Design Bob-omb: March 2014

A response to a discourage beginning artist:

You sound like me when i started drawing. Drawing and erasing, trying to get the perfect line. Always unsatisfied, always burned out. Never could think of what to draw, id get frustrated and quit. Then i saw conceptart.org.

id view pages and pages of rough ass sketches in sketchbooks. Pages and pages. And goddamn there was progress. Every piece was progress. Sometimes just little improvements, sometimes waves. But it was the sheer quantity pulling it all. Then it dawned on me. Its that quote that rings true. Milt Kahl's “Everyone has 10,000 bad drawings in them. Or something to that effect.

So now i set little impossible goals. I wanna do 1000 portraits and 1000 landscapes. When im lost for what to draw, i think of cloud watching as a kid. I throw down shapes and try to pull something out of it. If that gets tiresome, i have my smart phone, ill google animals or cartoons and recreate them. Maybe exaggerating features.

But i think the most important part is like the already mentioned reply. Draw/sketch and dont stress over it. Dont give any shits. Take a look at your work after you feel done with it, look at its flaws and where you want to improve, but also look at whats badass, look at whats awesome about it! And keep on drawing.

A response to running out of inspiration:

A fun game to play when I run out of ideas is the alphabet game. I start with the letter A and I draw something out of it. and i continue through the alphabet just trying to make stuff out of shapes of letters. I feel like this game plays on a few levels. Not only does it up your line control and rendering ability, it forces your mind to pull out figures from basically nothing. here's a quick sketch

Advice/Critique for an artist just starting out?

Take the time to go through the sidebar on the right ( http://www.reddit.com/r/learnart/ ). I recommend http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/ and go through fun with a pencil. Draw every single image in the PDF and read what Loomis is trying to convey. If you have drawn every goddamn image in that PDF your drawing skills will advance by leaps and bounds. This is a promise. The best program I can recommend you is a graphite pencil and some blank paper. For when one advances traditionally, all other art mediums follow. I say this for it was true for me, and I bet it will be true for others.

I start drawing and then get stuck at the faces. Never had any success. Help and tips please?

There is no such thing as "natural artistic talent." Odd as it may sound I think you should learn how to draw the skull. Keep drawing the skull until you can place the skull down from any angel without a reference. Once you have mastered the skull, move on to the muscle masses which sit on top of the skull. Understand the masses which make up the face and you will under stand how light hits it and how the form is made. Although it may sound odd again I think you should do more still life drawings. Draw eggs or sphere like objects with a single light source. I recommend these exercises because they have helped me in the past.

Hello /r/learnart! I want to learn to draw digital art, but need some answers/hints/suggestions/recommendations:

It's rough in the beginning. I struggled to draw more than 30 mins a day. I didn't know what to draw and I quickly bored of it. Then I started plowing through most of these recommended links on the sidebar. What's cool is I started drawing for longer periods of time. 30 minutes turned into an hour. an hour turned into 2 hours. Now I draw till my hand/wrist aches. I also noticed my digital art cleaned up as well. So as my traditional drawing improved, digital followed as well.

Tried figure drawing for the first time today; I don't know how to improve. Do I simply need a better understanding of anatomy?

I say speed exercises would do you very well. It'll improve your line control and muscle memory. Try to draw the same figures with time constraints perhaps 15 second quick gesture drawings, then 30 seconds, then 60. I say dump like 10 hours into this activity and you will see a significant jump in mechanical skills.

You will get discouraged, but you must realize its a short gesture drawing. They are meant to be sloppy.

Take notice of your lines. Make them smooth and flowing. Try not to scratch the paper, but focus on the muscles involved and movement.

Also, remember to breath. =] 10 hours of this will yield stunning results. And i bet you by the 5 hour mark, your eyes and your muscles will start harmonizing. Im excited for you friend!