Hey there! Just started drawing? Not feeling a current piece? Just need another pair of eyes? Or even a second hand? Submit your art that you're having trouble with and I can show you ways I think you can improve by drawing right over your piece!
I don't usually make text post on this blog, but a nice artist I know was asking for tutorials a while back and I forgot to send some to them while in school. So here's a post on it since it's easiest to grab and go this way. :)
This list focuses on the basics. I'm focusing on the foundations of art, so medium is generally irrelevant and you can use physical or digital with these. You'll have to google more specific tutorials on things like character design and such.
One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give to you is strangely, introduce things to yourself one at a time. In art class, we took whole topics week by week. For high school, we did a few exercises then spent a week drawing/painting and doing your piece(s). For basic art 1 & 2 in college, we did 1-2 exercises and then did 1-2 drawings, followed by HW (which we turned in next week) and sketchbook practice (which she'd check at midpoints). For basic art lessons with a tutor, we did practice then our own art. You can see the pattern here - the point is don't be distressed if you don't get everything at once, or the lesson in 2 weeks, or the lesson in 3 years - we practice and do a lot over time, and you'll pick up on things you need to improve naturally and through help with others. Take time to be proud of your art in mini steps too, even if it's not the best! You tried and attempting to climb an obstacle over and over again before finally leapfrogging it is still progress to it.
Overall tutorials:
DrawABox.com is a site that's dedicated to art exercises and practicing when you can. They talk about the basics of art as well as how practice is important. It can get tough at times and it's ok to stop and do a balance of say those practices and doodles if you choose to try and do all of it's stuff - but you don't have to either. It's just a nice basic education done by some art nerds who like going hard.
Ethering Brothers - these guys are famous for their 40billion tutorials. If you need help on a specific idea, search their gallery and you'll likely find something.
Thundercluck's Art Fundamentals - She did a good huge ass tutorials on how things work, and it's the least overwhelming of the 3 I got in this section, so I suggest it as one of the first to look at for digital stuff.
Art Instructions Blog - Another good & simpler website that goes great into fundamentals. They focus more on traditional art but if you're digital, you can replicate most of the techniques - art fundamentals and subjects cover all mediums. Very important
Drawsh - Particularly notes on Construction: construction is the basics of building an illusion of a 3D image on a page. Figuring out how to build shape gives depth to your work, and learning how to see in 3D lets you be able to draw an item then move it around in your head (sometimes, when you're good enough, don't be afraid to pull out a reference or use live subjects). Construction is how to figure out the foundation of your drawing, and good planning = better picture!
This link starts at the back, hit newer post to go forward.
There's a lot on anatomy and other nitty gritty details for when you want to practice those as well.
Griz and Norm's Assorted tips - Long time artist talk about various tips and tricks they use in art and how to avoid certain pitfalls. It's eclectic but great to look through.
James Gurney's Blog - He's got a lot of thoughts, a lot of tips, and a lot of adventures he catalogues. It's the least organized out of these but fortunately he has plenty of tags and most post have something neat going on. He's fantastic!🥰
BEFORE ALL OTHER BASICS….
How to Make Your Art Look Nice: Mindset
There's a lot of artist with different perspectives on how to approach art and your mindset while doing it, but the general consensus is that it's a process and sometimes you have to remind yourself to enjoy art!
Line
How to draw straight lines without a ruler. …but for the love of all that's good do NOT feel bad about using one! This talks about how to hold your pencil and how to do some good freehand stuff, some good practice.
5 grips for holding a Pencil for Drawing - This goes for pencil, pen, tablet, etc.. Get comfortable and figure out what's right for you and your pictures. I'd like to note that paintbrush holding will overlap, but some will differ.
A few line drawing exercises that help with line confidence.
Types of line drawings & what they are.
Contour Line & exercises with Mrs. Cook - Contour lines are one of the first art exercises I do in all the drawing classes I've taken. The good news is that they're surprisingly fun & look neat, even the blind contours!
Good deep thoughts on lines and how to use them.
Line Weight Tutorial
Lineart Weight Tips!
How to show variation in your line art: part 1 & part 2.
Some teacher's Drawing 1 & 2 lessons put online.
Light, Shadow, & Value
An introduction to tonal values.
Why values are important. The main reasons are that they give depth to a piece, and values literally shape our world.
