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Drawing Resources


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13 replies to this topic

#1
Maki Izumii

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Okay so recently, I've been looking into changing my art style and havn't had all that much luck with it. I'm trying to learn how to draw/paint realistic objects and people, but I keep defaulting back to anime/manga style. To help get me inspired, I've found a bunch of really good resources on the internet and I thought it'd be cool if we had a thread where we shared tips, tutorials, and resources in general for drawing! I know there'd be quite a few people on this forum who DO want to improve their art, and this place has always been a community based around cretivity and imagination, so yeah, post links to tutorials you've found, tips you've learned, and references you like, as well as just some awesome artists in general!

CGTalk - CGTalk is a great place to go to look for tips on improving your selected art - I especially like the Anatomy and Figurative drawing forum, as there's always something new to find in there and a bunch of good reference photos to help you improve your figurative drawing.

Manga Revolution - has a great community and a wealth of tutorials written by its users. Also features member galleries and forums - a definite fave for any manga artist!

Portrait Artist.org - a wealth of information for portrait drawing - a must for the serious artist!

Anatomy Atlases - Absolute GODSEND of a website that has detailed references of the human body. They're good to copy from for practise purposes, and to gain an understanding on how the human body works (essential knowledge for a character artist!)

PolyKarbon - More tutorials, mainly aimed at the beginning manga/cartoon artist

Character Designs - Huge archive of resource photos for artists - great place to go for reference pictures

Art Tutorials Wiki - An erm.. wiki of art tutorials! Havn't had the chance to check it out yet, but I'm willing to bet there's a few golden nuggets of knowledge in there!

WetCanvas - General Drawing tutorials that show you how to render things with various media (pencil, charcoal, etc). Great place to start for beginners!

Realistic Hair Tutorial - Very nice tutorial

DeviantART - Cultivating your Drawing Skills - Amongst the hundreds of decent tutorials on DA, this article stands out as it gives you a nice idea on where to start when teaching yourself to draw realistically (which I suggest everyone who wants to get good at drawing does). It's a good motivational read - also, that user has quite a few good anatomy tutorials in her deviantART gallery.

Monologues - Portrait Tutorial Another good portrait tutorial I found.

And finally, some tips from me!
-KEEP PRACTISING! Art skills don't magically appear overnight
-No matter how good you get, you can always improve and there is always someone better than you
-Make a conscious effort to improve yourself EVERY TIME YOU DRAW. If you don't push yourself, you'll never get better, you know?
-Try to draw for at least half an hour per day - more if you can
-Don't give up! If you can't get something looking the way you want it after lots of tweaking, move on and go onto the next piece.
-Experiment with different media to make sure you don't get bored - some nice medias to work with are: digital/cg art, pixel art, acrylic paint, pencil, pen, fine-liner, charcoal, watercolour, or even mix it up and do a nice mixed media piece - the possibilities are endless!
-Don't spend heaps of money when you're starting off - if you're buying paints, buy two or three colours and do a monotone piece to get used to the techniques, perhaps?

Okay, time to add your stuff! *hungry for resrouces*

#2
Zoe

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I have a few tips. :3

- If you can't get a pose or anatomy to look right, don't be afraid to use photograph reference. Just remember to give credit to the photograph's artist!
- Even if you think you've gotten all of the teeny tiny little details on your latest drawing of an existing character (assuming that's what you draw, of course!), look up a reference picture before you ink it or call it "finished". You might have missed something and it's always good to double-check.
- Don't be afraid to try new styles of drawing!
- Don't be afraid to try new mediums! You never know what you'll end up liking. I for one use pencils and markers a lot, but I'm starting to get into digital colouring, but one thing that I learnt I can't abide using is paint. XD
- Got artist's block? I find that listening to music or watching something on TV or a movie can inspire me. Try different things until you find what inspires you!

I can't think of any more right now. XD; I may add some more later.

#3
KiloTango

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Another tip: Before you ink, it may be a good idea to look at your drawing back to front, either with a mirror, through the back of the page by shining a light through it, or scanning and flipping it. You might see things that were unbalanced or out of shape that you missed before.

Also, if you're at all photoshop savvy and are going to be computer colouring, instead of inking over your sketch, scan it in, print it out in a very pale colour (I use very light blue) and ink THAT. That way you don't risk ruining a great sketch if the inks don't work, and you can drop the colours out using channels leaving only the black behind. (Also I happen to think black inks over coloured pencils look great anyway just as an object.) This is really good if you're trying a new inking technique or just want to practice.

Oh and to watercolour/paint users: If you have a little money to spend, first, buy yourself a really GOOD smallish brush. You might only need the one but it makes ALL the difference. Different brushes are better for different kinds of paint, and the one you use for say acrylics will be different to a good watercolour brush. Also TAKE CARE OF YOU BRUSHES. NEVER leave them sitting head down in the water, when you are finished wash them and while still damp gently shape them back to a point with your fingers.

(For the record I use a set of Petis Gris brushes I got for half price when they were discontinued, and still spent quite a bit on them. But to start, just buy one really good general purpose brush and take care of it. Petis Gris are squirrel hair and very very soft but keep a great point while holding a lot of paint, so if you can find something similar, get it. My favourite came with my watercolours and is wonderful.)

If you do a lot of fine lines in your watercolour (or want to), buy a couple of 'rigger' brushes as well. These are the thin but really really long ones. These are a bit odd to get used to but much better than a tiny brush for doing lines as they have a fine point but hold plenty of paint so you don't have to stop halfway through the line or overfill your brush. It's fine for these to be synthetic.

