Drawing / Sketching / Digital Painting

I'll have to check out the Poser Pro when there's a sale (and check if my laptop can even work with it). We'll see how dedicated I am in the long term, though.

That app looks cool.

Its $10 in case you didn't notice.
I brought it up because learning anatomy is tough with clothing on.
And that reference pic is awesome but there are a lot of things working against you: the lighting and the matte black is obscuring a lot of form.

edit: pulled the trigger... nm, stay away for now. It has potential but all the joints are rotate only. I thought it would be translate and rotate which makes posing so much easier but it's not. Hopefully they add it at some point.

Ah, will do then.

Realistically I should be doing what they do in art school: drawing nudes from still life. Problem is, and it could be immaturity or insecurity or whatever, but that doesn't sit comfortably with me.

I gotta get good at drawing folds in clothes as well so regardless, I'm improving somehow.

ccesarano wrote:

Ah, will do then.

Realistically I should be doing what they do in art school: drawing nudes from still life. Problem is, and it could be immaturity or insecurity or whatever, but that doesn't sit comfortably with me.

I gotta get good at drawing folds in clothes as well so regardless, I'm improving somehow.

I had some apprehension at first regarding nude figure drawing. I found a class in my area, and manged to get over my discomfort. It takes a few sessions, but it's really nothing like going to a strip club or anything like that.

I don't know if all classes work like that, but for one thing the pose changes regularly (and very quickly), so you really have to focus on the drawing and think of the nude person in front of you as something to draw, and not as a naked person (which can be somewhat dehumanizing, now that I think about it).

Also, most of the models that were in the class (the teacher tries to alternate between man and woman) did not have the kind of bodies you would expect to find in a strip club or a porn magazine. They were the kind of people you see everyday. Despite the fact that the person is nude, there is really nothing sexual about the whole experience.

ccesarano wrote:

Ah, will do then.

Realistically I should be doing what they do in art school: drawing nudes from still life. Problem is, and it could be immaturity or insecurity or whatever, but that doesn't sit comfortably with me.

I gotta get good at drawing folds in clothes as well so regardless, I'm improving somehow.

Check out Croqius Cafe on youtube. Good source of drawing nude from still life without the need to be in a room with a model! (Although, seriously, you get over any real world discomfort pretty quick after a few drawing sessions)

I am looking into another hobby to eventually ignore and thought pixel/sprite art would be fun to do for three hours one time. Hitting the search engine, I came across three that seemed promising.

Anyone have experience with these or other purpose-built tools? I'm entertaining the fantasy that I'll use this to work on some 2D games with my son, and so when I'm disappointing my son and myself in the future I want to know I tried the best tool for the job that didn't set me back very much money. I know I can use GIMP but I already have that somewhere and so that's a too-rational idea.

Thanks!

I have not heard of the others but Piskel has been recommended to me by my HTML instructor.

I have been using affinity designer which is a $50 (goes on sale for $25 if you catch it) illustrator clone. Its really good. It is not a pixel art or animation tool but they also make a photoshop clone called affinity photo that is supposed to be great as well.

I've ended up with a galaxy book, I think i'll try something like working through previous inktober prompts. what are the desirable/useful win 10 art apps?
do any of them work with cortana ? (ie partial or full voice commands

Krita usually comes highly recommended. I tried it for something for which it’s not designed—type—and wasn’t impressed, but I think I used it did it’s intended purpose it would’ve been good.

doany particular youtube/etc users/streams come to mind to help learn the very basics of art? I'm willing to pay a bit if the content is good enough to warrant it

One I'd recommend is Alphonso Dunn. He's focused on drawing, pen and ink and watercolour and he does great breakdowns of the basics.

He's got a specific "drawing fundementals" playlist that's a good starting point.

doany particular youtube/etc users/streams come to mind to help learn the very basics of art? I'm willing to pay a bit if the content is good enough to warrant it

I highly recommend using online to supplement art training but taking a sketching class at your local community college to get the basics. There really is no substitute for being in a class room with other art students and watching everyone work with real utensils on large newsprint.

So my counselor challenged me to try something new the other day, after we realized a bad habit I have of quitting things as soon as I find out that they won't come easily to me. I've always liked drawing, but I'm terrible at it. I have zero natural talent. So, in an effort for me to both learn that not being good immediately at something is not a reason to stop, and to devote thirty minutes of each day to something that's not for anyone but myself, I'm supposed to spend thirty minutes a day practicing drawing.

Any tips for where to get started? I have an iPad, but I figured just scribbling on paper might be the best way to get going.

trichy wrote:

So my counselor challenged me to try something new the other day, after we realized a bad habit I have of quitting things as soon as I find out that they won't come easily to me. I've always liked drawing, but I'm terrible at it. I have zero natural talent. So, in an effort for me to both learn that not being good immediately at something is not a reason to stop, and to devote thirty minutes of each day to something that's not for anyone but myself, I'm supposed to spend thirty minutes a day practicing drawing.

Any tips for where to get started? I have an iPad, but I figured just scribbling on paper might be the best way to get going.

I get rusty. I get rusty and work super hard to get back in shape... and then I quit. It's like "Yeah, still got it. Awesome. Gotta go!"

