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Is there something you just can't seem to get right, no matter how many times you draw it or look at references?

For me, it's how the shoulder attaches to the torso. Yeah, okay, when it's hanging straight down, it's not so bad. But at any other angle, especially reaching up to the sky, it's hard for me. That, and the human body in profile. I mean, really, we almost never see people in pure profile, and that's a good thing, because even the reference drawings (and PHOTOS!) look stupid.

Hands down, hands are the hardest thing for me to draw. No idea why.

I've always felt like hair is something I'm particularly bad at drawing.

Bowielee said:

Hands down, hands are the hardest thing for me to draw. No idea why.

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Ditto. If I could draw, I'd probably have had stuff published long ago. And a webcomic.

Patience. I learn skills pretty quickly overall, but after those first glorious couple of weeks, improvement slows down and I get frustrated.


Hands "down?" Umm.......

--Patrick

In one of my art classes last semester, we had a class period dedicated to hands and feet and it was a hellish day for me. I did a chalk pastel of two hands up to the sun and the background looks all great and the right hand turned out better than I expected, but the left was just horrible.

You know, people generally recommend drawing from life, but I also found it quite helpful to study drawings of hands and feet. Not that I'm any great shakes at drawing extremities, but you should have seen how horribly I drew feet until I watched someone draw an example for me; all of a sudden things just clicked.

Hands are hard. I think most artists can agree there. The worst part is you can't just get close like you can with some body parts, and you can't put in as much detail as you think you see in real life.

Cars. My dad could draw them very well, but I think it skipped a generation.

Fingers are weird to draw. I tend to make them too long or weird proportioned. I also struggle to draw anything solid and man-made: metal, plastic, anything with hard straight solid edges. It's difficult to get the proper symmetry and design that these objects tend to have. I draw a lot of DnD characters, so this usually presents itself in weird looking armor or weaponry.

I cube up hands when I'm roughing drawings out. It can take a good amount of time, but you get better proportions.

I find that one of the things people fail at with hands is that they want to separate the fingers too much. They make garden rakes, but in reality, those things overlap quite a bit.

I think most people flub hands because they aren't thinking in fractals.


Fingers branch. The middle two fingers sit higher than the rest. A fist acts a lot like a solid cube (see any 3D game for evidence). Thumb and pinky are about the same length (though they attach at different heights). And even knowing all these details doesn't help me draw 'em well.

--Patrick

My problem is actually finishing things....I start lots of things, but get distracted so easily that I rarely finish. In fact I haven't truly completed something in...years. Thats so sad.

LittleKagsin said:

My problem is actually finishing things....I start lots of things, but get distracted so easily that I rarely finish. In fact I haven't truly completed something in...years. Thats so sad.

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Welcome to the club.

--Patrick

Black people.

I was trying out caricature art a few weeks ago off of friends' photos, and discovered I have a difficult time rendering teeth in my drawings. A lot of people seem to give big toothy grins, and I just can't seem to make them look right (even by caricature standards)

Female faces and figures. I always end up making the faces look all wrong, the figures look too out of proportion I just feel rediculous. It's also hard as hell for me to make eyes that AREN'T cliche Japanse Moe eyes. I want to make my own style but that image is locked into my brain.

I got one- symmetry. I can not, for the life of me, make two sides the same. It doesn't matter if it is drawn or carved, I have to do one half an then the other by duplicating the first half or it will look like a blind baboon drew/sculpted it.

Yoshimickster said:

Female faces and figures. I always end up making the faces look all wrong, the figures look too out of proportion I just feel rediculous. It's also hard as hell for me to make eyes that AREN'T cliche Japanse Moe eyes. I want to make my own style but that image is locked into my brain.

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There's your problem. 'my own style'. You can't go into this thinking about making a style for yourself. You should go into it thinking 'I'm going to buy this book on how to draw a realistic figure and get really good at that'. After you can draw something realistically, that's when you start trying 'styles'.

I'm still learning myself. My art work swing wildly between good and bad...but I try not to think about styles any more.

Yoshimickster said:

Female faces and figures. I always end up making the faces look all wrong, the figures look too out of proportion I just feel rediculous. It's also hard as hell for me to make eyes that AREN'T cliche Japanse Moe eyes. I want to make my own style but that image is locked into my brain.

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Learn the basics. You've got to understand the human form before you can really exaggerate it. There still needs to be some semblance of realism. I can't tell you how many go for developing a style before learning the actual basics, and they usually wind up creating stiff, boxy characters that always lean to one side - little cartoon stroke patients.

To LittleSin + Zappit: So real figure first, then style. Thanks!

Yoshimickster said:

To LittleSin + Zappit: So real figure first, then style. Thanks!

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Anatomy books help, particularly those that can show details of musculature. You'll start to get a sense of how the body is put together, and its range of movement. Life drawing can help, too, so long as you've got a patient model. If not, high quality photos can be a great source. I've found great sources in magazines.

Nother question for the art people, how much are those figure drawing classes? The ones that have live models? Do you usually have to pay or are they free depending on where you go?

I took classes in college - which mostly consisted of one model - Frank - a retiree who, unfortunately, had a very atypical form - it looked like the man's ass caved in, and was trying to escape through his stomach - the only part of that class worth it was two of the books.

Hit up Amazon, and look for anatomy books specifically for artists. There's a lot that's good stuff out there, and most artists will recommend the books by Loomis - Figure Drawing for All its Worth, in particular.

But, hey, I found my own way. There is no one path, and that's a part of why there's such an amazing variety of styles and artistic perspectives out there. Any way you do it, you can get there.

Oh, and AVOID anything by Cristopher Hart. The guy apes (often poorly) some style and throws together a How-To book. They're pretty much worthless, I've found.

I suppose there is always the Leifeld method.

--Patrick

I have to admit ownership of at least a couple Christopher Hart books. I found his Cartooning for the Beginner helpful when I was starting out, but later on I learned Preston Blair covers everything (and then some) better in Cartoon Animation. Google it and you should find freely viewable copies of it online, no idea if they're legal or not so I won't link them.

Ben Caldwell's Action! and Fantasy! Cartooning were also huge influences on me. I still reference from them from time to time when I'm stuck on how to draw something.

PatrThom said:

I suppose there is always the Leifeld method.

--Patrick

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I wish I still had copies of this. When I was in high school a bunch of friends and I did a parody comic where all the characters were mockerys of all that stuff.

There was Anatomically-impossible man (he had six arms on one side, and just a giant thumb on the other), the Line (his body was 90% hash marks), The Jowel (poking fun at the Erik Larsen version of Venom, he was mostly a huge imposable jaw with fangs).

I'm sure if I were to see it now, I'd think it's dumb as hell, but it does show that even back then it shows that we noticed how bad the artwork was.

Though, even though he does the lines to death, I still love Jim Lee's artwork. My top X-men artists would go (in order from fav to least fav) John Byrne, Arthur Adams, Jim Lee, Joe Matureira, John Ramita Jr.

http://books.google.ca/books/about/Comic_artist_s_photo_reference.html?id=fLkcYWMZzysC&redir_esc=y

I have this book and I find it helpful.

I find it helps to think of the physics. Muscles contract and relax. If you think about what action has to happen to cause motion in the body, it can help with drawing realistic muscles. That's assuming you already know the rough placement, though.

Here's mine,






Had to kill Achilles to get it.