WARNING! There are some awful artwork on the page!
How I learned to draw
I know some of my friends out there have always asked me how do I draw so good? Or who taught me. Well, I taught myself and this is how I learned:
See at the begining of my stages I drew very ugly! 8/ I soon got into tracing, (yes, I know, tracing is bad) it helped me out a lot. It gave me control of my hand and penciling. Where the lines should curve, where lines should go and so on. Take drawing a leg for instants. I've seen some people draw them in straight lines and the make the feet stick out like what Mary Poppin's does.EXAMPLE That's not how you are supposed to draw legs and feet. Legs have specific curves and feet are in weird positions. Really you shouldn't try to take on feet, hands, and fingures till you're at least good at drawing a body. Drawing a face isn't as difficult as fingures and feet, but it's a start after you get the body mastered. You should always draw eyes the same length apart(if you draw and eye, put a space between the eyes the same length as the eye). Eyes are pretty difficult as well, I should know, since you have to have the eyes looking exactly alike. Give some practice into that as well. Noses are pretty simple, but don't try and make the lines that go up and connect to the brow, try and just draw the nose, with little lines, that make it look like a nose, but not in so much detail. EXAMPLE Lips are pretty much the easiest, at least, that's what I think, try looking at your own lips and try from there. Lips also have their own little lines that go with them. It's not a requirement to put them there, but you should try using it if you're wanting to do close to realism. Another thing, necks. They should be wide enough so that it seems that it is connecting behind the ear.EXAMPLE Drawing a face to the side you have to draw a neck in a certain way, you have to definately give room to the chin, so it doesn't look like they don't have a chin, and that the neck should connect behind the ear.EXAMPLE Ears are something else, look at your own ear and see how an ear is shaped or look at other peoples ears. If you don't want to take on the challenge of ears yet you could just hide it under hair. ^_^* Now, for fingures, say you are kinda good at drawing fingures, but just can't get them to look right, well, here's a way to do it. You can draw them holding something so that it would hide their fingures or have something in front of it, like smoke or magical power thingy.EXAMPLE Toes, I'm still not that good at it, I can sometimes get it, but sometimes not. Just look at drawings with people with bare feet, or look at someone's feet in different positions and try and draw them. Arms are just like the legs are, just curve differently. Arms can be in different positions and you can noticed where the lines should go.EXAMPLE If you want to draw something, but you have to have the arm in a position, look for pictures with the arm close to, or that position, or you can have someone hold their arm in that position. Legs are just the same, you have to define the leg's muscles if they are supposed to be muscular, if they're not, then that doesn't mean that they have extremely skinny legs. People walk don't they, so their legs still have muscles.EXAMPLE Another thing is shoulders. Be sure to have shoulders slant just a little, doen't make them go straight out, that's not how shoulders are. EXAMPLE
These are all things that you should keep in mind and work on. Now, as I was saying about the tracing... You should trace drawings done by proffesionals or a friend you know that is really good. I know tracing isn't a good thing, but it does teach you how to curve lines where they belong. How eyes are shaped, lips and so on. If you are wanting to draw a woman, practice tracing women, same thing with men and old people. It would really help you out if you get black and white drawings or at least something that is easy to trace. Continuing on, you should also trace people standing in different positions to help you out when, like say you get an idea of a pose in your head and you want it to be in a certain position, tracing drawings that are in different positions will help you out.
I'm not considering that you do tracing for a living, just trace to help you get control and become better at drawing. When you have gotten pretty good at that you can probably just think of something at the top of your head and try and draw it. You can compare it to one of your drawings that you did before tracing and you could probably see a difference. Moving to the next stage you can probably take different drawings, not any of the drawings you were tracing, but take one that you haven't drawen and try hand copying it. It's almost the same as tracing, but you are looking at the drawing and drawing it with out the aid of lines that you see through your paper. This would probably help you out with drawing it. It doesn't give you control like tracing, but it excersised your hand control and so on. Just try it and you'll know what I mean.
Another way that you can do both tracing and hand copying is by taking a drawing, tracing the outer lines and hand copy the rest. To test your skills out you can try taking maybe a sillouette drawing and try filling it in with how you think the person looks, and where lines should go.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is hair. I get so mad when people draw hair in straight lines, like the person just got shocked by electricity or something. Hair is usually in waves. WAVES people! Waves! Unless you want the person to have straight hair, but even straight hair curves in waves! How is does this is that the hair can rest, say on your shoulder, it will curve. Look at different kinds of drawings and you should know what I mean, and how to define that the hair is straight. You can also look at you own hair. Don't put it into so much detail yet, unless you feel you are ready. How I started to draw hair was by making lots and lots of lines. You can tell by looking at one of my old drawings that will be shown at the bottom of this page.
