re: your reply to prev anon ask. Could you do a post about the general principles that one teacher taught you that you 'could actually use to improve my skills'? Also I'm struggling to establish a regular practice, I want some system, like: start with portrait, pr details like hands etc. but can't decide how to build up skill efficiently so that it comes together in the end. I'd be so grateful for some practical advice.
Of course! There are probably heaps of them depending on what kind of drawing we’re concerned with, but I’ll try to cover several of the major things.
Leave more room “in front” of the subject you’re drawing, and less room “behind” it. That means more room in front of a face than the back of the head, more room in the direction something is heading than where they’re moving away from, and so on. This applies to people and animals.
Use the rule of thirds, avoid perfect symmetries or coincidences. The rule of thirds is pretty self-explanatory if you follow the link. It’s related to avoiding perfect symmetries, where you want to place your elements on your page in a way that isn’t centred. Coincidences are where lines just happen to meet or touch. This makes things look unnatural. Overlap them, vary the sizes of things, create differences.
General accuracy when drawing:
Focus first on position and size. This relates to composition, as mentioned above. Mark in where you want your elements to go and how large, before you even worry about drawing any shapes.
Draw large to small. This means drawing larger shapes first and smaller shapes later. Larger shapes are easier to establish on a blank page. Once that’s done, smaller shapes can be added in on the basis of the larger shape.Draw outside-in. That is, make sure your outside lines are accurate before moving onto any smaller details inside those lines. This is because outside lines determine important things such as the position and size of your picture overall. There’s no use drawing details first only to find as you go along that you’ve been doing it all too small or in the wrong place. Of course, with digital art you can move and resize things, but you don’t want to be wasting too much time doing that when instead you can be drawing.Compare everything. Drawing is about comparison. Something is only large or small, left or right, round or flat, in comparison to something else. Use what you’ve already drawn as reference points to help you determine where and how you should draw the next area.
General black and white shading:
Start with black, and go lighter. This is what I’ve been taught, though I’ve heard of other people going light to dark, layering everything as they go. If that works for you, great. However, the reason to start with black is because black is easy to get right. You don’t have to worry about whether you’re going too dark or too light. Black is just black.
Use the whole range of tones when shading. Once you have black (or the darkest tone in your picture if there is no black), you immediately have the two extremities of the range of values you need to shade with. You know exactly what the lightest tone is, and you know exactly what the darkest tone is. Everything else goes in between. A good work of shading requires a full range of tonal value, i.e. good contrast. This is another reason to start by putting in the darkest tone, so you don’t shy away from them. Starting light and going dark means you have no idea how dark you need to go until the very end, by which time people usually realise that they didn’t go dark enough the entire time and have to go back and re-shade everything. This is because:
Everything is relative. Compare everything. This is similar to what I was saying about making comparisons earlier. A tone only looks dark next to a lighter tone than itself. Next to a darker tone than itself, it will look light. The illusion above (found here) shows this at work. This is why, when shading one area, don’t just compare the tone with those around it, compare it with the entire picture. Just limiting yourself to how light/dark something looks compared to what’s immediately around it makes it easy for you to exaggerate the lightness/darkness of that tone.
Given simple lighting, the boundary between the light and dark side of an object is likely the darkest, not the place furthest away from the light source. This is because the dark side, while not directly illuminated, is still interfered with by reflections from its surroundings.
The hue is where a colour is, or is closest to, on the visible spectrum (above image found here). The hue is the “purest” form of a colour, if you will. Every single colour possible is some kind of variation of a hue.
Saturation is how pure the colour is, or how much hue there is in it, compared to how much grey is in it. High saturation leads to a very bright, pure, vibrant colour. Low saturation leads to a dull, grey-looking colour. No saturation means the colour is greyscale.
Tonal value, or lightness/darkness, is simply how light or dark a colour is. In other words, if you stripped the colour of all saturation and turned it black and white, how light or dark would that grey be?
Every single colour that is physically possible can be obtained by a mixture of hue, saturation, and lightness. For example, pink is a variation of a red hue, but lighter. Brown is a variation of an orange hue, but darker. Khaki green is a variation of a lime hue, but with lower saturation.
The colour of the light source affects the colour of an object. The sun, for example, is a warm light, which makes the illuminated side of an object a warm hue, and by contrast, the shadowed side of that object will be a cool hue. If the light was a cool colour, for example pale blue, the light side would be a cool hue and the shadowed side would appear a warmer hue by contrast. This is in addition to the colour of the original object itself. Therefore, “warm” does not necessarily mean it must be red or orange or yellow, and “cool” does not necessarily mean it must be blue or green. One hue can look warm or cool depending on what it is compared to. Purple will look cool compared to pure red, but it will look warm compared to pure blue.The purest colour is between the illuminated side and the shadowed side. This is because the illuminated side is contaminated by the lightness and colour of the light source, and the shadowed side is contaminated by darkness and reflection from surroundings. The light side is less saturated and lighter than the original colour, and the dark side is also less saturated but darker than the original colour. The bit in the middle retains most of the original colour.
I realise this is a lot of theory, so I’ve tried to illustrate them with images as best as possible, however the best way to learn this kind of thing is to go out, observe, and try it yourself.
I also have a portrait-specific tutorial here and an oil painting-specific tutorial here.
Hope this was helpful, and thanks for reading :)
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