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Angie's Art Tip of the Week
#1
tl;dr: If you don't feel like reading what I have to say, then just pay attention to the links/spoilers. But, really, if you want to learn art, then you should learn how to read about it!

Hey everyone. Some people sound kind of lost about how to learn art, and nobody seems to be talking about it much anymore
so let's talk about art!

See, I have this gigantic pile of art bookmarks that I keep adding to.
You can download it here if you're curious:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/81193440/bookmarks.docx

Maybe you should keep some too! It's good to keep learning and have stuff to refer back to. But sifting through so many bookmarks is overwhelming. We should talk about something in focus for now.

Today we're gonna talk about

~BEGINNING FIGURE DRAWING~

Why do figure drawing?

Figure drawing is really hard! It's something you should practice a lot all the time. Don't worry about completely mastering it, and don't feel bad if it makes your art actually worse for a time period. But once you learn it well enough, it's such a helpful tool.

Figure drawing is great because it helps you get a lot of structure, feeling of movement, placement, shapes, perspective, varied poses etc etc out of the stuff you do! It'll help you see things better and more thoroughly, helping you be more accurate. Basically, it's good for a lot, so it's important! It's useful for both drawing and pixel art. I suggest learning it thoroughly in drawing, because you should learn more accurate anatomy/figures before doing the sort of stylized anatomy/figures you do in pixel art. That way, you actually know what you're doing instead of mimicking the same set of pixel placements over and over again.

Resources for Figure Drawing (and commentary)

Lots of artists do figure drawing lots of different ways, so you should find a way that works for you. Be as complicated or simplified as you need to be for the piece you're working on. Work with shapes that make sense for you.

This right here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2080605/Figure-Drawing-Basics
gives a lot of helpful steps and tips along the way to learning figure drawing. But that whole, "adding the third dimension" stuff? The boxes and circles and what have you? That's great for getting your structures right, but by golly is it hard if you haven't learned your basic anatomy yet (which is something you should really do, if you're going to attempt figure drawing). I think part of my issue was that I tried getting into that stuff too fast. If I were you, I'd pay attention to the stick figure stuff and lines of action first!

Why?
You do NOT want your figure drawings to be stiff. Movement and personality first, then structure. It's hard to balance good anatomy with flowy figures when you're starting out, but that should be your goal. I warn this because I have a tendency to pay attention to anatomical accuracies and not whether or not my pose is boring, even though I know better. It's hard to get yourself out of these habits once you're in them, so it's better to avoid getting in them altogether.

NSFW WARNING:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/255814/Andrew-...re-Drawing
I don't want the younger members to be walked in on...
There's naked women in this one! But, it's an art thing, not a weird sexual thing. You should be able to handle that, as an artist. If you don't think your parents will understand, though, well
that's unfortunate
because Loomis is totally the most helpful thing ever!

He figure draws like nobody I've ever seen before. His shapes make so much more sense to me while helping me keep a flow like none of the other bunches of complicated figure drawing methods I've seen. I don't figure draw quite like he does, but just seeing how he does it gave me a lot of insight.
If you can't click on the link, then I'll just show you a few examples.
These ones are SAFE:
Cool, right? He shows you how to add depth and mass later (and that's something you should look into). But before that, in these simplified versions, you can really feel the life behind the poses. Human bodies are so complicated. Start simple, then work your way up.

Speaking of which, remember that you're trying to draw a human being (or an animal, if you're animal figure drawing...). Don't focus on the shapes for the sake of, remember that these shapes are meant to follow the form of a body. I find it helpful to look at stuff like this: http://alexds1.deviantart.com/art/Pose-t...l-72010406
or say, Bruce Timm drawings, to remind myself that these simplified shapes are supposed to be helping my understanding of the body.

Lost on how to practice figure drawing?

That first link talks about drawing stick figures and stuff. That's cute and all, but you can only draw so many before you start to blank out, right?

You can figure draw real people/models. Start paying attention to people in real life, how they pose, how their weight is distributed, etc. Sometimes I would draw teachers in the middle of class. You shouldn't do that because you should be listening to their lecture. But one of my teachers, see, he had this tendency to lean up against this thing...

Anyway, that can be a bit hard because people move around a lot and might not be willing to pose for you, so photographs should be okay. Sometimes I like to open photos in a program, then do figure drawings over them in another layer. Or you could just do it on paper and do a general sketch of what you see.

NSFW WARNING:
This has 3D models of people made of muscles and fat. You don't really see privates, but, well, there's breasts. With no skin. If for some reason that'll bother your parents, then, well...
http://www.posemaniacs.com/
You can use the 3D models on this site to try figure drawing. Plus, there's a 30 second drawing and negative space drawing tool. I used to like to do the 30 second drawing one. You can try doing 10 a day for practice, and that'll take no time at all! There's example videos and tips so you can get an idea of how other people manage to finish so quickly. It explains what's helpful about that exercise, so I'll refrain from doing so myself.

Of course, you should try your own original figures now and then too. There's not much good in learning if you don't challenge yourself to apply it.

I'll probably have to do a section on anatomy and proportion, because without knowing about those, figure drawing...isn't gonna go so well. I just started here because it was easy enough for me to talk about. If you're not ready for intensive figure drawing, you can always refer back to this later.

Closing

Wow, I sure typed a lot! Maybe I should make it monthly. Hehehe.
I wonder how many people tl;dr'd as soon as the page opened...