Tonal Values: Everything you need to know
How does light work & the basics on Light
Light & Shadow in Art - much more in depth of the above! Highly recommended if you have time to spare.
Understanding grayscale/monochrome art. Great for shading & planning.
A guide to Cross Hatching (and hatching in general) - As a side note, crosshatching is one of the early things taught as it marries Line + Value into a nice neat package and helps add form with just a pen.
Crosshatching for Comics
Learn more about coloring by working in grayscale
How to Make Your Art Look Nice - Contrast!
Using lighting to make your art look nice.
Some light & shadow classifications.
Edges - notes on how they work in shading.
Color
A side note - color theory doesn't differ much, but color MIXING will change between mediums. If you're doing traditional colored pencil, you're overlapping 2 or more pigments on top of each other. If you're doing traditional paint, you're mixing & creating a solution/emulsion (depends on the pigment and binding) of pigments with the particles reflecting light in different ways. In digital, overlapping colors & blending colors depend on how the program you use calculates it if you're not just putting 2 color side by side. This just means you have to adjust your mixing when you switch between them. :)
Slawek Fedorczuk's Light & Color Tips - also shows how to guide through a scene.
The Color Tutorial Part 1 & 2 by Sashas - A personal favorite.
Color Studies 1-6 by Sheri Doty
Amazingly nice breakdown on how color works in simple terms.
Sarah Culture's Tips on Color
The value of underpainting
A few notes on reflective light.
Experimental color techniques with Alai Ganuza: first post, second, & third.
Color zones of the face charts
Composition
Good Tips on Composition
Here's an example of how you can search the Etherington Brothers' stuff and get like 10 tutorials and tips on one subject. Composition & Cover Design, Shadow Composition, Two Line Composition - plus more.
How to make your art look nice: Thumbnailing!
And don't be afraid to make silly thumbnails or sketches.
Composition Examples - charts like these are great when you can't think of something yourself. There's no shame in using them.
Flow and Rhythm
Formulas for landscape composition.
Perspective
Perspective Drawing Tutorial by Julie Duell
Linear & Atmospheric Perspective Guide
One Point Perspective City Tut by Swingerzetta
Niso Explains Perspective - these are great for drawing figures in perspective!
Putting characters into scenes and drawing backgrounds
Backgrounds that make your character stand out!
Using background detail to guide the eye.
Odds and Ends
I shit you not, probably 1/3rd of my color, value, & structure knowledge comes from pixel art since I've done so much of it and it is all about challenging yourself to do the most you can with limitations. Check out lospec's tutorial database for fun and see how it compares to art techniques you're doing - even if you never try a medium, it's always interesting to see how it works. :D
How to Make Your Art Look Nice: Reference Images & Style, Pushing Proportions, and developing style.
Foervraengd talks about how he expanded his comfort zone with concept art & landscape drawing.
Luna Art talks about what they're thinking when doing concept art.
Repeating visual motifs in character design looks cool.
Eric's Thoughts on Drawing Backgrounds and Props.
Show vs. Tell: Why Visual is Not Optional in comics.
The Lost Vocabulary of Visual Story Telling Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, & Day 4.
Traditional Animation's 2 Digital Library books, The Know-How of Cartooning by Ken Hultgren & Advanced Animation by Preston Blair are two books from the golden age of animation they have up on their site for free viewing!
Animation resources dot org has a lot of cool stuff. Here's Nat Falk's How to Make Animated Cartoons (part 1). Their pages on Instruction & Theory are a good start.
Books
Good news: the internet archive has a TON of resources. Make sure to check around and toggle filters, it's a bit weird with organization. For example, a book can be under art or drawing - techniques, depending on who catalogues it.
Andrew Loomis is someone artist tend to die-hard reccomend. His work is collected here & here on the internet archive (one is Andrew Loomis, the other is Loomis, Andrew - thanks). I own Figure Drawing for All It's Worth and I recommend checking all of his stuff out, especially if you're having trouble with bodies and hands.
The Animator's Survival Guide by Richard Williams is mandatory in animation classes for good reason - it's fantastic!
Perspective for Comic Book Artist by David Chelsea is great for any type of artist. So is Extreme Perspective & Perspective in Action.
Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, & Making Comics. The first one is on the internet archive, the second two are likely avaliable at your library or at a bookstore as they're pretty popular.
Speaking of comics, Drawing Comics the Marvel Way has been a favorite of comic artist for years no matter what comic book companies and artist you like, it's a good introduction.
Anything by or endorsed by James Gurney, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realistic Painter is one of my favorites (this is his official page but you can get them elsewhere for cheaper too).
Art resource blogs with good tagging systems: @artist-refs , @help-me-draw , @helpfulharrie , @art-res , @drawingden , & @how-to-art
Lastly, I suggest if you find something you like online for free, SAVE IT! Whether it is through the Wayback Machine, screenshotting a whole webpage, reblogging/retweeting something, or putting it on pinterest, digital media is fickle and tends to go up in smoke when you least expect it. I have a partially organized Pinterest board that helped me find most of the stuff I wanted to keep. Figure out what works for you and save what you can.
hello! i would love some critique on my game art, especially anatomy issues, clothing folds and any glaring mistakes… i don’t draw animals at all other than for this game so im not super confident on the designs either 😓 thank you so much in advance! (also im really sorry if this is too many pieces, please feel free to pick any one to critique)
hey I'm so sorry for not getting to these sooner! I unfortunately don't think I'll have the time to actually draw over any of these, but I did want to say that you should have more confidence! These are are really amazing, and I don't see anything that's glaring anatomy mistakes at all.
I feel you make the species of all these characters clear through shape language, and while this style is relatively simple, it's still clear what kind of animal each character is. And that's REALLY awesome, honestly.
Only thing I can really say is that MAYBE the hand the rabbit has on their face could use some fingers or more definition, but other than that, these are lovely!
redrew with your advice in mind! thank you so much, i feel ive made a significant improvement!!
if u have any more advice based on this piece (/NF) i’d be all ears<3
THAT'S REALLY AWESOME!! Definitely see some improvement and more confidence in this. Careful, though, it looks like you were using the white of the canvas for the whites of the eyes haha.
I also should've specified, but when shading, I use a multiply layer! Not sure what program you use, but if you don't know how to do that or can't figure it out, there's usually a drop down box wherever the layers are, like so.
Just saw the shading on the turtleneck wasn't dark and thought maybe you weren't using a multiply layer, so excuse me if you were!
not really vibing with my art at the moment. any tips/advice on how i could improve these pieces?
Oh wow, I actually haven't used this blog in years, but I really appreciate someone finding it and being interested!
I don't have the time to go through ALL of these submissions, but if it helps at all, I can talk through one of the full body pieces, then one of the pictures focusing on the face and share my opinions!
So some key notes, definitely do a loose outline of your body if you don't already to make sure the pose and proportions are accurate before finalizing anything! The anatomy is altogether pretty good, but I've included some nitpicks just to see if those are the things you're probably not digging about your art.
This is how I'd personally draw the proportions for this character. Drawing a hand on the hip is weirdly a very deceivingly difficult thing to do, so don't be afraid to use a reference!! I was using this picture as a reference for this haha.
Now as far as the faces for your characters go, you are clearly making a style choice in these noses. That's perfectly fine! As someone who has rotated through many style choices throughout the years, I've found that many choices like this just don't read well to most people. It's an interesting choice, but I honestly took a hot minute trying to figure out what was going on here, so I'll make some suggestions that are still stylized and cartoony, but read better as a nose.
realisticaly with this expression, the nose would be a little warped to the side since the mouth is over there, but for the sake of clarity, we're drawing the nose looking straight ahead.
NOW the other thing I noticed is you seem to shade with gray. Now unless you're doing a piece where you want the colors to look muddy and gross, don't do that. I suggest using a warm, pinkish color to shade skin, and my go-to is usually a slate blue or light purple for most other things. It'd look something like this.
With shading, it's more than just putting a shadow on one side. Yes, remembering the light source is important, and you'd put the shadow away from that. However, it's also important to remember the SHAPE of things, and use your shadows to curve and shade around things. Like the legs, the shadows curve around them. Shadows are also handy to further define creases in clothing that aren't established with the lineart.