Also, if you can find some, try 'block' watercolour paper. Block paper is pre-stretched and gummed almost all the way around, so it stays flat and when you are finished and it is dry you cut off the sheet to get to the next page. It is so useful if you don't have the space to stretch stuff yourself. (And if you're not stretching your paper, it's soooo much nicer and easier to paint if you do.)

#4
KiloTango

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Okay, so I've spent most of a month knee deep in photoshop, and have discovered a tip for all you cg people out there:

LEARN THE HOTKEYS.

There's a crazy amount of shortcuts, so learning all of them is a bit unlikely, but learning a few will help. A good way is to pick a few and try to learn them in a drawing.

'But KT, why would I want to use keyboard shortcuts?'

Well, because the less time spent mousing over to toolbars and option windows, the more time you can spend on actual drawing, and once you get used to it, it makes things faster, easier and more intuitive.

(I'm in hotkey love mode because I just found out one I'd been wishing was there for ages)

Here's some that I find especially useful. These are the mac ones, the PC ones are similar but command and option are different. (apple and alt on a mac, control and alt on a pc usually, I think. Most things that are with command on a mac are with control on a PC.)

A general thing is that many tools are effected by shift, control, option/alt and command. For example, holding shift when selecting will add things to your selection.


SOME TOOLS:
Hold down shift with any of these to cycle through where there is more than one tool under a button, like brush and pencil:

B- brush/pencil
E- eraser
W- magic wand
G- fill/gradient fill
Q- Quickmask
V- Move
Space bar- switches to the hand tool. Hold it down and you can drag to scroll.
Option (alt)- When using a brush or fill, press and hold to switch to the eyedropper tool.

GENERAL USEFUL:
Comand+Option with + or -: Zoom in or out without changing the size of your window.

] : increase tool size

[ : reduce tool size

Command+D: deselect

Shift+Command+D: reselect what you just had.

D: Set your colours to pure black and pure white.

X: swap your foreground and background colours.

Option+Shift+M: If you have a painting tool selected, switches to multiply mode. If you don't, switches your layer to multiply. You can do this for other modes as well using different letters, like S for screen and N for normal. (This is the one I just discovered and am soooo glad for)

Command+H: Hides those little 'marching ants' outlines selections get around them, or brings them back if you've hidden them.


These are just a few, if any other photoshop users have shortcuts they abuse, post them too. :blink:

#5
Mitsuu

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http://www.natomic.c...ted/marks/mpat/

That's a pretty nice place for pixel art.

#6
KiloTango

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Another tip for photoshop users I've just picked up.

If you do anything like cel shading, LEARN HOW TO USE THE PATH TOOL. (You get it via the pen tool, when you select that there's a row of boxes in it's options, iirc it defaults to shape, but select path.)

You can use paths to make lovely long straight or smoothly curved lines. Once you've got your line where you want, select it, select a painting tool, then hit enter. Photoshop will then draw alone that line in whatever tool you have selected. It takes a bit of getting used to, especially if you're not familiar with vectors, but it is very, very useful and worth knowing about.

#7
Maki Izumii

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I.. love.. vectors =D I don't use 'em much anymore though.

#8
KiloTango

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More awesome I just found: CHECK OUT THE ADOBE EXCHANGE.

I just found these:


High res plain screen tone patterns
http://www.adobe.com...thorid=73918497

High res scans of patterned deleter screentones as brushes
http://www.adobe.com...p;extid=1041485

#9
TRiPPY

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Oh man! THANKYOU this is exactly what I've been looking for since my comicworks died on my old PC! I prefer using photoshop anyway and ive been stuck trying to learn Mangastudio (and failing). Hurrrrrraaaaahhhhh for useful brushes, now i can move my arse with my comics!

#10
KiloTango

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I've just tried them out and they work brilliantly. For the brush ones, The best way is to lasso out the vague area you want (like cutting out a bit of real tone really), place the brush (remember you can rotate them too), then use a layer mask to paint it in properly where you need them. If you want a fade, using a soft brush set to dissolve looks closer to what really happens when you scrape/rub away real tone. For the pattern based ones, I used them as layer styles then painted them in where I needed them.

Layering them up helps too.

Oh, and they're designed for 300dpi though the pattern based ones can totally go bigger.

Oh, and a tip for resizing for web: Rather than going straight to what you need and getting a tonne of moire, try repeatedly shrinking by 75% until you get the size you want. It seems to work better.

#11
TRiPPY

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ARGH BEST PEN TUTORIAL EVER-
http://www.mangarevolution.com/tutorial_di...tutorial_id=418

For YEARS i have NEVER understood that stupid pen tool thing in photoshop which irritated the crap out of me because I'd love to do digital inking, smooth lines and straight lines. I stumbled upon above tutorial while looking for background tutorials!

So many people have tried to make me understand how to draw simple lines with this thing but this tutorial ACTUALY MADE ME UNDERSTAND.


OH GOD I FEEL ENLIGHTENED.

*so happy brain explodes*

ALSO-
http://www.mangarevo...tutorial_id=194

Turns out I'd been using photoshop for years without realising a certain brush option menu EXISTED :| Now i can paint properly!

#12
KiloTango

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Told you I'd do this eventually. KT's guide to making speedlines on photoshop.

http://katycoope.blo...hop-part-1.html
http://katycoope.blo...hop-part-2.html

#13
KiloTango

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Also, this is both educational and entertaining:

101 Photoshop Tips in 5 minutes

#14
viperxmns

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The new Reference forum at Conceptart.org- http://conceptart.or...isplay.php?f=30




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