Reddit Reddit reviews How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

We found 64 Reddit comments about How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination
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64 Reddit comments about How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination:

u/Stupid_Guitar · 18 pointsr/funny

If you really want to draw, I'd suggest picking up How To Draw by Scott Robertson.

It leans more towards technical drawing, but one could apply the techniques learned to many types of creative drawing. There's an app you can download that scans certain pages that will link to video tutorials as well.

It's a hefty tome, but don't let that scare you off. A beginner with a willingness to practice will find their skills improve significantly, but you gotta put the time into practicing, no two ways about it.

Once you find you can handle the basics, I'd suggest taking a figure drawing class, or drawing from life in general. Community colleges are great for this sort of thing, since it would be very inexpensive compared to art school or private lessons. Anyway, good luck!

How to Draw

u/wellhungkid · 13 pointsr/manga

learn to use 3d tools and stick to the fundamentals

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1540762345&sr=8-3


https://www.amazon.com/How-Render-fundamentals-shadow-reflectivity/dp/1933492961/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

don't bother learning art or how to draw. focus on technique and draftsmanship.

you're looking at 10 years though if your gonna do it solo. you need your drawing skills, then comic skills, plus writing comic scripts, plus plot skills, character design, and marketing/sales skill.

i gave up. now i just draw hentai and furry porn. life is good.

u/IllyriaD · 12 pointsr/anime

Anatomy and form both need a lot of practice.

You can get Andrew Loomis' book, Figure Drawing for All It's Worth for free on Goodreads -
https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/147941.Figure_Drawing_for_All_It_s_Worth

Undoubtedly she will need to work on perspective as well, and I would highly recommend getting Scott Robertson's book, How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination. -
http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=la_B0034O5O32_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452971897&sr=1-1

u/clamo · 6 pointsr/learnart

ok i got two for you! ive been using these books to teach myself in my free time when i have downtime from my classes! they work great as guides to teach you fundamentals of figure drawing and perspective/ environment drawing.
figure drawing:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS514US514&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=figure%20drawing%20design%20and%20invention

environments:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=pd_sim_b_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AZB9YYFC6AJ5WER0WQY

u/StressCavity · 6 pointsr/animation

While your end goal might be cartoons, you will HAVE to learn to draw realistically to some extent. No way would you be able to animate anything in perspective otherwise, understand lighting, or know how to composite complex scenes. There are fundamentals that you must understand that are key to 2D animation, regardless of art style, which should be continuously worked on alongside your stylistic development.

Books:

Simple book on perspective

My favorite anatomy book

A pretty simple book on light (More pictures/examples than in-depth detail)


Overall beginners drawing book

This covers light/shadow and materials decently for beginners

I personally think you should focus on fundamentals alone until you have a decent grasp before looking at animation. But if you want to learn concurrently, this book is pretty well-known in the industry: LINK

There's tons more, but I already think this might be too much to take in all at once. Discover for yourself the rest, it's not good to have everything handed to you with fundamentals, gotta reign it in personally.

u/DrFacemelt · 6 pointsr/ArtFundamentals

You can practice curves or arcs in the same way you practice straight lines. Make lots of them! You goal should be to make fluid, confident strokes from your shoulder. Lots of books go over this including this one from Scott Robertson or this one from Andrew Loomis. Also check out this From Foundation Patreon.

u/Am_draw · 5 pointsr/learnart

Your friend is sort of right about the pen. It can help do away with the "chicken scratch" method of drawing by forcing you to be more confident with your lines but you should stick with pencil for now.


I'm mostly self-taught as well (although I learned a bit from Watts Atelier until it got to be too expensive) and the sheer amount of information out there can be really overwhelming. I mean, there's so many things to learn: perspective, line weight, figure drawing, portraiture, landscape, etc.


What definitely helped me is realizing that I'm never going to stop improving as an artist. That means that I'm going to have my entire life to hone my skills. Even if you have to unlearn a lot of bad habits, you've still got plenty of time to practice slowly, deliberately and mindfully.


If you understand that you've got your whole life to get better, it's easier to formulate a strategy to get better. You've got to think about this in the long term. That means taking a month to work solely on anatomy, another month to work only on perspective, another month to work on tone and values, while always revisiting the skills that you've already cultivated.


For example, I've laid out my artistic goals 3 months in advance. That means that for the next 3 months, I'm only focusing on anatomy and gesture/figure drawing. My daily schedule this week looks like this:


warmup

1, 2, 5 and 10 minute gesture/figure drawings

study/copy hands from Bridgeman's Constructive Anatomy book

draw 50 hands

spend about 10-15 minutes drawing hands from memory and comparing them to the references I was using earlier

work on something fun


If I have extra time, I'll work on some more anatomy studies but it depends on how busy I am with work/life. After this week is up, I'll move on to arms, then the core, then legs, head, etc, following the same setup I've made. Maybe the next 3 months, I'll move on to perspective drawing but I haven't thought that far ahead yet.


If you're confused about where to start, just pick something that you're the weakest at and start drawing that. It's a grind and you're going to be producing hundreds, if not thousands of drawings but that's the way to get better.


Like I said, if you start thinking in the long term, it gets less overwhelming. I'm gonna link some resources that really helped me out.


Books

Perspective Made Easy

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Fun With a Pencil Actually, anything by Loomis.

How to Draw Kind of a technical book but goes into really great detail about perspective


Youtube Channels

Watts Atelier Highly recommended. Watch his figure drawing videos. Also, if you can spare the cash, join his online school. It's fantastic and very structured course in drawing. Definitely look into this if you have trouble deciding what to learn next.

Proko This guy has great intro videos for figure drawing. I think he learned at Watts Atelier as well.

New Masters Academy They have a ton of great videos about everything. Definitely look into Glen Vilppu's figure drawing series. He's the god of figure drawing.

Alphonso Dunn Really great pen and ink tutorials


Sorry if I overwhelmed you (ironic, considering your original post) but I just wanted to share some stuff that's really helped me develop a schedule and get better. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help you a fellow art student out.


TLDR: You have plenty of time in your life to get better, so make a schedule and stick to it.

u/mazaer · 5 pointsr/learnart

I strongly recommend Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" book. It is almost entirely dedicated to perspective drawing. It teaches everything from the basics of two and three point perspectives all the way to more complex things such as mirroring curves and even correctly drawing things like staircases in perspective. It's also super cheap for what it offers:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=la_B0034O5O32_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417522342&sr=1-1

Grab that and work your way through every exercise one-by-one and you'll come out with a firm grasp on perspective drawing. He also has an accompanying website for the book that you can log into that goes through some of the lessons in video format. As he is a teacher (and so is the co-author), they both do a great job of explaining things in the videos.

u/sjalfurstaralfur · 5 pointsr/learntodraw

Sorry I was probably being unhelpful with that comment. Anyways, one critique I have is to keep in mind the 3D shape of objects. So right now the way you drew the pen, it's "flat" and doesnt have any dimensionality. You should aim to draw a cylinder rather than a rectangle. This is probably the #1 mistake I see beginners do in this sub. See pic. The end goal is to be able to draw a pen from any angle.

