5 ms·

Where do I start?

chefandy 3y ago
Learning to draw? If you have access to LinkedIn Learning (often available through public libraries if you don't have a premium account) all of the fundamental art courses there are absolutely fantastic. I'm an art school guy and while there's obviously a ton of value in getting personalized critique and tailored assignments from professors, the breadth, quality, and format of the LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) material-- from drawing, to watercolor work, to graphic design, to character design, to photography-- is truly exceptional. If you're savvy, you can probably get ahold of the course books for the self-paced "Famous Artists School" courses from the 50s. They later became the "Art Instruction Schools" courses that had the commercials with that dorky guy saying "Do you like to draw, or paint, or maybe just sketch and doodle?" It was created by Norman Rockwell and Albert Dorne specifically to guide people to teach themselves how to draw. You obviously can't get the mail-in critique, but if you have the discipline to do all of the exercises, you'll still do well.
criddell 3y ago
I've seen https://drawabox.com/ https://drawabox.com/ recommended before. I have it bookmarked but haven't started it yet.
wccrawford 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWi1pCR3peg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWi1pCR3peg NerdForge recently helped her boyfriend learn to draw from scratch, and she lists all the stuff she used to help him get there, and you can watch him go through parts of them as well.
Snigelmannen 3y ago
Here is what I did: I started with drawabox.com, which is basically a very rigid but free of cost boot camp style of starting from just drawing a line on a piece of paper. Simultaneously I read Lynda Barries' book on comic making and her book "Syllabus", and adopted her way of doing quick visual journaling every day. I read the Loomis book "Fun with a pencil" which is a book aimed at kids for drawing cartoony little things progressing to more realistic anatomy. This lead me to Loomis' books "Figure drawing for all its worth" and "Successful drawing". (the latter being a book on incorporating perspective in drawing). From there I have used various resources. A breakthrough for me was Rebecca Tillman Youngs online course on portrait drawing (which is basically teaching the Loomis method of drawing the head in a slow and methodical way) in that it allowed me to draw faces that I genuinely was excited about. From there resources that have been useful to me are Marco Bucci's online class "Drawing for advanced beginners", the books "Figure drawing: design and invention", "Anatomy for artists, drawing form and pose", "the Vilppu manual", ""Anatomy for sculptors", and "Rey's anatomy" (not Grey's anatomy). The best book on perspective I have found is Atteberry's "The complete guide to perspective". I have read a ton of other books, but these are the keepers. In five months I have gone through three 100 page sketchbooks and I have had fun and reached flow state pretty consistently the whole time through. The first of the sketchbooks was basically just drawabox exercises up until the 250 boxes challenge. At this point I transitioned away from drawabox as I was having enough fundamentals to have fun and make progress on drawings I cared about. All these resources and books may seem overwhelming and you definitely don't need to go through all of this material. The key for learning drawing is to figure out what is exciting for you to draw and get over that first hump to get to where you can draw something you see have potential even if it is not great. That's when the momentum builds and it becomes self propelling. Drawing is basically a language for communicating 3d form on a 2d surface, and like learning Spanish the key is just to get enough of a vocabulary that you can get started conversing. The rest follows once you can talk a little.

Where do I start?

Learning to draw? If you have access to LinkedIn Learning (often available through public libraries if you don't have a premium account) all of the fundamental art courses there are absolutely fantastic. I'm an art school guy and while there's obviously a ton of value in getting personalized critique and tailored assignments from professors, the breadth, quality, and format of the LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) material-- from drawing, to watercolor work, to graphic design, to character design, to photography-- is truly exceptional. If you're savvy, you can probably get ahold of the course books for the self-paced "Famous Artists School" courses from the 50s. They later became the "Art Instruction Schools" courses that had the commercials with that dorky guy saying "Do you like to draw, or paint, or maybe just sketch and doodle?" It was created by Norman Rockwell and Albert Dorne specifically to guide people to teach themselves how to draw. You obviously can't get the mail-in critique, but if you have the discipline to do all of the exercises, you'll still do well.

criddell 3y ago

I've seen https://drawabox.com/ https://drawabox.com/ recommended before. I have it bookmarked but haven't started it yet.

wccrawford 3y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWi1pCR3peg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWi1pCR3peg NerdForge recently helped her boyfriend learn to draw from scratch, and she lists all the stuff she used to help him get there, and you can watch him go through parts of them as well.

Snigelmannen 3y ago

Here is what I did: I started with drawabox.com, which is basically a very rigid but free of cost boot camp style of starting from just drawing a line on a piece of paper. Simultaneously I read Lynda Barries' book on comic making and her book "Syllabus", and adopted her way of doing quick visual journaling every day. I read the Loomis book "Fun with a pencil" which is a book aimed at kids for drawing cartoony little things progressing to more realistic anatomy. This lead me to Loomis' books "Figure drawing for all its worth" and "Successful drawing". (the latter being a book on incorporating perspective in drawing). From there I have used various resources. A breakthrough for me was Rebecca Tillman Youngs online course on portrait drawing (which is basically teaching the Loomis method of drawing the head in a slow and methodical way) in that it allowed me to draw faces that I genuinely was excited about. From there resources that have been useful to me are Marco Bucci's online class "Drawing for advanced beginners", the books "Figure drawing: design and invention", "Anatomy for artists, drawing form and pose", "the Vilppu manual", ""Anatomy for sculptors", and "Rey's anatomy" (not Grey's anatomy). The best book on perspective I have found is Atteberry's "The complete guide to perspective". I have read a ton of other books, but these are the keepers. In five months I have gone through three 100 page sketchbooks and I have had fun and reached flow state pretty consistently the whole time through. The first of the sketchbooks was basically just drawabox exercises up until the 250 boxes challenge. At this point I transitioned away from drawabox as I was having enough fundamentals to have fun and make progress on drawings I cared about. All these resources and books may seem overwhelming and you definitely don't need to go through all of this material. The key for learning drawing is to figure out what is exciting for you to draw and get over that first hump to get to where you can draw something you see have potential even if it is not great. That's when the momentum builds and it becomes self propelling. Drawing is basically a language for communicating 3d form on a 2d surface, and like learning Spanish the key is just to get enough of a vocabulary that you can get started conversing. The rest follows once you can talk a little.