I also noticed you color your lineart! Which is a great way to give your artwork a nice bit of life and softness. HOWEVER, a small suggestion just to break up your work and add a small amount of depth: add some black to your lineart, to separate individual pieces of it. LIKE SO:
Wherever something overlaps something else, like the hand on the hip, the leg over the other leg, the jacket over the skirt and turtle neck, the bangs over the face, I added a black outline to break everything up.
WHEW okay I went harder into this than I expected haha, so I hope that's okay! And I hope anything I mentioned helped. And if you'd like to use any of the colors or redlining I used in this at all, please feel free, that's why I included them :) But my main, less specific advice is: loosen up with your initial poses and sketches to make things more dynamic and organic-looking, shade with COLORS, and try and make the way you do noses more readable as a nose 👍
Your style is very fun and interesting and I hope you get to the point where you start vibing with it again!
Okay but for anyone who legit wants to know how to calculate it correctly:
The elbow joint on average rests a couple inches higher than the navel, so if you measure how long the distance is from the middle of the shoulder to that point then you have the length of the upper and fore arms!
So if anyone’s wondering about legs too, the simplest rule of thumb is that the length from the top of the leg to the knee is equal to the distance between the top of the leg and the bottom of the pectorals:
And I wanna stress that when i say “top of the leg” i’m not talking about the crotch (please don’t flag me tumblr it’s an anatomical term) i’m talking about the point where the femur connects to the pelvis, which is higher up on the hips:
It’s easier to see what I’m talking about in this photo of a man squatting:
So yeah if you use that measurement when using this technique you should get fairly realistically proportioned legs:
But remember! messing with proportions is an important and fun part of character design! Know the rules first so you can then break them however you please!
Woke up at 2am and couldn’t fall back asleep so I made a tutorial on the Photoshop techniques I use most frequently. Starting with the sketch:
adjustment layers: specifically the hue/saturation slider in this case, allows you to color correct quickly
lasso tool: for sharp edges!
alpha lock: useful for painting within a pre-defined area (especially useful when painting characters)
x (hotkey) : toggle between foreground + background colors- let’s you easily blend between 2 colors
ctrl/cmd click : quickly change current active layer. Especially useful if you’re burdened with too many layers (or just very disorganized)
clipping mask: similar to alpha lock, but can add details without changing/ painting directly on the previous layer. I often use them to test out + apply gradients.
layer styles: I didn’t use any in this image, but the possibilities for layer styles endless, from simply adding a quick outline (useful for die cut demarcations when making stickers!) to creating more seemingly complex appearances. Here’s a gif of Nick Carver using layer styles (a combo of drop shadows + inner shadows) to quickly make the illusion of snow but with simple strokes.
This one was a popular demand. Many people people asked me about anatomy tips.
I know how hard this topic is and how confusing at the beginning. It’s just so much to learn! Exactly! I remember how lost I was in the beginning and trying out things that actually didn’t help me understand anatomy better.
Actually what I want to convey here is that you can learn to draw human without learning all the muscles and bones. My personal opinion, based on experience is actually that you can do that as something extra. Learning muscles and bones won’t help you draw. True story.
If you grasps few essential concepts first you will be better off, plus you will be actually drawing characters. You will be more confident in your lines and gain knowledge that will be enough to create artwork you want.
Look at body as any other object you want to draw. Simplifying and remembering the simplest ideas is way to go.
Remember: these few ideas I am presenting are just a tip of an iceberg. As you will progress you will expand your knowledge beyond few essential points.
This is my personal approach so I can’t say it will work for you. I know that it works for me
In the conclusion for now, some things I’d really recommend doing if you’re seriously considering making a webcomic (or really a comic in general). Some of these don’t really apply to strips or gag-a-day type of comics, but I’m not talking about those here.
1. Write down ideas\sketch stuff, LEGIBLY. “I’m gonna remember it later” NEVER works. And if you scribble it somewhere on a piece of paper, you’d better scan it or retype in one doc later, because tiny notes always get lost among other doodles in my skethbooks.
(i know it’s hard to keep everything clean and organized, but this mess is just not productive)
If your project is a collaboration, save your conversations. If you’re working alone, make a blog for your ramblings. You have no clue what tears of relief I cry when I open that blog and rememeber I don’t have to painstakingly look through my heaps of sketchbooks and folders for a tiny idea I’m not even sure I wrote down a few months ago.