To reach that end goal, I recommend you get a beginner's book on perspective, any basic one you find on amazon should be fine. Perspective is like the addition and multiplication of drawing, because everything you will ever see in your life will be in perspective. Then once you finish that, delve into How to Draw by Scott Robertson. It's hard book but if you work through it, you'll be on your way in no time. Don't worry if you just end up drawing a bunch of boxes, because nearly everything can be mapped out into a box shape. Take for example this drawing by Scott Robertson, he uses boxes a lot.

u/guiguismall · 5 pointsr/learnart

You won't necessarily draw the internal anatomy every time you draw a person, but you'll definitely have to learn it by drawing it a lot. Look at it like that: when you draw a figure, the only thing you can see is the skin (and later, the clothes). Well, it happens that said skin is wrapped around a complex structure of bones and muscles, and so are the clothes of a characters. Knowing how this structure is built will let you "drap" skin and clothes the proper way, and will give you all the indications you need when it comes to adding light and shadow. As a bonus, being able to "see" the internal structure of a body gives you the ability to manipulate it, exagerate poses, and even create new ones from imagination.

Now as for how to learn it? I see in one of your old comments that you seem to have the books everyone recommends already, but have you tried using them? Grab either Loomis's or Hampton's book, and read them cover to cover while reproducing the drawings, that should be a good start. Alternatively, check out Proko's channel on youtube, he's got some material on figure drawing, too.

As a side note and to answer an older question of yours regarding drawing cars, check out Scott Robertson's book on objects and environments in perspective, or his DVDs on Gnomon Workshop if you're like me and prefer this format (subscription does cost $50 a month though, but Gnomon also has some pretty good figure drawing / anatomy courses. Your call).

u/xCentumx · 4 pointsr/comicbookart

First, I want to say that you have a pretty nice finish on this drawing. Your line weights are good, your use of spot blacks could use a little work, but you've got the right idea. I like the fact that you're lines thin out as you go back in perspective, really sells the idea that there is some distance between cyclopse and that cactus in the background.

Also your anatomy is pretty good, though it seems to me more like copying from other comics rather than taking the time to actually learn the muscles/muscle groups.

That being said, there's a lot of construction issues in this piece. I could go through and list off all of them, but really what it comes down to is the understanding of perspective. This is integral to creating a piece that has objects in it that feel 3 dimensional.

Now when I say lack of understanding of perspective, I don't mean that you have no understanding. You seem like you could probably construct some cubes in space, or even a rudimentary street view with a horizon roughly in the middle of the page. But the way to push your work further towards what you see in a an issue of X-men.

To get you where you want to go, I would either suggest Scott Robertson's How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments from your Imagination. Or if you'd rather you can search the internet for some tutorials like this Ctrlpaint Tutorial

I wish I had more examples, but it's been a little while since I was looking for this stuff. But it's something that I've practiced almost every day for many years and I've still got plenty of room to learn.

You're definitely headed in the right direction. It looks like you enjoy the work, so hang onto that. I'm not saying to bore yourself to death with technical practice, but take a little bit of your drawing time that you've set aside and practice some perspective and you'll see a huge improvement in your work. And once you feel comfortable, start checking out Proko for stuff about how to translate those perspective skills into bettering your figures (people) that you draw.

Good luck and keep up the good work

♥ Ethan

u/186394 · 3 pointsr/learnart

Color and Light by James Gurney.
How to Draw by Scott Robertson.
Figure Drawing by Michael Hampton.

And for perspectice specifically, this $12 video series by Marshall Vandruff.

u/Growsintheforest · 3 pointsr/IndustrialDesign

This is an excellent response above, and I'd like to add to this. I'm a senior at Auburn University for ID and I second that you should become familiar with sketching and, if given the opportunity, CAD software.

I've read through Scott Robertsons How to Draw book and it's a good resource for learning how to sketch.

Autodesk will often have free downloads for AutoCAD, Fusion 360, and Inventor for students. I'd recommend getting AutoCAD of the three, but I feel like Fusion is a bit more beginner friendly.

Even if you choose to go into engineering for school, sketching and CAD will help out a lot when you start your classes.

Also, if your high school has any public speaking classes, it wouldn't hurt to look into taking one. At least in my program we have pretty regular presentations, and it really helps to be able to communicate your ideas fluently when presenting a final product/end of the semester project.

Feel free to DM me as well!

u/J-Wh1zzy · 3 pointsr/learnart

Definitely, not sure what your budget is but there's a book I have called "How to Draw" https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1933492732/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491345682&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=how+to+draw+scott

It goes from A-Z learning to draw and think in 3D. It's an awesome book. I'm currently in art school and I had the pleasure of hearing one of the authors talk about it. After this book there's a second one called "How to Render" which goes through all the dynamics of light.

The thing I really like about these books is that it approaches drawing from an analytical point of view and really gets at the science behind it.

u/reverendbimmer · 3 pointsr/learnart

How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933492732/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_de0evb12A1TQ6
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933492732/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_de0evb12A1TQ6

Just picked this book up the other day. It's freaking amazingly helpful.

u/George_Shrinks · 3 pointsr/learnart

> For beginners learning to draw accurately, just focus on the Elements of Art.

I'd actually like to chime in here to give OP another option (not looking to argue about fundamentals haha. We all know how that goes).

Quick backstory:

I studied art for two years and went through pretty much the same training that you described above. I had a wonderful experience, but decided that it wasn't for me. I then decided to pursue Industrial Design, which meant I had to study the fundamentals all over again, only this time they were different.

Just like the elements of art, we still started out with the basics of line, shape and form, but with a much heavier emphasis on accurate perspective. In fact we were taught about the different kinds of perspective and how/why they work from the get go. The equivalent of "value" in Industrial Design was "rendering", only it was much more technical (how to construct shadows in perspective, how light decay and occlusion work, the Fresnel Effect etc.)

Of course this all just sounds like a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo, so let me make a small change to what you said above to summarize what I am trying to say.

>For beginners learning to draw beautifully, just focus on the Elements of Art.

and likewise

>For beginners learning to draw accurately, learn perspective.

I am personally in favor of learning the rules before you break them. Want to paint a pretty cottage? Paint a convincing one first using perspective. Again, this is not the only way to learn. It is just what I would recommend based on my experience. This is, of course /r/learnart and not /r/learntodrawperfectly, so please take all of this with a grain of salt.

"Well gee, thanks a lot Mr. useless design person."

Wait! Don't go, OP! I have some actual, useful advice!

  1. Avoid digital for as long as possible. Nothing beats the muscle memory you will gain from drawing with a real pen/pencil on real paper.
  2. Exercise those muscles every day! Here are some of my favorite exercises: 1- Straight, parallel lines. Keep your wrist as still as possible and draw from your elbow and shoulder. Grip the pen lightly and DON'T rotate the page. 2- Dots connected by lines. Draw lots of dots on the page and then draw nice, straight lines connecting them. You may rotate the page for this one. 3- Lines through a point. Draw a dot on the page and try to draw straight, intersecting lines through the center. Don't rotate the page. This one is tricky. 4- Circles! Just fill the page. Try to do these quickly. "Ghost" the shape of the circle over the page before putting your pen down, and then try to draw the whole thing in 2 or 3 quick gestures. 5- Ellipses! Draw some line segments on the page and then draw some ellipses with those lines acting as the minor axis. 6- Cubes in two point perspective. Draw your horizon line, and then just fill the page (I didn't fill the page here but you get the idea). Try to relax while doing all of these warmups. They might not be very exciting but eventually they can become sort of a calming, zen exercise. Your lines will look horrible at first, but you will get much much better if you just practice.
  3. Listen to everything /u/cajolerisms said above, and if you're up to the challenge, try approaching things from the technical route as well. Once you learn how perspective works you will literally see the world differently. It seems daunting now, but the more you practice, the more it will all make sense and your artwork will become more convincing as a result.
  4. As much as I hate telling people they need to spend money to learn how to improve their drawing/painting, I highly recommend this book. Scott Robertson does a great job of breaking down how perspective works and has some great tips on shortcuts for constructing accurate drawings. Plus, once you get the book, you get access to video lessons that break down all of the topics in the book.

