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Drawing Tips

10/7/2018

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The reason I'm making this post is because I sincerely believe many people who don't call themselves artists would enjoy drawing if they (and others) allowed themselves to do so. 
​I have a few thoughts for anyone who has contemplated drawing more for any purpose.

Purposes of Drawing

  • make fan art of stories we enjoy
  • make a living/as a career
  • capture a place, person or experience
  • pass time in random situations
  • make yourself and others laugh or smile
  • express emotions and feelings
  • describe an idea visually (diagrams etc)
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​At the comic workshop I went to over the summer, one of the instructors talked about how she coordinates her plots for her YA fiction. For each chapter, she will do a small drawing of the most important scene of the chapter. Though she isn't a trained artist, her thumbnails help her organize her book with visual anchors. I was so delighted with this idea and it stuck with me --drawing at any level has such powerful uses! 

Attitude

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- If you draw things you enjoy, improvement will come more naturally.
- Make yourself laugh! Don't be too hard on yourself.
- Draw every day if it makes you happy, but don't force yourself if it doesn't! 
​We all remember a teacher who would preface their lectures a MILLION times by saying "Remember, I'm not an artist, okay??" before drawing a stick figure on the board. This preface can be put before many other activities that a non-professional decides to participate in. "I'm not a dancer, okay? Don't judge me."
There's an inherent need to give context to a lack of skill, lest us be judged for enjoying the experience. One of the first steps towards engaging in a fun hobby or starting the road to making a hobby a profession is resisting the urge to judge your own work so harshly that you decide not to participate in it further. 
In other words, "I'm not an artist" can often result in a person giving up on drawing, when being good or bad was never a deciding factor in enjoying the activity. This is why children can draw carefree and confidently! They can hold up a scribbled crayon page and confidently declare, "This is a spaceship!" It doesn't matter whether or not the spaceship is in perspective or accurately proportioned. What MATTERS is that they had fun and created something they enjoyed making. 

Materials

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I generally don't invest in expensive materials for sketching. It feels intimidating, especially since my sketchbooks are for spitting out ideas rather than making finished drawings. I usually buy a cheap hardbound sketchbook from Michaels and work through that. I remember Rebecca Sugar once said she uses a binder full of blank paper as a sketchbook so she could easily tear out drawings she disliked without feeling bad about it. Letting your paper be disposable is an easy way to lower pressure on yourself! I also really enjoy drawing on post-its for this same reason.
As for actual drawing materials, all I can do is pass on the pens and pencils that I love to use. I also highly recommend checking out Jetpens; they have very detailed reviews of different drawing and writing supplies that weigh the pros and cons of each. ​
I'm happy to share which tools I use because they affect my enjoyment while creating!  Working with tools you know other artists enjoy can be an encouraging starting point. Pen and program settings can also affect how natural drawing feels when working digitally. 
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Pens will teach you to confidently make choices.
  • My favorite ballpoint gel pen is the Uniball Signo DX. It draws with a consistent, thin line and doesn't require pressing hard to make the line consistent.
  • My favorite felt-tip pen is the Micron Pen in 03 or 05. With these pens you get a consistent line weight, but I find myself pressing more deliberately. The great thing about these pens is they don't smudge easily and you can color with marker or watercolors on top of them. 
  • I don't use brush pens very often but I remember liking Kuretake brush pens. 
  • My favorite markers for coloring or building values are Copic Markers. They're pretty pricey, but a set of warm or cool grey in varying amounts of darkness can give you powerful control over value. They blend very well and don't leave strong streak lines from coloring large areas. 
  • My favorite digital pen is Kyle T Webster's Rough Inker series. I usually use Rough Inker 2. For inking digitally, the Lazy Nezumi plugin will help with line smoothing and stabilization, as well as strong perspective tools. 
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​Pencils will teach you to build up slowly ​towards an idea.
  • ​I love drawing with Prismacolor colored pencils because they're soft and don't smudge like graphite. You can color large areas fairly quickly, along with building up values from a very light sketch to finished, earthy lineart.
  • When I do need to draw with something eraseable, I use the Uni Alpha Gel Kuru Toga because I like the even control of line size. In general, I don't erase often because I can start light with colored pencils and make proportional changes as I go.
  • I use a big grey gummy eraser for erasing. 
  • My favorite sketching brush for Photoshop is Kyle T Webster's Animator Pencil. If you have a ton of brushes save in Photoshop, investing a few bucks in the BrushBox plugin will save you so much time with its search bar and customizable folders.  ​
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My final tip would be to take recommendations from artists you like, try some different materials, and find out what you enjoy the most! I generally like smoother sketch paper, thinner consistent line pens and soft colored pencils, but your preference may be different! 

Content

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What should you draw???? WHATEVER YOU WANT! 
  • Characters you like!
  • The view from your window! 
  • 10/10 Dogs and Cats!
  • Anatomy! Faces! Hands!
  • Swirling lines and shapes! 
  • ​Yourself! 
Some cool drawing prompt resources:
  • Drawing is Magic by John Hendrix
  • Yearly Inktober prompts
  • What to Draw? Prompt App
  • Easy, Cute and Cool Things to Draw

Sketching

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The purpose of a sketch is to plan a drawing or explore an idea. When I draw a head, I draw a circle first. This marks where the head is going to be as well as its size. Then I draw a horizontal line wrapped around it. That's the eyeline. Then a vertical line - that's the center of the face for the nose and mouth.
The point is, I very rarely start just drawing high-level detail without plotting out the space where that detail will live. Give yourself guides and try sketching light! Sketching is planning and it'll make your drawings look more proportionate.

