A How-To to Get You Started

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scienceguy8
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A How-To to Get You Started

Post by scienceguy8 »

Drawing for Non-Majors: using analog and digital tools

Haven't tried it myself, however, so I don't know if it will work.

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Jetrel
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Jetrel »

:eng: Addendums:
Drawing Supplies
- Black archival ink markers with a variety of line widths. Look for Sakura Pigma Micron Pens, Staedler Pigment Liners, or Mars Professional Precision Pens. You could also use technical pens like Rapidographs, but I find the marker tips allow for more variation.
- pencils
- archival paper
- tracing paper
- light table or light box (optional)
- ph balanced artists tape
Ignore the above. You need:
1] a good mechanical pencil which grips the lead solidly so it doesn't slide around funny when you draw. I got mine at Target; a pentel e-tech for about $3.
2] a kneaded eraser; and possibly a vinyl/art-gum eraser. You will probably have to go to a proper "art store" to get these, but they're still dirt cheap (less than $5). The reason you want these is that those "pink block" erasers that are unfortunately standard, have a habit of grinding lead into the paper and leaving permanent dark smudges. You're gonna be doing a lot of erasing.
3] some copier/printer paper. Get whatever your local school/office inkjet has - I suggest borrowing it right from the printer's paper tray, since you're putting to as educational of a use as printing out a school paper, and you're hardly using any as well. As a beginner, "quality of paper" is immaterial; it's not going to make any difference in the quality of your work. The only time it would make a difference is when you are actually aware of it making a difference. E.g. when you've drawn on several kinds of paper, and you find yourself wishing you had that kind you were using last week; at that point, bother to find out what it was, and get some. But don't bother until then.
Why archival? Always be prepared to make amazing work that you'll want around forever.
Don't bother until you've got some practice. The better you are, the more often this happens, but the converse is also true.
've found that some people, mainly non-artists, think that using tools like light tables or projectors is somehow less legitimate. In fact, most artists use these tools to create their work and have for centuries. From Vermeer to Warhol, artists have used a variety of optical devices as drawing aids. There's no reason why you shouldn't.
There's a key thing to keep in mind, though. Copying, or "studying from the masters," is an extremely good way to learn what they did, but "just trying to duplicate what they marked onto the page" is NOT going to teach you anything. Throughout the process of imitating them, you much be continually be analyzing WHY they did what they did. Why is this line here? Why is this section of the arm at this lighting level? Et cetera. Don't imitate their work - reverse engineer their work.


The rest of the tutorial is a decent tutorial on "how to trace a drawing and input it into a computer", but this is only useful for so long. Tracing is a good practice if you want to "lock all variables" and make the only relevant thing be your actual pencil technique by itself, but keep in mind this doesn't need to be done very often; or more to the point, there are a ton of other extremely important things you should be doing for other practice. So go ahead and goof around with it to start out with, but do get onto, like ... attempting to do real drawings.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Jetrel »

scienceguy8 wrote:Haven't tried it myself, however, so I don't know if it will work.
It will work to create something that looks "like you traced something". It only won't look like that if you actually know how to draw. You can't fake actually knowing how to draw, and this isn't going to let you fake that. You can't fake it without knowing significant parts of it, and at that point, it's not faking it anymore, because you actually do know large parts of it.

It will let you "make images", but ... just be forewarned of the above.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

For someone who actually wants to learn to draw, I strongly suggest against starting with tracing. If you want to use an existing image as a model, grid-copying will be much more useful for learning.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by kitty »

and i would strongly suggest against grid copying, too... it will teach you to work exact - but nothing more.
i strongly believe that drawing isn't much of a technical capability but about looking. you have to learn to see the right way. to see the things like they really appear and not like you assume they are. and tracing and grids will do that for you, they give you exact results but you need to learn to do it yourself. there are serveral methods of measuring, the use of negative space and so on which are harder to master of course, but will reward you much more, too.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

I agree that grid-copying can be harmful as well, if you use it the wrong way. Don't copy one square at a time, but draw your subject in logical and natural sections (head, torso, eyes, etc.) and only use the grid to keep you from straying too far off proportionwise. Also, don't use too dense a grid, 3x3 shoud do most of the time, 4x4 should be the maximum.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Shadow »

My two cents. A good artist can work with everything. Screw that expensive equippment.
Tracing has by no means helped anyone it just kills time and wastes paper.
I speak out of experience. 1 lousy try is more worth than 50 traces.
On the other side I concur with Jetryl look how others do it. I have a collection of other peoples work and actual the main reason why I have a DA account. :mrgreen:
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Jetrel »

Tracing offers practice on one thing; drawing smooth/clean/etc lines. This is a useful skill, and in fact all "real artists" end up doing a lot of tracing if they ever ink their drawings. But yeah - it won't teach you anything about the other 99% of drawing. And that other 99% is ... rather important.