    Remember that every time you put your pencil to paper you are creating something that has never existed. No one has ever seen the things that you will draw. You are a creator, and that is just about the coolest thing to be in the universe. Don't give up, and happy arting!
u/9869604401089358618 · 3 pointsr/Gundam

If you already know how to draw, then try Scott Robertsons books.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Render-fundamentals-shadow-reflectivity/dp/1933492961/ref=la_B0034O5O32_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480449825&sr=1-2

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=la_B0034O5O32_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480449825&sr=1-1

They are not about drawing gundam but about drawing hard objects in general. Which is much more important then learning to draw a single thing as you can transfer the skill to anything.

u/worldseed · 3 pointsr/learnart

Perspective is something that will help you draw anything. People, buildings, interiors, animals, objects, vehicles etc. Check out Nsio's tutorials on deviantart for some examples and guides on how perspective helps you draw figures from imagination (and life).

As a beginner book, people always suggest Perspective Made Easy. It's cheap and well regarded. How to Draw is more advanced and focuses on vehicles / landscapes, which might not sound useful if you just want to draw figures but (personally) it helped me soooo much in placing complex 3D forms in perspective (which is all the human body is after all).

u/Garret_AJ · 3 pointsr/conceptart

I don't like to give crits to fix what you have. It's a sketch, and you should think of sketches as disposable. Learn something here and move on. I would say my big crit is they're more organic looking than robotic.

That being said, I recommend you do some study before you try again. When learning to make robots there are two very essential things to learn; Human anatomy, and contemporary mechanical engineering.

Human anatomy: Really dive in to understand how joints actuate with muscles and ligaments. These will help you understand how your robots joints should work as well. It will also work to make your creations more believable.

Here some links:

- https://www.pinterest.com/achinzoo/anatomy/

- https://flabergastertron.tumblr.com/

- https://sketchfab.com/search?q=anatomy&sort_by=-pertinence&type=models

I also recommend this book on Analytical Anatomy: Figure Drawing: Design and Invention

​

Mechanical: don't just look at this stuff, you need to understand how things connect. Why did they engineer this or that a certain way. Is it supposed to move? How should it look. Is it supposed to be a conduit for wires? how does that look? Draw these things, build up the muscle memory. They will express themselves when your drawing creatively I promise, but you first have to do the studies.

Here's some links

- https://imgur.com/r/MachinePorn

- https://www.pbase.com/amoxtli/uss_midway

- https://sketchfab.com/search?q=robot&sort_by=-pertinence&type=models

​

And here's a fantastic book you should have: How to Draw: By Scott Robertson

I like where you're headed, but I think you can do better. Keep drawing and I hope that was helpful.

u/usethebrush · 3 pointsr/CommercialArt

Perspective is critically important, and in my eyes, the number one area of focus, if you had to pick. However, I would tie learning perspective with a re-evaluation of basic shapes and start thinking about structure and form. Drawing basic shapes in space allows you to construct and build anything you can imagine, realistically and even a cartoon. It's the first thing that people notice is wrong about an image including non-artists, even when they can't place their finger on why it's wrong. Everyone with functioning eyes have great vision. You could say that we are all black belts at seeing things, because it is one of our senses since our birth, and the one that we are always using. So when you're drawing and painting, you are a visual magician. You're using these fundamental tools to fool these people into believing that an image on paper is as deceiving as reality. It's all an illusion. You cannot avoid the importance of perspective. If you aren't practicing it, no cheap tricks will be able to deceive a person into believing what you created.

You learn as early as elementary school about the 2D shapes. The square, the circle and the triangle. You know about their 3D counterparts, the cube, as well as a sphere, cone and a cylinder. In geometry everything is perfectly symmetrical and easy to solve. But when you step out into reality, everything is thrown into disarray, all of these shapes are merged together mechanically and organically, and on top of that, your vision is deceiving you. Very advanced forms of mathematics were created to solve those problems accurately, but we are not interested in that. You'll also realize this when you come across proportion diagrams, and why it does nothing when you are drawing from the model. You will also need to understand what circles look like in perspective[ellipses.] Do you know how to draw an ellipse properly? Do you see what happens to these shapes in space? Learn to draw these basic shapes correctly in space, it requires knowledge of perspective. Would it help you to think of a basic game like Snake? Imagine what it would be like to play that game in 3D. Although we aren't playing a game, we are just observing reality and interpreting it in 2D, that's where perspective falls in. You can use perspective construction thankfully. You can simplify areas into basic shapes. You can measure and draw pipes and cubes, aligning them to their current vanishing points. Until you're finally building whatever you need for your own worlds.

The other fundamentals are critically important as well. But drawing in space with perspective is what you need for your drawings to look structurally correct. Yes, it can be a complex hurdle. It's both easy to understand and difficult to wrap our eyes and brain around. Thankfully there are dozens of great free resources available, and no threat of them going away, any time soon. If you have great reading comprehension, there is a free resource that pretty much covers every single thing you would ever ask about perspective. Otherwise many instructors have done a great job simplifying what you need to understand for your own work. Here are links to two great resources that have emerged more recently.

Mow some lawns, shovel snow, baby sit, beg for money, sell a game, buy these.

u/Lorathor6 · 3 pointsr/SS13

Thank you, I appreciate it :)
Well, the only advice I can give you is to never stop drawing. I don't know how "good" your skill is or if you're just at the beginning but for most people that really want to draw the big let-down comes after a short period of time when they can't realize the progress they're making. Most of the people stop drawing when they can't see that they're getting better after some days or weeks. Drawing is a skill that needs alot of time and patience. Other than that it's just rinse and repeat. Draw what you like and just have fun. If you're over the first hill and start liking what you do, everythings going faster and faster. I don't know what art you're into but a good start would be to learn the fundamentals. For character it's anatomy, for environment it would be perspective. Learn to understand lighting, colour, shadow, perspective etc.

If you're not afraid and still really want to learn drawing I recommend How to Draw and How to Render, both from Scott Robertson. Both books are heavily influenced by product- and concept design but give a really nice overview about fundamentals - that's how I started.

I hope that helps :)

u/blauman · 3 pointsr/InternetAMA

There's different types of drawing, design drawing is the skill you need for inventing, engineering and it'll be good for planning other artistic media you want to get involved in (film, books, games).

Feng Zhu, Scott Robertson are awesome.