Drawing Size

Something I didn't consider until later in my education was that the size of a drawing can drastically affect how it looks. The brush size you use and the size of the subject you draw is another aspect that many artists find a comfortable preference in, so it's definitely something worth exploring! 
DRAWING SMALL
  • ​Encourages simplification
  • Makes proportions clearer to see
  • ​Muscle memory comes from wrist/fingers
​The smaller you draw, the less room you have for details. This is the reason why many people do tiny "thumbnail" studies of compositions or poses before committing to a full-size illustration or drawing. It's also the reason I enjoy drawing on post-its! Working at such small scale encourages me to simplify subjects and make a clear-reading image. ​
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DRAWING BIG
  • Encourages adding detail
  • Makes proportions more challenging
  • Muscle memory comes from shoulder/wrist
The large you draw, the more room you have for detail. Think of someone who paints a huge mural on the side of a building. Much of the time, they've done the mural at a smaller scale traditionally or digitally, and will "grid out" the design on the building to make sure the proportions are correct. This is because it's harder to see the whole drawing at once when the scale is bigger. 
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Skilled Drawing Requires...

Muscle Memory (Physical Repetition)
  • printing and tracing over pre-existing drawings you like
  • practicing drawing a subject multiple times
Visual Reference (Stored Information)
  • using an outside image to inform the subject you're drawing
  • referring to your memory to draw something you can visualize
If you want to test the power of muscle memory, try drawing or writing with your non-dominant hand. Even skilled artists will have a harder time making the same drawing! 
Building both of these requires PRACTICE! If you're interested in improving how you draw, I think both of these aspects weight in equally to success in drafting what you imagine. 

Reference

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Something I didn't internalize for a long time is that all drawing comes from reference.
​ALL drawing! I'm mostly talking about visual reference, but reference can be emotional too. It's the same reason people say to "write about what you know." The important missing second part to this sentiment is "If you don't know it, research it so you do!" 
The Purpose of Reference:
1. Find something that exists in reality
2. Study it to understand the  structure/proportion/color/form
3. Incorporate it into you own work with enough of your original elementst to separate it from a copy.
Examples of Using Reference:
- My friend looks at photos of houses/ buildings so she can put them in her surreal world. 
- I scroll through outfit posts on Tokyo Fashion to find an outfit for a character I'm drawing. 
- My boyfriend searches pictures of hands at different angles to understand a challenging pose.
The purpose of all of this is to say that ALL artists, even the greats, used reference and studies to make their work. Being able to draw things from memory is the result of repetitive, built-up reference of certain subjects in the brain. If I asked you to draw a face, you know from experience that a face has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, and that the elements of a face are somewhat symmetrical. You know that eyes are the highest, followed by the nose and the mouth. Part of growing as an artist is creating a growing visual library that is stored in your brain and kept fresh through use. 
Another way to think about a reference is to compare it to an academic paper. Most academic papers require sources to be referenced, whether or not actual quotes are used inline. The development of a strong concept in any form is aided by the use of reference. 
Cool: Using a reference, incorporating elements of it into your original work in a way that separates it from the reference. 
Uncool: Using reference with no context changes. This is what I'd call an uncredited study rather than a reference pull. 

​An example of great reference: Norman Rockwell's photographs he used for his paintings. 
A very cool tutorial guide on creatively using photo reference. 

Studies

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From Wikipedia: "A study is a drawing, sketch or painting done in preparation for a finished piece, or as visual notes. Studies are used to understand the problems involved in rendering subjects and to plan elements to be used in finished works, such as light, color, form, perspective and composition." 
I really love the idea of a study as "visual notes." Whenever I feel like I want to add new elements to the way I draw, I go into my giant folder of artwork I've saved from Twitter. I find a piece of art I like, or a part of a drawing, and I try to copy it to understand how it was drawn. "Hmm, I really like how this person drew this hand." It's like learning a new yoga pose or vocabulary word. If you like the usage of an element, you want to test it out in an example scenario before you can incorporate it into your own work. 
Studies don't have to be copied from Renaissance artists or master painters! Though those are also good starting places to find visual reference. If you find art you like online, try copying the shape of it, or a certain aspect of it. See how they build/structure/draw eyes/whatever it is! Copying and studies is a great way to learn how to draw appeal. Print out art you like and draw along with it or use tracing paper! Build muscle memory.
There are great free drawing resources online - Pinterest, Twitter, and Gumroad are all great places for finding example artwork and drafting tips. Grizz and Norm's Tuesday Tips are an excellent series on how to draw different body parts/poses/appeal. ​
An example of a cool study: Alex Kolano's study of Gauguin's work.
Cool: Doing a study of a painting, and calling it a study, and posting it online with credit to the artist you're studying.
Uncool: Doing a study of the painting, calling it your own, and not crediting the original artist at all if you post it online. ​​

VISUAL REFERENCE - Try it yourself! 

If you want to see the power of visual reference firsthand, try this little exercise.​
1. Draw an animal from memory. No, really, I dare you. Here, I'll try an anteater. They have a long snout, right? Scribble it out. ​

2. Pull up a picture or two of that animal. Re-draw your animal based on what you see. How has it changed? 

​​3. Turn the two previous drawings face down and close your reference images. Try drawing your animal again. What did you do different? I'll bet it's improved!
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Bonus: Try drawing that anteater from memory a few days later! 
This exercise is based on a post by Jack Stroud on Twitter. ​

Conclusion

I hope some of you found the information in this post helpful or encouraging. I always get excited when people who don't consider themselves artists try their hand at drawing or creating in any way. I'd love to continue to encourage people to draw if they enjoy it, and I think knowing more about the relationship between art and reference was an eye-opening equalizer for me. 

​Onwards, and happy drawing! 
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