined to create a cube, or a box. Here, each square is distorted slightly depending on which way the cube is facing.

Note that the back faces of the cube and the bottom of the cylinder are hidden. These shapes allow us to visualize that which should not normally visible.

A sphere from all perspectives can be represented by a circle. But we can make it more like a sphere by adding lighting and shadow if we so desire.

Cubes, cylinders, and spheres are examples of 'solid shapes' because they consist of 3 dimensions.

Lets see how these solid shapes can be used to compose the human body.

By stacking three cylindrical objects, we can create a torso. Two spheres have been added to form shoulders, while a smaller cylinder forms the neck.

An arm is an alternating sequence of spheres and cylinders connected together. Note that the hand has been simplified for this example.

We can apply these solid shapes to the rest of the body to give us a more recognizable representation of the human form. It doesn't even have to be perfect. And just like that, our stick figure now has a silhouette that is unmistakably a person!

In the above examples, notice that we kept the stick person at the beginning while building up the shapes and solids around it. This is because the stick person serves as a guide for positioning the body and its various parts -> also known as posing.

You can do the same thing to everyday objects! Here, I drew a wine glass by stacking these three dimensional solid shapes.

The cup and its contents are two ovoid shapes that were cut in half. The stem is a very thin cylinder shape. The base is a cylinder with a slightly wider bottom.

Solid shapes help inform us how objects and parts of the human body may appear from different perspectives.

For example, a sphere can be used to demonstrate how the human head appears when looking up or down, turned to the side, or tilted at an angle.

With these examples, I hope I have managed to convinced you that if you can draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can draw a person! You just have to train your eye to recognize the simple shapes within complex objects. Try it with everyday objects as well! Or even your favourite media! A drawing subject can be as simple or as complex as you envision it to be.

Once you have mastered that, there are many aspects of drawing you can explore from here that may require you to seek additional resources or a fellow artist's advice.

Last of all, remember that drawing is an iterative process. Even if you draw something correct the first time, you will need to draw it again and again to get it right all times! And by making small changes like the ones we explored in this tutorial, your drawings will gradually transform!

I hope what I've demonstrated here are enough to provide the basics of how to get started with drawing objects and people, and also to help refresh more experienced artists. :) Hopefully I didn't go too off topic with what was requested, and let me know if there are any more questions I can answer.

Cheers :3

[rrrawrf-draws]

Jacob's No Pressure Guide to Learning How to Enjoy Art Practice

DISCLAIMER: I own none of this. All of it is just an abridged version of the Drawclass (link: Drawclass 04/29/2022: Jacob's No Pressure Guide to Learning How to Enjoy Art Practice - YouTube). Please watch the video for the full experience, context, and nuance.

So, recently Jacob Andrews from Drawfee taught a class on how to practice art without putting too much pressure on yourself, and honestly, it was excellent. Do give it a watch if you're also facing a wall in getting started on art practice (also subscribe to their channels and support them on Patreon for more excellent content :D). Since I don't really have a good memory for basically anything, I did what I usually do to memorize stuff: I made notes. This blog post is basically just for me, but I'll be glad if it helps other people too. (again, all credit to Jacob and Nathan for the excellent Drawclass).

The Rules

Rule #1: Pick any 5 days during the week to practice. Take your break days whenever you want.

Rule #2: Set a minimum time for each day that is easily achievable. Continue drawing after that only if you feel like it. 

Rule #3: If you miss a day, it doesn’t matter. Just try again the next day. (Avoid thinking of it as maintaining your “streaks”)

Rule #4: Do NOT try to do a good job (Practice is INPUT). The only judgment you get to make is if you drew or not.

Rule #5: Focus on something you want to improve on each week. It can be as general or specific as you want it to be.

The Schedule

Day 1: Draw from imagination to the best of your ability

the aim is to get warmed up and also to get a baseline for the week

Jacob’s Example: Jumping poses, 15 minutes

Day 2: Speed sketching 

numerous and fast drawings from reference

Fast is subjective, whatever feels comfortable for you (the upper limit is 3 minutes, Jacob does 30 seconds to 1 minute)  

Not going for detail, just capture the structure and vibe, as fast as you can

No need to even save it

Jacob’s Example: 10 minutes, ~1 minute for each reference photo (reference photos from Pinterest)

● Nathan’s sketches from the same reference photos:

Day 3: Reference drawing

Pick references (the number is up to you) and spend a little more time with each one

Capture details and complexities this time (like if day 2 was poses, then in day 3, try to capture musculature or folding of clothes etc.)

Doesn’t have to be a one to one copy, you can stylize

Another thing you can do is lower the opacity of the reference image and place your sketch over it to see which areas need improvement. In case of Jacob’s example, he mentions that the torso and legs are too short (areas of improvement which he was already aware of, so in general he tries to keep those in mind while drawing).

Nathan’s sketches from the same reference photos: 

Day 4: Style study

Take a look at how professional artists portray the topic you’re studying

It helps you to develop shorthands and your own style

Pull up references and try to imitate to the best of your ability

Can also draw over the reference pics to understand the shape language and flow (but don’t simply trace the drawing)

Also try to notice shapes made by the negative space

Basically don’t mindlessly copy, this is “active copying”

● Nathan’s:

Day 5: Draw from imagination again

Put together what you learned throughout the week

Compare with day 1 (hopefully, you will notice improvements)

Changes will be incremental, don’t be discouraged!

Jacob’s example: 10 minutes of free drawing:

● Nathan’s:

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your art practice!

[rrrawrf-draws]

Support me on PATREON or Ko-fi 💕

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Some drawing tips previously posted on twitter. More drawing tips on my patreon. Hope some of these can be helpful.

[rrrawrf-draws]

fudge wrong blog

inktober oct 2 - mindless

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inktober day 1!!! prompt is ring

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5 min a day sep 6

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5 min a day sep 5

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5 min a day sep 2 2019

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okay so i am gonna start doing this thing where i draw five minutes every day. it is going to be awful. it is going to suck I'm going to look back at this blog and cry. but along with drawing five minutes every day... I am also going to post what I drew every day!!! I will regret this mightily later. the intention of this is to just get into the habit of drawing every day, and then maybe later I'll start working on improvement.

[rrrawrf-draws]

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

[rrrawrf-draws]

How I draw skin Part 2: DON”T DRAW NATIVE PEOPLE WITH RED SKIN!!!! A tutorial

For the first tutorial on how I draw skin, see the post here.

But seriously, I’ve seen too many drawings of Native characters with literal red/pink skin to count so just in case some of you are having troubles with drawing Native people, I’ve provided a guide for you. Please take my swatches if it helps!! and no more red skinned people, please <0<

[rrrawrf-draws]

how to draw arms ? ? 

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Quick Anatomy Tips by rm_manga

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fluffy magic boi keooooo

10/21/19

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Striped hyena, a cleric of sorts