The best place to learn a skill is from (revered) expert professionals, and these two have worked for worked for Hollywood, and other expensive, high quality, stringent time scale projects, but have decided to teach due to poor teaching of design skills (usually drawing) in many schools.

u/nibot2 · 3 pointsr/comics

The only advice you need right now is to improve your draftsmanship. You need to understand anatomy to be able to draw people, no matter what level of detail/realism you wish to achieve. Animators and cartoonists who who draw all varieties of cartoon characters are always masters of drawing the human form. Even drawing characters like Fred Flinstone requires you to understand anatomy, such as the way joints bend, or hands and fingers function. Having a grasp on anatomy will help your story telling, no matter how you choose to exercise (or disregard) the knowledge. The best place to start learning is a very well known book authored by Andrew Loomis: Figure Drawing for What its Worth (this is one of the most well known peices of instructional drawing literature) Buy this book and study. You already have ideas that you want to draw, and thats great, and improving your draftsmanship will help you be able to get your ideas out. In addition to anatomy, You will also need to learn some basics of perspective, to be able to convincingly draw your stage for example, or how to set up characters around the stage and make them appear to all be on the same plane. Scott Robertson has a great book that teaches fundamentals of perspective, worth looking in to How to Draw Good Luck!

u/Hewkho · 2 pointsr/ArtBuddy
u/Kriss-Kringle · 2 pointsr/DCcomics

You need to pick up an anatomy book because right now you're inventing muscles and applying too many shadows until the whole drawing becomes visual noise and it doesn't read clearly.

First off, I'd recommend you study Figure drawing for all it's worth by Andrew Loomis. You can probably find a PDF of it online for free and it's not overly complicated for a kid to understand. Then, if you feel you want to stick with drawing in the long run convince your parents to invest in these books:

Atlas of human anatomy for the artist

Human anatomy for artists : The elements of form

Classic human anatomy: The artist's guide to form, function, and movement

Figure drawing: Design and invention

How to draw: Drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

How to render: The fundamentals of light, shadow and reflectivity

Color and light: A guide for the realist painter

u/Gramnaster · 2 pointsr/LearnConceptArt

I think it's a bit difficult and unfair for me to comment based on one painting alone. Do you have any sketches (line drawing, preferably) of this painting, or anything that showcase what you can do so far? Almost everyone will suggest we start designing anything in line sketches, especially if learning, so I'm interested to see what you got :D

Edit: Since you're looking for advice on how to start, I'll just say a few things that might be able to help you start.

(1) Drawing, imo, is the very foundation of all art. I think before you start painting, you should start drawing first! Here are a few links that may help you start with drawing:

  • Art Fundamentals (Free, and pretty good)
  • Foundation Group (Paid, but pretty good)
  • Ctrl+Paint (Free and Paid. Both are pretty good)

    (2) I suggest you follow an art school's course outline so you can progress pretty well. Feng Zhu Design School has an outline that they use for their students to learn how to do concept art in 1 year (16 hours per day). You can also download a detailed version of what they offer in their course, then you can have an idea on what each component means.

  • FZD Course Outline

    (3) There are also a few books that would be really useful to you when learning how to draw and render. These are supposedly the best on the internet (I only have two, the first two books in the list) Here they are:

  • How to Draw
  • How to Render
  • Figure Drawing
  • Color and Light
  • Imaginative Realism

    I think those are all I have for you now. I'm not in any way a professional artist (I'm currently studying Industrial Design), but I think the above things I've mentioned should prove useful to you. If you have any questions, you can send me a PM :D Work hard and practise every day!
u/Choppa790 · 2 pointsr/ArtistLounge
u/Mizzazz · 2 pointsr/katawashoujo

I don't really have the time to do a fully fledged critique right now, but the most prominent issue to me is your line work. It's very chicken-scratchy and not confident. The quality of line is what separates okay artists from great artists, and you will be able to sketch a LOT quicker once you get better at it.

This reddit has some great resources and lessons

It's by a guy who did lessons with a well known artist at CDA (Concept Design Academy), this guy is a freaking genius and I can only hope to even scratch the surface of his ability!

The owner of this sub also recommends this book - Which I'm sure you can get in a more illegitimate manner, but it's fantastic and a must-have for any budding artist.

I want to recommend this to /u/Anagram-Daine, too, if he's here at all.

As a final note, this video on line weights is great, too.

Line weight can really help establish forms in your work without needing to add value, and being able to think in 3D forms can help a lot. The idea behind this is that you simplify everything you see into primitive shapes, such as boxes, spheres, cylinders and cones. All of these shapes can be warped, distorted and bent to form anything you can possibly think of, so being able to know these shapes and how light would pass over them will give you the ability to draw ANYTHING, should you know what it looks like.

Have fun!

u/Brendan_Fraser · 2 pointsr/learntodraw

Practice practice practice.

Start from the beginning and just keep doing it. The more time you put in the better you get. Success doesn't happen over night. Check out the book "How To Draw" to learn perspective drawing which will teach you form and shapes correctly. Also check out https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals

u/strppngynglad · 2 pointsr/drawing

I'd recommend this book for learning perspective of things like this to OP

u/DrDougExeter · 2 pointsr/learnart

I can definitely help you with this.


How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

This is the best book on perspective you can buy. Perspective is the number one thing you need to have a grasp on if you want to draw, especially from imagination. Practice this until it clicks for you.

For setting up scenes I recommend Andrew Loomis books, Creative Illustration in particular. Loomis has several books out and they're all amazing. Many artists have learned to draw from Loomis.

Burne Hogarth is another master of the craft and you can learn a lot about musculature and anatomy from his books. These are generally a step up from Loomis so you could move on to these once you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals to take your work to the next level. Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing, Drawing the Human Head.

For people and anatomy, Proko (http://www.proko.com/library/) has good free youtube videos. He uses a lot of Loomis and Hogarth methods (which are pretty much the standard) and presents them in a way that is easy to digest. He's constantly updating his channel and adding new videos.

If you can only get a few books, I would get the How to Draw perspective book first, then go through the Proko material, then move onto the Loomis and Hogarth stuff. These learning materials will take you pretty much as far as you want to go.

Also I highly recommend sticking to traditional materials (pencil and paper) while you're learning. Once you have the fundamentals down then you can move on to digital. You're going to make things much easier on yourself if you stick with traditional while you nail these fundamentals down.

u/Tauralis · 2 pointsr/learnart

As far as I know, rotating objects in space involves drawing an ellipse at foundation of your initial object, then setting another vanishing point according to the desired angle, and draw a new grid around the ellipse for your object, but from your new vanishing point, so that the lines of the grid would be tangent to the ellipse.


Sorry I can't go into detail, it is really hard for me to explain this, my English is rather bad at explaining such intricate topics. I would recommend reading "How to draw" by Scott Robertson, where he provides a more indepth look into perspective.


https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

u/9Solid · 1 pointr/LearnConceptArt

I'm not an expert on what's out there by any means, as I'm mostly a 3d artist who recently has been more interested in brushing up and improving my drawing skills. But I just bought this book which deals a lot with what you're looking for.

u/brokenwings0584 · 1 pointr/learntodraw

Sorry for the delayed response...