I haven't been brave enough to go back to paper, but I really do think that drawing with pen and paper can help you gain confidence in your lines. YMMV.

I'm sorry I don't have more info for you, just wanted to chime in. I've taken some online courses just to see if they could motivate me when I'm not feeling motivated. They did not work, as lovely as some of them are.

I think my favorite courses are from this guy, because they follow a good structure: https://www.ctrlpaint.com/

trichy wrote:

So my counselor challenged me to try something new the other day, after we realized a bad habit I have of quitting things as soon as I find out that they won't come easily to me. I've always liked drawing, but I'm terrible at it. I have zero natural talent. So, in an effort for me to both learn that not being good immediately at something is not a reason to stop, and to devote thirty minutes of each day to something that's not for anyone but myself, I'm supposed to spend thirty minutes a day practicing drawing.

Any tips for where to get started? I have an iPad, but I figured just scribbling on paper might be the best way to get going.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain really helped me. Try drawing something freehand by copying from a photograph/picture, then turn the reference picture upside down and try drawing it again. Your brain has ideas of, for example, what an eye looks like, and you'll tend to draw that idealized image of an eye, instead of drawing what you're actually seeing. Tricks like that from the book help you get out of your head and draw what's actually there.

I've carried a small notebook and pen with me when I've been drawing regularly. Just something that fits in my pocket. It's amazing how many 5-minute drawings you can get in a day when you do that.

I will echo what the two previous posts said.
"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" teaches to you see and build relationships between things that you see so that drawing becomes more of a puzzle that you refine until you are happy with the results.
One perfect example for this is negative space drawing in addition to the mentioned upside down drawing.

And regarding GB: I have never done 5 minute drawing outside of an art class setting but there is no reason not too. Practice makes perfect and the time limit will force you to not judge what you draw because you quickly realize that it is a waste of time that could be spent drawing. You will quickly start to surprise yourself.

I also like Bridgman "Constructive Anatomy" (IIRC) because if you can draw a 3D cube on paper, you can stack them together to make skulls, ribcages, and more.

I'm an engineer by education, but a life long creator and lover of all things learning and experimenting. My latest foray has been working on a year long art project that has been an absolute passion project for me. I couldn't be happier with the amazing way it's turned out so far and if you want to help contribute to the home stretch, head on over to the link above!

I've been using Asesprite quite a bit lately, with a Wacom Intuos Draw tablet. I like the performance of the tablet, but the writing area is small. I figure it's time to upgrade to a slightly larger tablet. Ideally, I'd like to stay under $100, but if it makes sense to go higher, I might be able to do so.

Any thoughts here on the Huion H610 or recommendations on a different drawing tablet?

On a related note, I am still floored that the latest Wacom tablets have 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity! I remember gushing about 1024. (must have been way back in the day, heh)

Well, I'm supposed to show my stuff to people. So rather than expose myself to the tender mercies of Facebook and whatnot, I'll let you fine people let me know what I can work on. I can't do hands, and I'm still learning proportions. But, yeah.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/upgyTsQ.jpg)

Not bad for a complete beginner!

This isn't necessary per se, (if you're having fun with what you're doing then feel free to ignore!) but what i would maybe suggest is that you try to focus on a more realistic rather than stylistic approach to begin with, and maybe draw from life if you get the chance. Once you have a good grasp of proportions realistically it becomes MUCH easier then to exaggerate and develop a style. (I say that as someone who still struggles with getting anatomy and proportions correct myself!)

Drawing from life... Would photos work for that? I don't have a lot of available models willing to sit for my unique take on them.

photos are ok if you can't get a proper model. However you lose a lot of depth and lenses can distort things a little so it's not a 100% perfect substitution.

There's also Croquis Cafe on youtube (nudity, so nsfw) which is really useful, since it sets up each video as timed sketching exercises, and if you feel like that goes too fast you can always pause the video. They have a bunch of different body types as well, which is super useful.

Thanks! I've been told by several people that doing twenty minutes of gesture drawing every few days with figure models will help me a lot. I'm not entirely sure that I'm doing those gesture drawings correctly, or if I even fully understand what gesture drawings are.

pretty much just quickly sketching basic lines and shapes to capture the movement and proportions without getting caught up on adding details. The videos above are good for that, because they start with one or two minute exercises, switching poses between each one, so you don't have time to focus on anything other than the basics.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/nRd92Ai.jpg)

The position of the eyes is super off. I'm having trouble positioning and scaling eyes from different angles.

EDIT: Woof. High resolution phones are not the friend of those just starting out...

Way to go trichy!
One artist trick is to measure with the tip of your pencil. Or if you aren't using a pencil, use the width of your thumb. It will help with proportions a lot. Just hold it up in front of you and use it to measure and compare the facial features.
For instance, when you are looking at the model, you can say that the total head hieght is around 5 thumbs high and the closest eye is then measured at 3 and a half thumbs high and 1 thumb to the right of the other eye.

Also don't forget that people may seem symmetrical but in fact are asymmetrical, if only slightly. Then you factor in fore shortening...
In other words don't beat yourself up too much. I know it is hard to not be our own worst critic. But that is quite a turn around for someone "who had no natural ability to draw".

^^^