:hmm: I suggest, if studying from a master, or a photograph, imitating by nothing but just looking at it - no grids, no tracing. This may be something you have to work up to, and grids/measurements can help you if your sense of proportion is really bad, but try and grow out of any "aids" as soon as you can. Studying this way has a -lot- to teach you, and it's a good step to practice before moving up to actual "drawing from life", because you don't have to deal with the extremely difficult problem of projecting a 3D object onto your 2D canvas. Being able to do that is another necessary skill, but it's something to tackle -after- you can actually draw something that's already 2D (3d things are rarely viewed from the same angle, and it's really hard for beginners to judge).
Shadow wrote:My two cents. A good artist can work with everything. Screw that expensive equippment.
:eng: A really good artist can take advantage of better tools, but a beginning artist isn't going to be able to tell the difference. Good art tools are kinda like good woodworking tools. They're also kinda like major league sports equipment. If you give Tiger Woods a really good golf club, as opposed that that crappy one you bought on a garage sale, it will actually make a big difference. But if you give me (who has no skill at golf) an awesome club, I wouldn't get any better use out of it. "Fancy art equipment" works basically the same way, IMO.
kitty wrote:You have to learn to see the right way. to see the things like they really appear and not like you assume they are.
Absolutely. This is one of the key illustration skills - first, realizing that the visual memory we have in our heads is far from perfect (even though it usually feels like it's perfect), and learning both how to sense when it's off, and how to correct it.

A great way to work on this is to draw something from life without looking at it during the drawing; perhaps studying it for a while, and then stepping out of the room and trying to draw it - and then comparing where you screwed up, and what misconceptions you had. It can be very difficult, and being able to do a good job with something that you are looking at is a prerequisite. Advanced practice, I guess. (Trying to draw something with no reference, and then looking up a reference, is another form of this practice.)
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Thrawn »

Jetryl wrote:
kitty wrote:You have to learn to see the right way. to see the things like they really appear and not like you assume they are.
Absolutely. This is one of the key illustration skills - first, realizing that the visual memory we have in our heads is far from perfect (even though it usually feels like it's perfect), and learning both how to sense when it's off, and how to correct it.

A great way to work on this is to draw something from life without looking at it during the drawing; perhaps studying it for a while, and then stepping out of the room and trying to draw it - and then comparing where you screwed up, and what misconceptions you had. It can be very difficult, and being able to do a good job with something that you are looking at is a prerequisite. Advanced practice, I guess. (Trying to draw something with no reference, and then looking up a reference, is another form of this practice.)
I just have to second this. Whenever people ask me for art advice/ stuff like that, it's the first thing I tell them.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

A great way to work on this is to draw something from life without looking at it during the drawing; perhaps studying it for a while, and then stepping out of the room and trying to draw it - and then comparing where you screwed up, and what misconceptions you had.
There's also a useful practice (especially when drawing a human model) where you do it the other way around, you don't look at the paper at all when you'r drawing, but you keep your eyes on the model. Obviously, the picture isn't going to come out right, but the point is to practice observing and the eye-to-hand pathway.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by scienceguy8 »

Well, that's the last time I post a how-to in the art section. I'll just leave the art to the experts for the time being.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by kitty »

please - don't be offended!
i found the result of your post quite valuable - a very interesting discussion!
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by Shadow »

scienceguy8 wrote:Well, that's the last time I post a how-to in the art section. I'll just leave the art to the experts for the time being.
Hey still a interesting read.
The trouble is everyone has an opinion. It just shows that everyone must find his own way. On the other site some signpost on the way are alway nice. They mustn't be exact though some show shortcuts others not.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by irrevenant »

scienceguy8 wrote:Well, that's the last time I post a how-to in the art section. I'll just leave the art to the experts for the time being.
Heck no! Even if it wasn't a great tutorial (and I'll leave it to others to decide that) look at all the useful advice from Jetryl et. al. that posting it triggered!

If you hadn't posted the tutorial then both you and we would still be in the dark about the drawbacks of that approach.
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Re: A How-To to Get You Started

Post by dontano »

I think that you could give it a try the same. Said from an only-paper-artist like me that never experienced pixel-art for good, you might have a chance to surpass the so-called artists, wouldn't ya think? Never surrender, never retreat.
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