Hello, everyone have a very good day!, it's 21 December, God sure willing this time is probably the last time I write for you :( ... Just joking, hehe, the world won't end so easily, So, let's go into the topic for today. I'll show you one other trick to improve your drawings and especially your sketches, these are little clues I've discovered through my growth as an artist and I want to share with you today! Let's begin:
1. Always when you go to try to start making sketches
take about 5 to 10 minutes to perform hand exercises (warm up), later I will make a tutorial on how to do
exercises to warm the hand (Step 4) before drawing, I recommend to watch for my Blog for To learn how effective this method.
2. Use some background music when working, an important part of the creative process is always have something to get some inspiration, I turn on the radio almost always when I need to relax and concentrate on my work, sometimes I seek for some classical music collection, however at night which is when my Creativity goes a genius "
aggressive" I turn to my favourite music:
indie, rock, alternative music, electronic music and some other genres. Always draw with the music that makes you feel comfortable,
stay in the mood.
3. Be your own critic, look at your drawings, whenever you feel something strange is that in fact
there is something wrong, it's not your imagination, refusing to correct the errors that you see at this stage of a design may end up being a big mistake for when the time of making the final art comes, always remember that a sketch should be clear and easy to understand for the person who will do the final artwork.
4. Always try to be basic (in a good way), try to do simple and light forms you already know, a basic structure with a rectangle one another triangle and four circles can easily form a large car the details are up to you, the basic shape can give you some keys to go to the next step, is an evolutionary process, every step you go the most close you are to the finished artwork, always remind this:
The next time you want to draw something your mind has acquired the ability to draw that again better and better than before, and you will need less time to achieve it.
5. Having references is always good and bad at the same time, and that's because often we want to draw like an artist we admire, it's not bad, in fact it is very good way to inspirate you to learn, you can look out on their techniques, projects and processes to devise your own. Personally I always admired the work of
Tite Kubo,
Jan Van Eyck,
Michelangelo and other several artists like
Artgerm or
Yuumei, not necessarily only cartoonists. The trouble about referencing from other artists is when you start focusing too much on their work and you don't stop to look at your own work and developing your own style, this is a serious part, because we can fall into comparisons and worse on, the imitation. The good part is that our referents can serve us as support material for developing our style, and always move on as individual artists and authentic, instead of trying to move towards being an artist who is not us.
6. Drawing always the same kind of person, the same object, or always use the same theme, it can be part to help you create your own style but if it is carried to the extreme it can kill you when you need to draw something different, I recommend you explore other styles, other objects, e.g. have you drawn light lamps? Have you drawn a giant robot like a super-robot-chicken? Have you thought of drawing old people? Do you have any own characters? Why not draw them on their childhood, in their middle age and old age as well? When one varies the subjects in which one works one can emphasize one element that makes it easy, normal, common, difficult, strange, horrible and even charming, the artist is working to identify and point out that he likes to have a mental reference to your style and give that strength when drawing that object or that person.
7. If you like to draw a human, or animal, I can recommend to my useful links section in the sidebar of this Blog, you will find several links where you can perform exercises in anatomy, let me say that those wonderful exercises helped me so much in this time, you can spend from about
20-30 minutes a day you will start learning pretty quickly how the human or animal body works.
8. Try sketching only with a pen, is one of the things I'm always recommending to people who want to draw better, in fact it is a way to control the line, when you become unable to erase the lines you'll have to think twice the line you want for your sketch, first you go to into a conditional mode too, to think that you can grab a slight trauma without the
pencil/eraser, but this exercise will help you gradually improve your ability to draw, the more you do it will be better, and you'll get used to make a stroke with more identity and ease.
9. Take your time, speed comes after you've mastered the technique, usually many people want to imitate the speed of professional artists in Youtube or Deviantart, well it's normal to want to get to this point someday, hell yeah! we all want to do that, but remember that you should know how to
walk first and then you can learn how to run.
10. For each draw you have you will approach an inch closer to the goal you want to reach, whether small or horrifying, is cute, is a work of art that you cherish for the rest of life, and so on. My advice in this part is to fill at least one sketchbook a month, fill it with whatever you want to draw, perhaps at the beginning you must be thinking this:
"A whole book? This guy is crazy!" I'm neither crazy nor sane, I rather an intermediate position, hehe. Many artists I admire had lots of notebooks filled, they usually fill 2 or 3 sketchbooks in a month with very epic drawings, most of them in pen or ink, that's so insane,so when you start to fill and fill sketchbooks you can feel like
"I'm on the right way every time I do more drawings more easily and fluently".
Now I'm giving you a little gift, something really from my inside, try to keep this in your pocket, you could not miss the
"Bonus track" of this publication, I think this is one of the most intimate advice I can give you, I learned this from a teacher of arts at the university, at first his exercise seemed pretty weird, but I said:
"Well, why not?". The exercise was to always bring with me a small sketchbook, really tiny (could go into my coat pocket with no problem), then with the "little notebook" you could draw what you wanted anywhere, so the teacher told us the following:
"I want you to fill this book with things you like to do, what do you like watch, things you admire, things that catches your attention in good or bad way and if it is possible I want the drawings or cuts that you will add to the sketchbook in colour".
The idea at first seemed odd, but when I filled the booklet I realized that in one way or another I began to realize the things I liked and I didn't know I liked them so much!, so I could easily make a mental map of my identity as a person and also as an artist
(likes/dislikes). When you feel you can not go, your goal is farther than you can walk, run or crawl to it, have a look at your life, who you are, and that makes you to feel like you can always give one more step for it.
Never give up!.
Identify ourselves first helps to identify the world around us.
Thank you for reading this Blog post, I'll be watching forward to any questions, suggestions or comments from you. I invite you to know my
Deviantart and my
Facebook page, so you can see new entries, news and the announcement of my upcoming Webcomic series. Do not miss it! Regards, until next time.