How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination by Scott Robertson:

amazon dot com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

I haven't made it to far into the book because my primary focus is on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but so far it seems pretty fun. It's about $25ish.

u/IrisHopp · 1 pointr/learntodraw

In this case, I'd figure a way to make it work for you instead of fighting it. For example, one of my classmates has really scratchy, high-density way of drawing. Another dude has very accurate inkings drawn with a crazy wobbly line - but because the initial sketch is calculated and very precise, the image still reads.

Especially when you draw big (think A3 or larger) and then present the image smaller, the line quality will look better.

On techniques for fine motor skills, I've heard great things about Peter Han's course, though I haven't bought it myself. In school, we did the exercises from Scott Robertson's book. That book is hardcore on technical skills. The motor skills are only a small part of it.

u/baimo · 1 pointr/ottawa

ahoy!

If you're finding it hard to make time for in person classes, there are tons of resources online that might suit you better for the time being. Youtube is an awesome resource, I really enjoy Aaron Blaise's channel but there are tons of other free lessons and tutorials available.

Tumblr is actually a really good place to find all kinds of art blogs/refs/tutorials. Even Reddit has some drawing sections where you can get critique from others!

Lynda.com you follow along with lessons and they provide working files you can can download.

FZD School of Design

Level Up!

Other than that just practice!
These books are a pretty good jumping off point if you want to just get a strong understanding of foundations.

Sorry for the long post, I likes me some drawing yar har :)

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/learntodraw

Hey man, thanks a lot! It's been a few months and I've gotten pretty good fast which scares me because I'm afraid of hitting my first plateau. But to answer your question, I think it deserves a thorough explanation of my experience through the lens of a complete novice artist, so forgive this massive wall of text.

Most if not all of my drawings were flat and 2D and instead of drawing what I saw or imagined, I'd sort of just put marks down on the paper or tablet and course correct until I found something I thought looked good. So I just started practicing anything that could help and boiled it down to this process.

Drawing better figures (drawing anything, really) starts with four components: creativity, mechanical skill, analysis and community. And this isn't just about drawing theory, but also managing your headspace so that you can make it a habit to draw everyday, because nothing substitutes practice.

Creativity is 100% necessary to improving at art, and you need to draw for fun, regardless of your level of practice. Because if it stops being fun, you stop doing it. I've gone days, if not weeks without drawing anything because nothing was coming out how I wanted it to. So I'd stick to practicing fundamentals for weeks only to become frustrated at the marginal improvement I was making, but also bored of drawing because it became a chore. I think the hardest realization at least for me as a beginner is accepting that my art will never get "good enough." You have to swing for the fences with what you know, identify your mistakes afterward, and divide that up into key problem areas to focus on for when you step away from the creative process to practice fundamentals. This all being said, I think the exercise I find most useful for creativity is opening my vault of unfinished story scripts and doing character designs for them. If you for whatever reason don't have any unfinished stories collecting dust on your Google Drive, do what your default state is when you're doing creative work. You really gotta explore your mind and do what feels good. For me, there's nothing quite like the feeling of bringing a character from your own imagination to life. Don't be afraid to make mistakes for this process. That's the point.

Mechanical skill is line confidence. Mine still isn't the best, and I definitely chicken scratch lines loosely before finding the correct one. If you can see in the sketch, I used an orange layer for my messy sketch, and use a few light strokes in black on a second layer for the outline. Eventually those get smudged to create realistic skin tones, but that's a subject on its own. To practice more confident lines, I use drawabox. It's a free series of line exercises you should do. They're time consuming to do at first, but if you do it enough, you should be comfortable enough to use any of the exercises as a 15 minute warm-up every time you pick up a pencil. There’s also an active subreddit and YT community where you can post your exercises and receive criticism. More on community later. Drawing confident lines, in theory, should dramatically cut down the time it takes to sketch something. These exercises also incorporate drawing simple geometric shapes in 3D space. This is important because every visual object you could ever produce is composed of simple or complex shapes. When I get home from work I'll post a video of the timelapse for this drawing, and you can see all the mistakes I made because I couldn't confidently create lines.

Analysis is the act of seeing and interpreting, and in art I feel like it's neglected in the same way listening is in communication. Art is a means of communicating something, and if you're always producing and never observe, it stops holding meaning. It's kind of like when that hipster band sells out and people stop identifying with their music. In order to make genuine pieces of art in my opinion, you have to be constantly observing, or you'll produce the same stuff over and over again, or produce something that isn't you. So to practice analysis, the best exercise by a mile IMHO is drawing from life or photo reference. In art schools, they focus on building rich visual libraries, meaning the number things you can imagine at any angle and can draw from imagination. So say you're practicing architecture for a week. The instructor will have students draw buildings and interior spaces from a particular time period, whilst mixing in exercises that involve drawing from imagination in the style of what was observed. Then they move on to another time period. So if you want to improve your faces, draw all female/male/child/elderly faces doing different facial expressions at different angles both from reference and imagination, then switch when you get bored or exhausted. Then if you get bored of faces do hands, or another part of the body, or animals, or flowers, or buildings! After you finish drawing, compare them to your reference photo, analyze your mistakes, and try again until you're confident enough to draw something completely from imagination. Pretty soon you'll have a robust library of visual elements that you can combine to create complex and believable compositions.

Community is another overlooked subject in this field. I used to be a solitary artist. I mentioned earlier that I always believed I would just get "good enough" one day and only then will I show off my work. That was the single most damaging belief I held. There will always be someone better than you, but they should be a source of inspiration, not envy. Because if you get involved in local art galleries, you'll meet the artists and learn they're genuinely nice people. I do security work at this newer young company and they put commissioned art pieces in their buildings, so over the weekend I got to watch a few of them work. They had friends come from their community and help them scale and paint. They convinced me to start an Instagram for my work, because the fundamental purpose of social media is to give artists you meet irl something to look at after meeting you. The problem with the artiste hermit is that you'll never be confident to show people without worrying about the quality of your art. As they say, "an artist's work is never finished", so you'll always feel a bit of doubt when showing people your work, but that's natural and you learn to manage it better. Additionally, it just helps to be around other artists because we view the world differently. I asked one of the commission artists I met, "Is it a bad time to be an artist?" He replied, "It's always a bad time to be an artist." We shared a hearty laugh, and it was at that moment I realized community is also an important tool for life enrichment. Nothing is worse than being stranded in a sea of people who can't comprehend why you would want to be an artist in the 21st century.

I don't think any of these four components are more important than the other. The more you understand each one individually, the more you see how they all affect each other. If you draw a lot of cylinders in 3D space, foreshortening an arm will just make sense more because you've drawn a similar shape at that angle several times. If you go out to a gallery and observe art, you might see something that evokes a feeling that you'll need to recreate. If your lines get really confident, you'll spend less time fixing mistakes and more time putting more ideas on paper/canvas/tablet. They work in tandem, and I wouldn't give each component a structured dedication of time everyday, but I would switch off whenever the process gets stale or boring.

I hope I answered your questions and more. Sorry I went off on such a long post, but I would have liked a road map when I first started. Happy drawing, don't forget to have fun and take breaks.

Other resources:

YouTube is helpful, but most of them aren't for beginners despite being labeled as such. Shapes in 3D space will always be the most beneficial exercise for understanding space and perspective so do that more often than looking up "how to draw (a specific thing) tutorial)" on YT. There's this app called Magic Poser, and many others that let you put objects into 3D space and adjust for angles and lighting. Just play around with the light, observe how it behaves, trace it, draw it from imagination, add shapes, and so on.