You can try my technique of starting at tracing and working your way up to hand copying then try and draw a free hand, with no help of any other picture UNLESS you are trying to make the drawing that person. If you are wanting to draw free hand and supposed to be like say Aya from Parasite Eve. Use pictures of her to make her eyes, nose, lips and hair style. You have to draw your own way, but it's supposed to look like Aya not somebody else.
Keep practicing to draw your own way, using others drawings to help you and soon you should notice how you have improved. I'm not saying that you will become good really fast, but you can't just know something. You gradually get better and better. It took me years to get as good as I am and watch, years from now, I will be even better! ^_^*
Don't forget to take art classes, it could really help you out with shading and drawing from real life and other things. You shouldn't always keep to one kind of art, such as comic art. You should learn to draw realism too. If you want to take on the career of being a comic artist you HAVE to know how to draw realism. Draw a plant, your cat, dog, whatever. I say you should start with a plant since it stays still. Then move on to a sleeping cat or dog, since they stay still longer than humans do. It really annoys me when a friend of mine asks me to draw them and I tell them: "If you'll stay still longer than 2 seconds." and they say, "I will, I will." NOPE! They don't, before I'm even able to make a line, they get up and move. When I start to actually draw them, THEY MOVE. So I quit trying to draw a friend or person that doesn't stay still long enough for me to actually draw them. You should practice to get good at drawing first before you start drawing people. When you get good at drawing, you should (maybe) notice how much faster it is for you to draw something.
If you have any questions, feel free to Email me.
Past Drawings
If you have even thought for one minute that I was just plain good from the start. You are sooo wrong. Just take a look at these and you will see how much I have improved. I have kept all my drawings from the past to remind me and to show friends, that are not so good at drawing at the moment, how horrible at drawing I used to be. Really I wasn't that bad at drawing from the start. I mainly got help from tracing and hand copying, like I said above. Anyways, I have kept drawings from when I was still in elementary @_@ mainly from 4th and 5th grade. I will have only one drawing from my past times of drawing saying the year I had drawen it. Some of my drawings have CAS as the signature and there are two meanings for that signature 1) it was drawing somewhere in my elementary years to when I started Middle School 2) I don't know the year it was drawen. I also did a lot of drawing in the year 96, so it was hard for me to choose one.
Alright, alright, before you even look at the first drawing, I have to say something... I will permit you to laugh at these, for even I have done so. ^_^*
CAS-- Here is a drawing I remember doing in the 5th grade, me and my friend Christina became friends in the 5th grade and I started drawing this character I call Katina as her.
1993-- Here's a rare one, I know I had done this in elementary and I actually put the year on there. YAY!
1994-- This one I had drawen myself, I just got the idea of drawing her from She Hulk. I called her Cally Hulk! AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (whips tears from her eyes and continues to laugh.)
1995-- I know this one came from the 6th grade. Me and my friends started this club called CBC (C=Charlotte B=Brittany C=Charlene) It's kinda hard to define what they are doing in the picture, but it was practically the only '95 picture I could find. I wasn't any good at shading or anything at the time, but it was a start.
1996-- As you can tell, I've gotten ptetty good since '93! ^_^*
1997-- This one came from when I was in the 9th grade, I have practiced and practiced at defining lines on clothes and you should noticed it's pretty good.
1998-- This drawing I drew when I started to become an anime fanatic! ^_^* Looking at this drawing I would say that this is how you should more likely draw hair, not like I used too.
1999-- You may of seen this on my art page somewhere. I thought I'd place it here, for those of you to use it. Trace around it and just make up what her face looks like, how her scales are. One thing too, for her scales I say you should only put scales where you think the shading to be.
Hand Copy Drawings
Warblade-- Done in 1995.
Tomoe-- Done in 1995.
Phoenix-- Done in 1995.
Double Impact-- I don't know what year this was drawen. I had gotten it from a comic, if you had only see the comic I gotten it from it is much smaller than the actual drawing.
Frazetta-- Done in 1995. All the drawings on here were completely seperate, I just took the pictures I like and mixed them all together.
