You tell me. Anything's possible. "Where there's a will, there's a way."




"Attempt. Fail. Fail better." ~ Samuel Beckett

Keep practicing. "Practice makes perfect." I've seen artists go from making crappy stick people to publishing webcomics in the time span of one to two years. Keep at it and done give up.



*And before anyone jumps in on this conversation with a "physician heal thyself" I'll go ahead and put up a "do as I say not do as I do". Yes, I'm a hypocrite, I know it. But at least I'm a hypocrite that gets other people motivated.

Other than everyone else? I dont think so. =P

Everyone starts with crappy drawings, and get better as they go. You gotta start somewhere, after all.

Yes dammit. XD

I know someone who went from being 15+ and drawing stick people to being 18+ and drawing high level drawings. (Though him having an artist's complex says his art sucks and is flawed.) XD

Can't give you what I don't have. I know him in real life. I see all his work face to face. XD

But I'll see if maybe he has a site or something.

Could you give me some tips on how to better my drawing skills?

K. I think I'm presently on stick figure. But I'll make a guy from his right-side view and post it here by tomorrow.

Could you tell me where I can find them? Because I can't seem to. Thanks

Draw from life!


Carry a little dummy/sketchbook around (i have a A4 sized sketchbook, but i always take my bag everywhere, a couple of my friends just carry oblique sized miniature sketchbooks) and whenever you don't have anything to do/feel inspired/are in a boring class/ are on the bus/train/beach, draw things you see or feel ispired to drawing. make sure you make it a habit (nothing to do? just let me reach for my sketchbook). i filled about 5 A4 sketchbooks of about 150 pages each in about 2 years. i wouldn't have believed my own progress if it where told to me before i started doing that.

let's see, it wasn't quite stick figuires but i did this about (i believe) 2 or 3 years ago, it has to be said though that digital media are not my thing and i never drew manga style before so lets say that my non digital work was at "my style is between surreal and realism" and i was starting my anatomy studies and my digital stuff was at "how come my manga looks odd?"... never the less, looking back at it this, it was pretty horrendous:



i also tried artsier things:



and:



and then i started practicing real art (i did a year of artschool which helped tremendously, but i KNOW the same effect can be reached if you are motivated enought to practice everyday) and now i do things that are much more acceptable.

like:



which is currently in the WIP forum

i was really helped by this guy: http://www.youtube.com/user/sheldonsartacademy?blend=2&ob=1

truly, i have hardly heard anything in my year in art-school that sheldon hadn't said to me already.

so anyway, don't get discouraged, with discipline and practice anyone can become good at drawing. you just have to do it as much as you possibly can. you'll notice progress in as little as a month as long as you practice every day.

You'll have to click on the pictures to see them full size. And yeah I know. I drew them with a Pen. But from now on I'll do it with a Pencil. Here are the rest of the sketches I copies from the book page 29 (as viewed from Adobe Acrobat).

And the following images are the ones that I copied from real-life images of 5megapixel resolution from my Nokia N95. The first two pics are mine.

I know they don't look alike but still, I'm the stick-figure man right? And the third pic belong to a friend of mine who was my classmate in 12th grade. His name is Karan Gupta not that you need to that or something. Lol!!

Dude Green, I don't understand what you mean to say here man. Could you be a little more.......Just use the normal english accent/cadence K? Please.

I know of that pre-render feature in Diablo 2 . But Even for creating 3D stuff you need a reference image. I just wanna be good enough for that drawing the reference images.

I don't understand why people here have disliked the fact that I have asked them to rate my "copies". I know that I should try to sketch from real life, rather than another person's lent skill.

And another thing is that, I don't understand how drawing something is different from drawing it from a photograph. If you could help me with that I'll be grateful.

And also I was comparing ages because when kids, people catch up faster. The skills that people learn as kids are the ones that stay with them in for a long time. I mean that's how prodigies are made. That's why they're called child prodigies.

K. I get it. But I'm not the ego-kinda guy. I'm looking for help for the pixel side of art that I can come up with.

You see I was simply shocked when I first saw my sketches, just a couple of days ago that is. I just don't understand how I'm doing horribly when it comes to producing something I visualize on my own. But then again I don't know if you guys visualize everything before you draw it on paper or put it to sketch. Among my other doubts. Which is why I'm here. I'm sorry if I've pissed people off here. I just want help here.

I kinda had the same idea of the whole thing. But really thanks a lot ekabor, I really needed a confirmation from a professional. And now I think I will get back at practice. Thanks a lot man.

im in the never ending repeating cycle.

Old question but, the difference is that when drawing from life youre converting a 3d image to a 2d one, whereas a photo is already 2d.  Our minds have certain ways of computing what a 3d enviorment looks like that can sometimes trick us when we try to depict it on a 2d surface.  SUch as beginers tend to draw things that should be forshortend too long.  Our brain knows that when it sees something foreshortened that it is actually long so there is a tendency to draw it that way instead of how it really looks.  Or sometimes if something is at a slight angle, you might mistakenly see the angle going in the opposite direction that it really is.  With a photo you dont have to deal with any of these problems, so thats basically the difference.

Everyone that has any drawing skills.

Nobody starts out with the skills you get from practice, just some people gain skill faster from practice and we call those people talented. They start at the same point zero as everyone else, they just learn faster.

First, I wanna say I am glad to see you taking interest in improving your art skill. Most of us are here in this same bandwagon; the more the merrier. :)

To answer your question about going from stick-figures to professional drawings, it has happened to all of us who got there. Age does not matter, because - although counter intuitively - drawing or painting do not require phenomenal motor skills. What really counts is our ability to visualize, but this wont worsen with your age.

If you want a motivation story, you should definitely hear about Jonathan Hardesty, A.K.A. MindCandyMan. He went from being a complete rookie, to professional artist in a very short time (starting at the age of 22 when he decided to improve).

Here is his info page:
http://www.conceptart.org/?artist=MindCandyMan
Here is his sketch book thread. It shows his journey as an artist, starting with his early 'newbie' drawing, up until his professional works, step by step:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870

Now, your drawings are amazing. Those figures are really well drawn and I would rate them 11/10.
...Unless you copied them using onion skin, but I believe you didn't.

I would recommend the book "The New Drawing in the Right Side of the Brain". it is a fantastic book for beginners, plus there is a workshop thread revolving around it in cgsociety forums.
To sum it up, instead of giving you a mechanical or mathematical approach to drawing, such as "for the head, draw a circle, then divide that circle in three parts, then place the eyes in the bottom 2/3, etc, etc"... they take a more abstract ideology. According to the author, you need to brake that symbolism idea that kids create, you cant think of a head as an oval, the nose as an L, and so on. Instead, you need to see the big picture. So, there are several exercise to help you break that link to symbols and get to draw using the abstract side of your brain (right side), rather than using the logical side (left side).

There is an artist in YouTube who follows a similar principle in his video tutorials:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EclecticAsylumArt#p/c/DE90A0B005052EFB
He is extremely skilled and gives awesome advices. You should check his videos out.

Good luck and have fun.

Edited by Leath - 16 May 2010 at 7:38am