Books are also a great resource and I'd start with Scott Roberson and Thomas Bertling's How To Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments From Your Imagination. It's a great jumping off point, because there are book recommendations at the start of most chapters for specific topics. Books are also extremely useful because there are detailed, hi-resolution photos for you to observe. It also makes you look sophisticated when you have a library.

Oh, another classic book is the Loomis guide on head and hands. It gives you a detailed guide on drawing any type of head and face, but it is a dry read. Great resource, but very dry and a little dated.

Lastly, never pay for anything unless it's absolutely necessary for self-study. If you have books you haven't read about perspective or anatomy yet, don't buy a $300 course from an online school. If you have paper and a pencil, don't go buy a tablet. I did, and though I don't necessarily regret it, I didn't need to get a tablet to get started.

u/syn-nine · 1 pointr/drawing

I made a little gif to explain how to derive a perspective grid using a 60 degree cone of vision. I thought you guys might appreciate it. It's based on Scott Robertson's How to Draw book:
https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

Steps:

  1. Draw a border for the scene.
  2. Locate the horizon line.
  3. Draw a circle that encompasses most of the view, centered on the center vanishing point.
  4. Find the Station Point by extending lines from the edges of the circle to the middle of the Field of View such that the angle between the lines is the width of the FOV (60 degrees).
  5. Locate your first Vanishing Point.
  6. Locate your second Vanishing Point (90 degrees from VP1 measured from SP).
  7. Locate the Diagonal Vanishing Point (45 degrees from VP1 measured from SP).
  8. Use VP1+VP2+DVP to draw a grid of perspective squares.

    I'm on Drawcrowd if you want to say hi: https://drawcrowd.com/kennedy31415
u/Ophichius · 1 pointr/fo4

If you've got the time and resources to spare, try making maquettes. You can get modeling clay fairly cheap, and it can be incredibly helpful to throw together a quick maquette, chuck it under a lamp, and see what happens with the light.

If you want a great pair of books on light and form by a master painter, check out James Gurney's Color and Light and Imaginative Realism. His blog is worth a read as well, it's always informative and interesting.

If you want a more technical approach to lighting, How to Render is a fantastic technical examination of how light behaves on various surfaces. The associated How to Draw is an excellent technical book on perspective. Both are a bit dry and clinical, but quite excellent.

Anything by Andrew Loomis is also well worth picking up.

u/xensoldier · 1 pointr/conceptart

Yup I highly recommend you get his newest book "How To Draw", fantastic book.

u/weenie131 · 1 pointr/stevenuniverse

Sorry this is really not going to be helpful but I'm going to say it anyways. It's mostly practice. The more you try it, the more easily your eye spots it out. And by practice, I don't just mean look at stuff and try to find the shapes in it. Draw it out, build stuff out of geometric shapes or go over your drawings and fill it in with geometric shapes. If you search up analytical figure drawing, it basically takes this concept and applies it to the human figure. If you really want to go in depth, a book that really helped me with the technical aspect of art was the book, How to Draw. I'll link it at the bottom.
I think a lot of technical drawing is mostly retraining the things your eyes notice as well as muscle memory. If you practice enough, you'll get there. Some people like to say drawing is a talent, but the real talent is work ethic. If you want to get better, and you work at it, you will.

Link to analytical figure drawing example:
http://theartreferences.tumblr.com/post/33190998640/analytical-figure-drawing-week-6-shoulder
Link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422224291&sr=8-2&keywords=how+to+draw

u/Halzman · 1 pointr/learnart

Well, I've gone ahead and picked up the recommended How To Draw book, since that seems to cover primarily what I'm trying to get better at (that flip through you did was perfect!).

I really enjoyed the advice you gave throughout your videos, like only committing to what you know you can do, and the risk/reward perspective. You make quite a few compelling points!

As far as topics - I've always marveled at how an artist can take a blank canvas, draw an outline, and then add details to bring them to life. I have enough technical skill to make a decent copy of an existing image, but I could never start an original concept from scratch without just creating generic stuff. Mentally I have an idea on features or style, but I'm never sure on how to incorporate them.

I guess my question would be - How do you 'design' the uniqueness to an idea? How do you figure out what kind of character to give it?

u/Tchernoi · 1 pointr/Art

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

I'd also recommend looking through the gnomon workshop for lectures about perspective, color theory, anatomy, composition, positive negative space, tangent lines, etc etc etc.

Art isn't an exact science but it's definitely close.

u/dkoreo · 1 pointr/conceptart

Honestly mate, seems like you need to broaden your minds creative library. The best way to do this is to do a lot of studies of things from life and combined them with the things you love. So if you want to design cool vehicles then you need to do studies from vehicles we have around us today. Best way to learn this is to use your perspective knowledge and draw those vehicles/buildings. Scott Robertson honestly breaks this process down the best. And if you don't already have it I suggest picking up How to Draw, by Scott Robertson. https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541794749&sr=8-1&keywords=scott+robertson He goes pretty in-depth on how to create vehicles and buildings with perspective.


Also check out Feng Zhu on YouTube. He talks about how to go about expanding your creative library. And being able to pull from it when concepting.

​

Hope this somewhat helps. Good luck with your art journey mate!

u/sixilli · 1 pointr/learnart

I would recommend How to Draw by Scott Robertson. He does lots of digital art but the book can easily be followed by using any medium of your liking. The book is filled with practical examples and knowledge. Many perspective books dive so deeply into the science they forget to show you how to use and apply it to your work. The book also comes with links to hidden videos to go with the book. Here is a video of him paging through the book. You can check out his other tutorials on that same youtube channel. His videos usually focus more on advanced subjects a bit past the basics but any skill level can learn from them.

u/my_pants_are_on_FlRE · 1 pointr/rocketbeans

http://www.amazon.de/How-Draw-Sketching-Environments-Imagination/dp/1933492732
http://www.amazon.de/How-Render-Fundamentals-Shadow-Reflectivity/dp/1933492961/

how to draw gibt einem die grundlagen wie man objekte/landschaften perspektivisch korrekt zeichnet bzw. konstruiert. how to render baut auf how to draw auf und zeigt einem wie man die linien mit farbe füllen muss. dazu gibts noch links auf seine website mit 30+ stunden videomaterial.

u/Attemptingrepairs · 1 pointr/learnart

When you said Scott Robertson's How to Draw book you meant this?

u/TMiracle · 1 pointr/leagueoflegends

Mmmm... it's hard to say really, I'm self-taught so my way of learning is most likely very inefficient. The few tips I can give you though is:
at the very beginning, just make drawing a consistent habit, draw whatever, but dedicate some time and try to draw daily. Little but consistent steps are much more powerful than ''drawing entire day once a week''.
fall in love with the process and don't care much about result, aka never compare yourself to others. Your drawings will suck, a lot, for a long time - and that's completely okay, because we all go through that. Comparing yourself to someone with years of experience will only demotimate you. This video perfectly illustrated what I mean: https://youtu.be/lRtV-ugIT0k
once you get into ha bit of drawing relatively often, you can try learning some fundamentals like anatomy/perspective. For those there are many resources online, and books.
AND PRACTICE - a lot, on paper, with pen, or wahtever you got, there's no such excuse ''I odn't have a tablet or fancy pen or whatever'', in fact most of your studies if not all, in the beginning should be on paper, before you get into digital things.

