Drawing (Vague, innit?)

[Hat Salesman]

I want everyone to tell me how to start a picture, how and when to put in details, whether to have a dark or positive mood, or even have one at all.

I'm looking for help, because quite frankly, my art sucks.

[destructin]

Put basic shapes to things first like...

First a face, with a nose, mouth eyes, etc, and then add details.

I don't know.. this stuff should be pretty obvious really.

Attachments:

[The Omnipresence]

Jan 10, 2010 2:14:01 GMT -5 destructin said:

Put basic shapes to things first like...

First a face, with a nose, mouth eyes, etc, and then add details.

I don't know.. this stuff should be pretty obvious really.

This old Vietnamese guy told me that you should do the eyes, nose and mouth then do the face and then add the details.

He also told me that shading was about 80% of drawing.

Then he called me a GI and told me he was going to get me.

[charlie]

well omni, i start with eyes, face, mouth, detail.

[Gront]

Jan 10, 2010 2:42:01 GMT -5 The Omnipresence said:

He also told me that shading was about 80% of drawing.

Well, that really depends on your style. While this fact is probably true of my pencil drawings, many users here have some excellent artwork where shading comes off as a second thought (or is entirely absent). The real trick is to find your own way of doing things and go from there.

As far as the progression goes, start off with your background. This is not necessarily 100% necessary, but the only people I know who do otherwise are crazy good with visualization, so I'd start with the basics. Go for basic forms first, then add details (windows on buildings, hair on people, etc. Then work your way into the foreground. Basically, you want to go from back to front, "rendering" (adding detail) as you complete a layer.

As for dark or positive moods, this comes back to style. Some artists prefer one or the other, whereas others choose based on the picture, and still others just draw whatever the hell they want.

If you need more specific aid, please tell us where you need it.

[rabiesisme]

Jan 11, 2010 14:36:37 GMT -5 Gront said:

Jan 10, 2010 2:42:01 GMT -5 The Omnipresence said:

He also told me that shading was about 80% of drawing.

Well, that really depends on your style. While this fact is probably true of my pencil drawings, many users here have some excellent artwork where shading comes off as a second thought (or is entirely absent). The real trick is to find your own way of doing things and go from there.

As far as the progression goes, start off with your background. This is not necessarily 100% necessary, but the only people I know who do otherwise are crazy good with visualization, so I'd start with the basics. Go for basic forms first, then add details (windows on buildings, hair on people, etc. Then work your way into the foreground. Basically, you want to go from back to front, "rendering" (adding detail) as you complete a layer.

As for dark or positive moods, this comes back to style. Some artists prefer one or the other, whereas others choose based on the picture, and still others just draw whatever the hell they want.

If you need more specific aid, please tell us where you need it.

I don't think you have to be in any kind of mood to do anything. It might affect the quality, but this "this mood is used to draw this type of thing" talk just comes off as a whole lotta bullshit, frankly. I have a (not quite finished) Rocking Rabies fullbody drawing sitting in my files right now that I started like 3 months ago, and I sure as hell didn't keept a constant mood throughout whatever progress I made on it over the course of several days.

For content: With characters and stuff like that, I usually contruct some sort of crash testdummy-looking thing out of lines to get the proportions and stuff right, and then use the brush to draw it again, because I zoom in a lot and it's easy to lose track of how long the line you're drawing actually is at 100% zoom.

[Hat Salesman]

I don't mean it as in "you have to be in that mood" but more as of how you want people that just saw it to feel. I could be happy and make a depressing picture, possibly with the hopes of mindfuck.

So, in short, background first, followed by...