Eka's Portal

I'm new to drawing, both digital and in general. Any comments or advice on improving?

It is very hard to give feedback when you are new to drawing. It looks nice for a beginner, but that is not the thing that is important (If you ask me) I have been into drawing my whole life.

My advice would be to look up tutorials. One thing begginers often do it to try to make advanced pictures, focusing on shadows, hairstrands, reflections and things like that (You will get to that, but it is kind of over doing it if you are new to drawing) Like. You don't want to do professional racing when you take your first driving license lessons Anothet things beginners tends to do it that, Instead of doing a messy sketch and playing around, they star on doing" perfect detailed eyes" and the thing you have left is 2 very detailed eyes with no feelings on how to do the more basic thing. The form of the head and how the eyes will match. Many times people who just got into drawing try to find their style the first thing they do. Very often anime or Disney looking styles. I think you will find your style when your start to advance. But also, there is NOTHING wrong with copying other styles My advance would be not to ONLY try ONE style. Try MANY different styles. Anime, DIsney, Picasso, an artist you like, Harsh, soft...You name it. Don't be afraid to try things out.

Here is a rather nice tutorial and how to start with the basic. Good luck on your art journey =^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewMksAbgdBI

I found those "How to draw Manga" books very helpful back in the day. But... it's not the early 2000s anymore and we have the internet! So, you're best bet is to look up some tutorials. Youtube is good for things in general, but I must admit I haven't used it for drawing tutorials. So, I can't attest to how helpful it may be. However, I did find a site I think is really good for beginners and beyond:
https://design.tutsplus.com/series/huma ... s--cms-724

Another site(that I make frequent use of) is line-of-action. It randomly spits out life-drawing model photos. You're supposed to use the site to warm up and capture the essence of the model's pose. Only spend like, 1 to 2 minutes on each photo. There's a time you can set on the site.
https://line-of-action.com/practice-too ... e-drawing#
(the site is down at the moment, but I think it's temporary)

Practice your fundamentals and you will grow as an artist. As Mecho said, it is tough to give feedback to someone just starting out. However, I can offer one really important piece of advice: don't compare yourself to others. It took me a long time to get over that hurdle and it held me back immensely. Only strive to do better than what you've done before. Never value your art based on how close you get to someone else's work. You will only defeat yourself.

I would like to echo and emphasise the statement "don't stick to just drawing anime", I made the mistake of doing that back in the day and my art suffered horribly for it. It's essential to understand things like proportion and anaotmy so your drawings don't come out all wonky.

I've been watching this guy Ethan Becker for a while and he has an amazing approach towards improving pretty quickly that I wish I had picked up on sooner. It's tracing digitally but not completely, you trace just enough to get the idea of what you want then take off and do what you want with the pose from there
https://www.youtube.com/user/ToBelgium

I'm learning to draw too, and I was inspired by the tutorial of WitchKing00 to make faces from!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toiZCmE ... e=youtu.be )

The body tutorial from him is due any day now, and it's going to be a longer process through the coming time to have more. Clean and simple, this is an excellent way to get started!

I've also been trying my hand at bodies a few times, using tutorials like this one from mikeymegamega:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W7ksFl ... u4&index=1)

This is all great stuff to practice with!

Mecho wrote:It is very hard to give feedback when you are new to drawing. It looks nice for a beginner, but that is not the thing that is important (If you ask me) I have been into drawing my whole life.

My advice would be to look up tutorials. One thing begginers often do it to try to make advanced pictures, focusing on shadows, hairstrands, reflections and things like that (You will get to that, but it is kind of over doing it if you are new to drawing) Like. You don't want to do professional racing when you take your first driving license lessons Anothet things beginners tends to do it that, Instead of doing a messy sketch and playing around, they star on doing" perfect detailed eyes" and the thing you have left is 2 very detailed eyes with no feelings on how to do the more basic thing. The form of the head and how the eyes will match. Many times people who just got into drawing try to find their style the first thing they do. Very often anime or Disney looking styles. I think you will find your style when your start to advance. But also, there is NOTHING wrong with copying other styles My advance would be not to ONLY try ONE style. Try MANY different styles. Anime, DIsney, Picasso, an artist you like, Harsh, soft...You name it. Don't be afraid to try things out.