Books I recommend for a begginer:
Perspective: https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732
Anatomy: https://www.alexhays.com/loomis/ (these are free)
and this channel is absolutely amazing https://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV

When you start with basics, you will be just drawing spheres and cubes. Learning fundamentals is very different from actual illustrations - it's quite tedious and even boring, but it propels you forward fast. When it comes to drawing fun stuff tho - always question what, why, how it works and use references. Look at many other artists and question how and why they did the things they did. Once you get down to it - it becomes just pure science.

I'm not gonna go on anymore because it's quite a long post as it is, hope it helps in a way. I use photoshop, because I started with it and it's very powerful- tho it's very hard for a beginner to use, in you case I would probably start with ''paint tool sai''.

If you wanna follow me and learn more about me, you can follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/tmiracleart and the links in the stream description, as well as join my discord (link in the stream description).

u/agnosgnosia · 1 pointr/DCcomics

Not bad. The thing that jumps out to me that could be improved is the mallet. For one, the bottom dark line under the diamonds doesn't curve on the left at all. The two diamonds on the outside also look off. The left one should be more foreshortened. It just dawned on me how you could draw the construction lines to make this look better. Admittedly, this could have been done better if I had split the oval reference lines more equally, but the prinicpal is there to get you understanding how to make construction lines for the diamonds to look better. I just kind of eyeballed it.


This book, How to Draw by Scott Robertson, can give you more in depth instruction on how to draw shapes from different angles.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

u/Soliloquies87 · 1 pointr/MattePainting

I'm late to the party, but I made a cheat sheet for my boss niece last week: here's all the ressources I can think of to kick butts at matte painting.

The sites where we pay per month

Gnomon Online School
Super school of vfx in California. They have on their site a lot of tutorials from 8 to 20 hours to learn to make your own camera projections. You can either pay (expensive but worth it) for a private class with a teacher via Skype. Or you pay (cheaper) for a bank of tutorials.

private lessons
https://www.gnomon.edu/courses/online


the bank of tutorials
https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials?tags[]=matte-painting


I recommend: All the tutorials of Dylan Cole (vol 1, 2,3), Camera Projection Techniques in Maya, Matte Painting Production techniques, etc.




Plural Sight (formerly Digital Tutors)


a site that has courses on a little everything. This site is very good when you want to learn new programs. Excellent serie on the 3D which becomes more and more present in the matte painting, and some tutorials


https://app.pluralsight.com/library/


related to 3D

Quick start to modeling in Maya (volume 1,2,3)
Professional Tips for Modeling Complex Shapes


related to matte painting

Photo manipulation and Clean Plating Fundamentals
Matte Painting Basic and the Static Camera Shot


Sites where we pay per tutorial (Gumroad, etc.)



The tutorials of Anthony Eftekhari

Good DMP tutorials that show you the latest techniques and how to do it step by step.


https://gumroad.com/anthonye

The tutorials of Eytan Zana

More concept art, but the main lines apply just as well to the DMP.

https://gumroad.com/eytanzana


Free sites and tutorials


Garrett Fry's blog

He also has a Facebook group that helps each other in DMP, it is THE technical reference for matte painting. His blog is full of technical stuff for camera projections (aka moving your matte painting). A treasure of information.
https://www.gfryart.com/blog



Other


TEXTURES! (Or can we find good textures to make DMP)


CGtexture

http://www.textures.com

Flickr (Matte Painting References)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjframe/sets/72157605581901392/

Flickr (Matte Painting Resources)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dman3d2000/sets/72157629164518650/

Photobash.org (paying a card)

https://www.photobash.org/

Pictures of Jacek Pilarski

https://gumroad.com/jacekpilarski

Books (yes yes, it's a thing)

Digital Matte Painter Handbook

it's old, the drawings are ugly, the photoshop stuff in it is pure candy though. Full of stuff in DMP that I have never seen elsewhere but that is the basis of the trade. Still actual today. The matte painting of the castle in is also an excellent starting point if you start from scratch.

https://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Matte-Painting-Handbook/dp/0470922427/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523975893&sr=1-1&keywords=Digital+Matte+Painting+Handbook

How to draw and How to Render

Scott Robertson, a big shot of concept art, shows the basics of traditional drawings, perspective, etc. An essential.

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=GWB27RDDYF5E0JG7TTY0

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Render-fundamentals-shadow-reflectivity/dp/1933492961/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=K9W1RK5K9KVWMPY14EAE

Imaginative Realism and Color and Light

James Gurney is an illustrator who specializes in realistic fantasy artwork with traditional mediums, excellent cues on light and color

https://www.amazon.ca/Imaginative-Realism-Paint-Doesnt-Exist/dp/0740785508?th=1&psc=1&source=googleshopping&locale=en-CA&tag=googcana-20&ref=pd_sl_2y2j9az9y9_e

https://www.amazon.ca/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YCNYYJCTNJ4405KD1S6B

Nuke 101

We can make the projection of matte painting in Nuke or Maya. An excellent book for Nuke.

https://www.amazon.ca/Nuke-101-Professional-Compositing-Effects/dp/0321984129/ref=pd_sim_14_8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FNST5YS1F7464SZY3QZV

u/TwoToedTerror · 1 pointr/learnart

Glad I could be of help!

Watts Atelier is really amazing. It is beginner friendly - anatomy knowledge helps, but you wont be drawing the figure immediately. It will still be a good idea to learn anatomy while you continue through the program - I'll link you to some great anatomy resources.

To give you a rough breakdown of how the course works, you start by drawing simple shapes (spheres, cylinders, boxes, cones) focusing on form and value. Then you will start drawing other simple geometric forms applying the same principles. Then drawing fundamentals is finished with still life drawing. Next you move into portrait drawing fundamentals, then figure. If you are interested in painting, you can continue the course to portrait and figure painting, along with other specialized classes (landscape, drapery, composition, etc.)

On the issue of sizing, that is a problem that will solve itself naturally over time. It has to do with proportions and measuring, which is a skill that takes time and practice to get a handle on. Eventually you can visualize where everything goes and place it on the page in the right spot. But yeah, Watts Atelier will definitely help.

The difference between Watts and other free tutorials online is 1.) professionalism and structure: The course is taught by the founder of the atelier Jeff Watts, and it is structured like a true academic art class. Learning online gives you random bits of information which are helpful, but you can't contextualize them. The course is designed to take you from beginner to master. The tutorials online are fun, but don't have that structure.

2.) The teachers are world class artists. To give context, here is some of Jeff Watts work. You may not want to be a painter, but you can be confident that you are learning from a master. You can also google his drawings, they will blow you away. Also, the guy Stan Prokopenko who I recommended - and is often mentioned in this sub - was trained at the Watts Atelier by Jeff Watts.