2. Inspiration folders, or even better, inspo blog with tags also help with collecting and remembering ideas. Color schemes, landscapes, style inspirations, atmospheric stuff, maybe some photo references, all those neat things.
3. Basic tier: character design sheets. Top tier: common poses, expressions. God tier: outfits they wear throughout the comic. Holy cow tier: turnaround sheets for all those outfits.
(I’d die trying to find good pages for references without these)
4. If you haven’t finished detailing the plot, don’t even think about moving on to drawing the comic. You’re gonna regret it when you come up with a really cool plot element that can’t be incorporated anymore because you’ve already drawn all the parts you could’ve tweaked.
5. Don’t just define the plot, make a script. Writing down the lines and the brief description of the actions serves me fine:
(notice that I approximately divided the pages & the text that’d go to each panel on a page)
6. Hard mode: make thumbnails for all the pages, if possible. At least whenever a new chapter starts.
7. If your story involves some convoluted chronology shenanigans, you’d better write down the events of your timeline in the chronological order.
8. Backgrounds. You can’t avoid them, bro. Like half of the comics are backgrounds, especially if your story involves a lot of adventuring and looking around. I know it hurts, but you’ll have to become friends with them. Read some tutorials, practice on photos, go out and sketch some streets, use 3d programs (like Google Sketch) to understand the perspective, use sites like houseplans to visualize your buildings better, I don’t know. Just be prepared for their imminent evil.
9. If you’re drawing digitally, pick a brush size for the lines and stick with it. You don’t want your lines and detail levels to look all wonky and inconsistent in different panels. And I don’t mean the cool stylistic varying lines, I mean this:
Also, things on the background should have thinner and/or lighter lines to avoid distraction. Usually less details too, unless you’re making a busy background with a simple foreground to help it pop out. Or wanna draw the attention to an object on the bg.
10. Readable fonts. Even if you chose to ignore people with poor sight or dyslexia, the majority of your readers aren’t gonna be excited about struggling to decypher this:
Also, as much as I love my black speech bubbles, colorful text on black still kinda hurts the eyes. I wouldn’t recommend doing that for all the characters. Black speech bubbles are usually used for creepy, inhuman voices. And yes, having a colorful outline in this case helps.
11. Probably newsflash, but did you know that panels have their place, order and functions? They do! My favourite thing ever is how I used panels when I was like 12:
(comics ain’t rocket science, but this one is)
The composition of the panels and word balloons always serve for a better reading experience. They guide your eyes over the page, so that you never feel lost or confused. The images in the comic equal frames in a movie, so it’s pretty damn important in what order you look at things and how quickly you can understand what’s going on!
(Eric Shanower & Scottie Young’s Wizard of Oz)
12. One update a week is fine for testing waters. Don’t overestimate yourself, especially if you have a pretty busy life outside it. A stable comic that updates slowly, but regularly is better than an unpredictable erratic one. You can always pick up the pace later, if you feel confident enough.
13. Try to always have a buffer - a couple of pages in reserve. If you’re making the pages much faster than you’re updating, this shouldn’t be a problem. But if those paces are equally the same, it’s goddamn HARD. But on the other hand, if something happens and you skip an update, those come in handy.
If you’re looking at this list and thinking “wow that’s a LOT of work”, you’re totally right. And it’s okay to be intimidated at first! But that’s why it’s important to start with something small. Once you get the formula down, these things will be natural to you.
Yikes D8.
That’s why it’s so important to do stretches and draw with your whole arm (ok, arguably hard with a tablet versus a big gorgeous easel) and etc but I forgot today bc I am a moron and it was great
Have you ever felt like your art is on the same level for a long time? Have you ever felt like you can’t grow your skills. Have you ever felt like everyone around you grows in rapid speed and you are just like a snail at the end of the race?
I was thinking about that and trying to pinpoint the reasons why you might feel that way. I figured out some solutions that helped me and some other artists I know.
1. Not looking for critique/feedback
‘You can’t yourself pinpoint things you need to focus on because your eye still isn’t trained enough to pinpoint exact problems.’