Here is a rather nice tutorial and how to start with the basic. Good luck on your art journey =^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewMksAbgdBI

Thanks for the tutorial, and yeah I can agree on focusing too much on all of the details. That's something I have learn to worry about later while I need to focus on learning the basics first.

dragonjerky wrote:I found those "How to draw Manga" books very helpful back in the day. But... it's not the early 2000s anymore and we have the internet! So, you're best bet is to look up some tutorials. Youtube is good for things in general, but I must admit I haven't used it for drawing tutorials. So, I can't attest to how helpful it may be. However, I did find a site I think is really good for beginners and beyond:
https://design.tutsplus.com/series/huma ... s--cms-724

Another site(that I make frequent use of) is line-of-action. It randomly spits out life-drawing model photos. You're supposed to use the site to warm up and capture the essence of the model's pose. Only spend like, 1 to 2 minutes on each photo. There's a time you can set on the site.
https://line-of-action.com/practice-too ... e-drawing#
(the site is down at the moment, but I think it's temporary)

Practice your fundamentals and you will grow as an artist. As Mecho said, it is tough to give feedback to someone just starting out. However, I can offer one really important piece of advice: don't compare yourself to others. It took me a long time to get over that hurdle and it held me back immensely. Only strive to do better than what you've done before. Never value your art based on how close you get to someone else's work. You will only defeat yourself.

Thanks for the advice and the resources, I'll try to focus on improving my own art over time as well as finding my style.

Dekkard2 wrote:I would like to echo and emphasise the statement "don't stick to just drawing anime", I made the mistake of doing that back in the day and my art suffered horribly for it. It's essential to understand things like proportion and anaotmy so your drawings don't come out all wonky.

I've been watching this guy Ethan Becker for a while and he has an amazing approach towards improving pretty quickly that I wish I had picked up on sooner. It's tracing digitally but not completely, you trace just enough to get the idea of what you want then take off and do what you want with the pose from there
https://www.youtube.com/user/ToBelgium

Yeah, I feel like the eyes are kinda static and lifeless, so I'll try to learn more anatomy to draw in a way that is more natural. Also thanks for the suggestions.

CapturePoint wrote:I'm learning to draw too, and I was inspired by the tutorial of WitchKing00 to make faces from!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toiZCmE ... e=youtu.be )

The body tutorial from him is due any day now, and it's going to be a longer process through the coming time to have more. Clean and simple, this is an excellent way to get started!

I've also been trying my hand at bodies a few times, using tutorials like this one from mikeymegamega:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W7ksFl ... u4&index=1)

This is all great stuff to practice with!

Thanks, I'll look into those

The best advice I'm able to give is draw from life. Do figure drawings. Trace them if you have to. Repeatedly! As you put down each line, focus on what part of the body and muscles you're drawing. With time and practice you will naturally recognize these forms. Same with facial expressions. A little exercise you can do is drawing 10 distinctly different expressions using only eyes. Once you feel that's easy, do it with mouths. It's a truth I've had a hard time accepting but drawing from realism makes exaggerating and stylizing way easier. Every improvement I've made has come from observing real life bodies and objects.

Well, when I first started, my stuff looked about the same quality as your image. But as that one guy stated, it's tough to rate when there's so little to see. On top of that, there're important other factors too, like:

*What are you using to draw, a tablet or mouse?
*What's the program you're using?
*Have you drawn before doing digital, and if so, how long?

Far as improving stuff in general, like some others stated above me, trace stuff. Trace and trace and trace, maybe pieces of artwork or from artists you like to make it less of a chore. And as you do it, take note of the shapes, placements, and details you're going over, like how wide you're making a neck, where the buttocks connects to the thighs/pelvis, arm creases and elbows, or where eyes are in relation to everything else on the face. Obviously don't upload traced artwork now, but if you have others who know their stuff about art, and you trust them, show it to them and get their input. You're gonna be needing refs for awhile, but don't get discouraged; we all start from somewhere. Of course, there's a big difference between using a ref, and just straight up copying artwork.

Get basic stuff down first, and then move up to something like muscle anatomy. You'll learn really fast that bodies have general rules with proportions, and the better you understand that the better you'll get at playing and toying with them; look at the Incredible Hulk's proportions if you want a great example of exaggeration. Keep it simple, then move forward when you're comfortable. Remember, art should be a hobby; moment it feels like it's too much, dial it back.

Learn how layers work too, and NEVER be afraid of using a lot if it gets things looking right. Fill tool is also your friend, and why we use multiple layers as well.

Oh and if you're worried about lifeless eyes, there's a few solutions for that. Eyebrow expressions, and eye shine like you see in anime. I like to layer the eye shine as the top layer, above all the linework since it's easy to make a white circle. Experiment, see what works! And I hope my 2 cents from a budding, still-amateurish artist was useful for you.

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It is much better than anything I could paint. What app did you use? GIMP? Photoshop? Paint?