You probably get the picture, its a great program. My experience with it has been an absolute joy. I wish I could go back in time two years when I started pursuing a career in art and taken these classes immediately. It would have saved me so much time and effort wasted trying to figure out how to grow as an artist on my own. What I do is pay for a month and watch all the videos and print out the handouts for the module (currently on portrait II), and then spend however long I need to get a good handle on it before I spend the 100$ for the next month. Also, if you have the cash to blow, you can spend extra money to get 1 on 1 coaching with teachers at the atelier.

I will note that it can get boring drawing spheres and still life all the time, so make sure you schedule time to draw stuff you love. Once you get into portrait and figure things get way more fun, but just be ready for that in the early stages.

Anyway, glad I could help at all! Feel free to PM me at any time, I have tons of resources I've hoarded over the years that can be helpful. Here are some links that might be helpful:

Here is a video of Jeff Watts drawing and answering questions, it will give you an idea of what his teaching style is like and who he is. Also the drawing is really good.

New Masters Academy is another great tool that has been huge for me. The anatomy and figure drawing courses are amazing. They aren't as structured as Watts, but can be very useful for when you have specific areas you want help for.

This book is superb for figure drawing. Also, this book is the equally amazing book on perspective. Also, a lot of books don't talk about drawing the clothed figure (which is pretty dumb considering most of the time, commercial art has to do with clothed people), which is why I also love this book. You are probably familiar with Bridgman's book, but if you don't have it - get it.

A lot of professional artists in many different industries (concept art, comics, film, animation, 3D, etc.) make gumroad tutorials for a decent price, here is a massive list of tons of these great tutorials.

If you want some inspiration while you work, I love listening to Creative Trek and Chris Oatley's Artcast. They both are mostly interviews with other professional artists and contain all sorts of wisdom and inspiration to help you out.

I have more, but I'll leave it there. I hope the best for you man! Keep up the hard work! Feel free to PM me for whatever reason.

u/I_am_godzilla · 1 pointr/DigitalPainting

Definitely classes. If you're not doing classes for whatever reason. I suggest making these three books your bible.

How to draw - Scott Robertson

Color and light

And finally

Bridgman's Drawing from life

No need to get them all at once. But these three books are chock full of lessons that you will revisit over and over as you progress in your art. Strongly recommended.

u/mortini · 1 pointr/learnart

Scott Robertson in one of his videos talks about building muscle memory for drawing straight lines and ellipsis. Once you do this, you simply 'turn the pad' to position the paper so it's wherever you want to draw.

Technical Pen and Paper does two things for you. The way it feels when you drag a pencil tip across the paper is called 'tooth.' This is feedback that your hand can feel as it will feel different as you speed up or slow down. Or different types of paper. But you can feel the pencil move across the paper.

Tablets generally don't have any tooth - or very very little. So it's difficult to build that 'muscle memory' for drawing a straight line.

The first few lessons on drawabox you could work on those at your desk without any issues. It's really about getting confidence with basics and line quality.

How to draw - By Scott Robertson is pretty good. It's really based on perspective and drawing things in perspective, though, and isn't as much designed in lessons but as in sections for different types of perspective tasks.

u/ArkitekKX5 · 1 pointr/Art

Well drawing for me started out as a coping mechanism when I was a kid and still is for me today (especially these days). I had a lot of problems with depression and anxiety as a child coupled with a fairly ignorant father that didn't recognize these things as mental problems. I was forced to try to find a way to deal with hordes of feelings and emotions that as a mere child I was incapable of understanding and drawing helped me do that. Around the time I was about 13 or so some close friends of mine started drawing and where WAAAAY better than I was, so that pushed me to start working on things like technique and different styles. I really liked Dragonball Z at that age so I started drawing pictures I printed out from the internet regularly and started drawing in an anime style and eventually began coming up with my own characters, my friends were really good at drawing in anime styles so they taught me a lot about it.

When high school rolled around (I'll say sophomore year or so) I took basic art 1&2 but I never really did too much because the course material was SO rigid that it didn't interest me. Ms. Huelett (the art teacher) felt like I had a lot of talent and took me under her wing in a big way. She knew A LOT about art and helped me learn and meld multiple styles together in order for me to create my own. She taught me a lot about anatomy and how to draw people/characters in different poses, how to properly shadow characters and apply light sources to my pieces, creating expressions and applying drama through a characters poses, she poured as much knowledge into me as she could and I couldn't be more grateful for all she taught me.

I know it isn't much (you've also been given some great advice already I see, which is fantastic) but I'll give you a few links to some books that really helped me learn more about various styles and techniques (I still have most of these books and refer to them fairly often, even now)

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954561&sr=8-9&keywords=how+to+draw

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Urban-Sketching-Location/dp/1592537251/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954800&sr=8-19&keywords=how+to+draw+graffiti

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Art-Doodle-Book-Outside/dp/1856696820/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954800&sr=8-28&keywords=how+to+draw+graffiti

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Head-Figure-Perigee-Jack/dp/0399507914/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954902&sr=8-28&keywords=how+to+draw+books

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Manga-Mark-Crilley-drawing-ebook/dp/B006WUD10S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954990&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+draw+manga

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Manga-Bodies-Anatomy/dp/4766112385/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954990&sr=8-6&keywords=how+to+draw+manga

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Cutting-Edge-Anatomy-Reference-ebook/dp/B00G8ELT2K/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1404955084&sr=8-10&keywords=how+to+draw+comics

http://www.amazon.com/Draw-Comic-Book-Action-Garbett/dp/1440308136/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1404955084&sr=8-14&keywords=how+to+draw+comics

I think that's most of the books I've got, at the very least it'll give you some ideas to practice with and all of those books together isn't too bad of a price and it's a good way to get experience in the things you want to learn (I think) if you're not able to afford the classes you were suggested.

Good god this post is long as hell and I apologize for that, I'm just trying to be as helpful as I possibly can with what I know (call it a flaw)

I'll leave you with a few pieces of advice that help me out regularly and that I feel have gotten me to the level I'm at now (though I think I'm just ok at best truthfully)

  1. Sketch whatever idea you have in your mind for something as fast as you can and just let your ideas flow through you. Don't give yourself time to say this part sucks I have to redo it, just go for it and you'll be surprised at what can come out of it.

  2. Try to take inspiration from artists you admire but don't try to copy their style. What worked for me was incorporating my inspiration with various artists and merging them with my own ideas which eventually lead to me developing my own style(s)

  3. Do your best to not look at your art as inferior to another persons artwork. Absolutely, have those people you look up to want to be like artistically and draw inspiration from, but do your best not to doubt yourself. It's YOUR artwork and YOUR ideas, the only person's opinions that matter are your own. If you're truly happy with what you've created and feel you've done the best you can then I promise SOMEONE out there WILL like your work as well, at least in my opinion.

    Sorry again for the book, I just hope I was at least a little bit helpful with the advice I was able to give and didn't come off as arrogant sounding or anything

    Best of luck and I can't wait to see what you do in the future :)

u/4FK · 1 pointr/learnart

this is a great book!!! XD

u/mcscope · 1 pointr/learnart

If you want to actually learn perspective well I recommend this book - it's the most technical treatment of the subject that I've found.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732


It is written as though you are going to be drawing complex objects like sports cars in 3 dimensions so it's very precise. Most of the explanations of perspective I've found on the internet are very 'dumbed down' and just cover the basics of vanishing points.

u/the_spookiest_ · 0 pointsr/IndustrialDesign