This is number one problem I see and many professional artists will tell you about that. You can’t be too shy to show your work to people who can give you good critique. Look for professionals who are willing to help you and use that. Critiquing is mistaken to be something hurtful for young artists BUT in reality people giving feedback are trying to help you grow. I know how hard it is to hear that you are still not good enough, that your art is lacking something. Maybe you know that yourself but you can’t yourself pinpoint things you need to focus on because your eye still isn’t trained enough to pinpoint exact problems. The best person to go to would be professional with trained eyes who is able to say by flipping through your portfolio what it lacks and what you can do to make it look better. Don’t be afraid and seek that help. Don’t be too attached to your own art and accept that it isn’t perfect and you need a fresh pair of eyes to look at it.
2. Not implementing the feedback
‘Implementing is the key step in the process of growing.’
After you have done first step from my list and you finally found a professional willing to give you feedback try to implement feedback. Don’t just listen to it, nod few times pretending you understand what it being said. Don’t defend your art and don’t give excuses if the critique is genuine. Implementing is the key step in the process of growing. There is no use in feedback without you actually trying out the tips you were given. The whole point of that is to change your work. You are not being better artists by collecting thoughts about your art. Now it is time to do the work. It actually requires to put time and effort . Usually what people do,after receiving feedback, is they pat themselves on back like it was ‘job well done’ and being lazy. They are not willing to actually put in the work to implement feedback. It is time consuming and you need to put a lot of effort. Although without that there is not any point in seeking feedback.
3. Not trying/not failing enough
'Embrace failures as a valuable lessons.’
Yes! There is lesson in failure! As hard as it is to understand. Once you collect experience you grow from it and become wiser. You know what path to choose to avoid next time failure. Successful people are the ones that can try something many times before they finally succeed. When they finally succeed it’s just a result of many attempts they have made before. No one is born ready for challenge. People are scared to lose because for our psyche it hurts more than a win feels good. People will try avoid at any cost losing so at some point they give up and stop trying. You can’t say for sure you will be successful artist after you did it for a year and don’t see result. You are not the one deciding how long it takes. It will be done some day. some day you will meet your artistic goals. But you will only meet them by trying and failing probably hundred times on a way. Just don’t be afraid. Those mistakes on a way are path that differentiate you and a professional. They already failed many times to get to where they are now. When you understand that you will embrace failures as a valuable lessons.
4. Doing things that are not challenging you.
'Feel uncomfortable and pick up this damn pencil and draw like no one else is watching!’
Don’t settle in your comfort zone. You’ve heard that already many times right? That is why. You limit your skillset. Good things come out of comfort zone. If you feel like you have problems drawing something you are probably right. The reason is you don’t challenge yourself enough to draw things that are difficult for you. For example if you are only drawing a boy in front view standing with hands straight it doesn’t sound like the most exciting art right? But what if it’s the only thing you can draw and it looks somewhat decent? Well then, solution for that is easy - experiment with different angles, experiment with expressions, with composition, with different species. Be brave here and discover topics you don’t draw. You art will become more interesting and you will be more confident drawing. Personally I know that this is the hardest part for artists. It is hard to let go of what we know and discover unknown. We feel vulnerable and like we can’t really draw. This feeling sucks. As much as this feeling sucks you know what else sucks? Sucks that your skills are stagnating. Feel uncomfortable and pick up this damn pencil and draw like no one else is watching! I guarantee that after some time you will be surprised with what you created and how your art have changed.
Good luck to everyone who is on path of improvement!
Friendly remind that this blog is on hiatus until further notice!!
I love and appreciate all the submissions that I’ve been getting, however, as I type this, my computer is lagging so much that I want to bang my head into a wall. I do most of my reblogging and tumblring on mobile now because I’m practically incapable of doing anything on my 7-year-old Macbook Air. So, until I am able to get a new computer (which will be a while, folks, I only have $40 in my bank account lol), this blog will solely be used to reblog helpful tutorials!
People often say to me: “You draw like some kind of inhuman machine. If I eat your brain, will I gain your power?” The answer is yes, but there is another way.
The key to precise drawing is building up muscle memory so that your arm/hand/fingers do the things you want them to do when you want them to do them. Teaching yourself to draw a straight line or to make sweet curves is just a matter of practice and there are some exercises you can do to help improve.
If you’re going to be doodling in class or during meetings anyway, why not put that time to good use?
This is so important to mention to all artists. The reason PRACTISE improves drawing ability over time is it increases the literal, technical movement in your hands and arms through /muscle memory/.