If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to join in! I know there's much better artists than me in here; I'm no art student, and generally lack confidence in what I'm even talking about. But, if I don't talk about this stuff, who will? I figured I should have some initiative. So please, correct me or elaborate or add on where necessary!

Until next time! Study hard!
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#2
I think I already learned something...
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#3
(11-25-2012, 08:23 PM)StarSock64 Wrote: NSFW WARNING:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/255814/Andrew-...re-Drawing

I skimmed over this, and it looks way more helpful than any other figure drawing/anatomy book I've ever read, so thanks a lot for posting it.


You have inspired me to try to practice drawing people more, I look forward to next week's art tip of the week!
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#4
I'm going to jump in and say that people should be more open to criticism around here.

Now this might sound ironic, since we're generally a friendly community with heavy emphasis in giving good critique. But I've been noticing that actual criticism has been quite scarce lately, and when it is done, people complain about it (in a light way but still complaining).

What I'm going to suggest is not to take them like personal attacks and NEVER to put your 'friendship' or 'admiration' over valid criticism. I mean, someone can be really good at spriting and you might admire said person, but this doesn't mean he or she can make mistakes. So don't hesitate in being honest and pointing out said mistakes.

I know I'm saying this more because of what I experienced in my thread, but I want to bring this up a final time to say that the criticism WAS NOT an attack to me, people WERE RIGHT about the mistakes and their reasonings and therefore, NO ONE should feel hurt or see that as a fight. It was a simple debate, that is explained completely in this thread's OP.

So please read the above post carefully, let your pride away and try seeing this as an opportunity to get better, because by getting better, you'll help others better. Capiche?

I'm really glad with your initiative, Starsock; it was quite a post. I didn't read some of them due to me being at work atm but I'll be sure to read them when I have the time. I just needed to share my thoughts on the situation. I hope this thread will be of use for many people in tSR.
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#5
Art student here confirming that figure drawing helps.

Really, if anyone is serious about this, go and find a life drawing class. Books help, but initial learning is better if you actually see. I've recommended some to friends and they've done it.
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#6
Well, you're right on time Angie !
Everyone's been talking to me about the benefits of live figure drawing, and the book i'm reading about lines of action really insists on it
(it's an amazing book, I'd recommend it to a lot of people on tSR http://www.amazon.com/Force-Dynamic-Draw...0240808452 )

Didn't finish reading your post, but i'll do so soon

damn you're good at explaining stuff
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#7
Just popping in to make my usual suggestion of Bridgman's figure drawing book. It's a lovely resource as are what is all posted here. Very well written and commendable Angie, thanks for reaching out to the community here to help, this was an enjoyable and helpful read!
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#8
Finals week is next week

so I'm kind of busy...
I'll let these talk for me and then maybe I'll talk about it later
(Though I really didn't want to talk about this at all for awhile longer)

This week I'm not going to talk about
~STYLE??~

http://whitetrashpalace.deviantart.com/a...-169660607
http://whitetrashpalace.deviantart.com/a...-169660702
http://whitetrashpalace.deviantart.com/a...-171808305

It seems like some people on tSR have trouble with style
which totally shouldn't be an artist's first concern.
But this isn't an art class
so I'll talk about things in whatever order conveniences me, y'know...
They're self-explanatory enough that I don't have to say much and I can go study college stuff!

The links talk about a few of the benefits of drawing from life
which seem to elude people
but maybe we can talk about that some other time.

Have fun reading anyhow
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#9
Style isin't really my first concern, but trying to figure out what method of style is what comes down the line while looking for the balance in proportion: that's my real issue there, and arguing about it for months on end ain't helping, as we've been doing for the past few months due to narcassisim in my end.

Perhaps this is what turns me off from spriting and drawing, as some of these guides on DA seem harsh, but they mean well. But if I can figure out what "pigeonholding" actually means (since it's not a common art term, and has been driving me mad since day one), and since a member helped explain what an "eyeballed trace" was, there was less confusion, but sometimes I feel rather creatively cramped (lit. I have no idea what to do) with this term squeezing between me from different angles.

Perhaps if I actually found good sources of human photos, it will help me out a bit more.
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#10
(12-07-2012, 06:29 PM)Gaia Wrote: But if I can figure out what "pigeonholding" actually means (since it's not a common art term, and has been driving me mad since day one)

The "pigeon hole" principle is a math thing if I'm not wrong and refers to "putting more things in than space is available".

The name comes from an example: You have six pigeon holes but seven pidgeons. Obviously, if all pidgeons go into a hole, at least one hole will hold two pigeons so that hole would be cramped.

Applying this to art would probably mean "putting more detail into your work than you should" as that makes things unreadable, busy or just cramped.


(I MAY BE WRONG THOUGH it's not like I know about such things, this is just a thought)
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#11
Actually...

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pigeonhole

To categorize; especially to limit or be limited to a particular category, role, etc.

"Fred was tired of being pigeonholed as a computer geek."

When you're limited to a particular style or to knowing only certain symbols then you might be called "pigeonholed" in that style. When you're pigeonholed, you're essentially stuck to your limited....limitations.

(If these kinds of terms ever confuse you, you should probably...ask...)
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#12
Coming across several tutorials with varying POV's can do that to ya.

For example the Andrew Loomis method of drawing is really helping me out, but when I begin to layer, some of the limbs come out either too short or the torso too wide. Drawing a real-life eye can be a pain in the ass too, I've had several attempts before. Do you have any tips for this issue here? And another thing, I'm not completely familiar with some of the terms more advanced artists use, I can also use some help on that.
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