Art thread :>

[Armored frog]

hello!

so i was scrolling around, and read that a few of you also like to draw and stuff, so i thought why not make a little thread for sharing drawings, and maybe making fanart of eachothers OCs, idk just have some fun

so please reply with some fun doodles or something :)

 

anyways, here is a drawing i made of jughead

 

[DeltaAro]

4 hours ago, Armored frog said:

so i was scrolling around, and read that a few of you also like to draw and stuff, so i thought why not make a little thread for sharing drawings, and maybe making fanart of eachothers OCs, idk just have some fun

We already have one here, but I guess it was a good idea to create a new one.

4 hours ago, Armored frog said:

so please reply with some fun doodles or something :)

OK, I try to do one, hopefully before the ASAW runs out (oops Saturday).

4 hours ago, Armored frog said:

 

This is great! You're very talented!

[Armored frog]

1 hour ago, DeltaAro said:

We already have one here,

Uh! i will definitely check that out, thank you

[DeltaAro]

Zero Two is an Aro Ally

CC BY 4.0

PS: the complete failure to draw anime style is embarrassing. I would have thought the skills transferred better, but no, this is something totally different.

[DeltaAro]

On 2/25/2024 at 4:24 PM, Nix said:

Christopher Hart's drawing books are super popular with the kids I teach. It looks cool, colourful and not too difficult, so I guess it speaks to them. I see them as just another tool, like most drawing books really. In my personal experience there is no perfect book to teach you to draw better or different. But drawing books can help to see how others do it, and that will certainly help on your journey.

Thanks for the advice, sensei! 🧑‍🎨

(I answer in this thread because it would be totally off-topic in the other one).

I always believed that one NEEDED books or a teacher. Because if humans could just naturally figure out how to draw by themselves, it wouldn't have taken so long for art to reach technical perfection.

Aside from obviously advanced topics like perspective and anatomy, even basic gesture drawing of pre-Renaissance art looks technically unsophisticated. It seems foreshortening is enormously difficult for humans to do right without instructions.

It's hard enough for me with instructions.

E.g. Ancient Roman painting was not that unrealistic, but they also consistently struggled with free 3D-rotation of limbs, e.g.:

Part from Initiation to the Cult of Demeter fresco, 1st century BC

Huge gap to:

Jonah (Sistine Chapel) by Michelangelo, 1512

Perhaps, one could argue, it was just their style. But it's hard to believe that everyone pre-Renaissance did not want to draw foreshortening right, and so I suspect it was technical progress. Especially since Romans and Ancient Greeks achieved perfection in sculptures.

PS: Thanks for reading all this. I hope I didn't come across as too pretentious. 😅

Edited March 9 by DeltaAro

[smac n cheese]

a drawing of my friend (idk how to do online art)

[Nix]

On 3/8/2024 at 11:25 PM, DeltaAro said:

Thanks for the advice, sensei! 🧑‍🎨

(I answer in this thread because it would be totally off-topic in the other one).

I always believed that one NEEDED books or a teacher. Because if humans could just naturally figure out how to draw by themselves, it wouldn't have taken so long for art to reach technical perfection.

Aside from obviously advanced topics like perspective and anatomy, even basic gesture drawing of pre-Renaissance art looks technically unsophisticated. It seems foreshortening is enormously difficult for humans to do right without instructions.

It's hard enough for me with instructions.

E.g. Ancient Roman painting was not that unrealistic, but they also consistently struggled with free 3D-rotation of limbs, e.g.:

Part from Initiation to the Cult of Demeter fresco, 1st century BC

Huge gap to:

Jonah (Sistine Chapel) by Michelangelo, 1512

Perhaps, one could argue, it was just their style. But it's hard to believe that everyone pre-Renaissance did not want to draw foreshortening right, and so I suspect it was technical progress. Especially since Romans and Ancient Greeks achieved perfection in sculptures.

PS: Thanks for reading all this. I hope I didn't come across as too pretentious. 😅

Oh don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to suggest you don't need some form of instruction or teacher. Would be a little weird since I'm an art teacher ;)

My point was how people tend to look down on forms of instructions that are focused on (what they would consider) 'low-art'. I taught myself to draw action poses by looking at anime, mainly Dragon Ball Z (rip Akira Toriyama) But my art school teachers wanted me to drop that practice as it wasn't considered 'good art'.

I mean, I understand and teach the importance of looking at the classics and learning from their long journey from the stiff, awkward poses in ancient times to the dynamic and exciting ones in the Renaissance (great examples by the way!) but I feel you shouldn't box yourself in. Anything that inspires you to draw more is a great tool to get better. Because getting better means drawing loads, trying out new techniques and challenging yourself.

I saw an experiment once were a group of students was tasked with learning to make a clay pot in 2 weeks time. Half of the group had to make as many pots in those 2 weeks as they could, while the other half got to use that time to make just one, but as perfect as possible. As you can probably imagine, the quantity group made a lot of really ugly pots, but at the end they had a fairly good grasp on which techniques worked well and which didn't. The quality group all made 1 nice looking pot, but they were a lot more frustrated by their learning process. The moral of that story is to not stare blindly at your art if you can't make it work. It's okay to just put it away and start fresh. It will speed up learning and it keeps frustrations at bay.

[DeltaAro]

16 hours ago, Nix said:

Oh don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to suggest you don't need some form of instruction or teacher. Would be a little weird since I'm an art teacher ;)

Yes, that makes sense. 😅

16 hours ago, Nix said:

My point was how people tend to look down on forms of instructions that are focused on (what they would consider) 'low-art'. I taught myself to draw action poses by looking at anime, mainly Dragon Ball Z (rip Akira Toriyama) But my art school teachers wanted me to drop that practice as it wasn't considered 'good art'.

They fit the cliché of fine art teachers ... culture snobs, oops.😉

I would understand it if they said: anime / manga is quite a bit different and skills aren't easily transferrable. You may get confused.

That's how it's for me. E.g. the very little bit of practice I have is using 7 or 7 ½ heads proportions. Manga is around 6 heads and that's only the beginning, literally every proportion is different... I simply cannot draw manga.

Spoiler

Yeah, I aimed at that. And completely failed to achieve it. So embarrassing.

Now, the negative attitudes towards certain books (usually poor Chris Hart) were more substantiated: that they teach you a bunch of ready-made "recipes", tricks or easy hacks to repeat - but not universal drawing principles.

I guess I overthink it, one should notice if one gets stuck with a book, right?

16 hours ago, Nix said:

I mean, I understand and teach the importance of looking at the classics and learning from their long journey from the stiff, awkward poses in ancient times to the dynamic and exciting ones in the Renaissance (great examples by the way!)

In defense of the ancients, it can't be 100 % skills. More like 80 % skills and 20 % deliberate style / artistic canon.

For example, the ancient Egyptian artists realized that they drew the human face and body incorrectly:

• frontal eye + head in profile
• frontal torso + legs sideways

It was a stylization that represented high status. Normal workers and slaves are depicted correctly!

Or another example: medieval art feels often feels a bit organized like a story to me: your gaze is supposed to wander around and look at all the small details, so modern perspective just wouldn't really work that well:

Tower of Babel by the Bedford Master, 1405–1435

Compared to...

Tower of Babel by M. C. Escher, 1928

Modern 3-point perspective is so imposing: it makes the parts of an image very unequal.

16 hours ago, Nix said:

I saw an experiment once were a group of students was tasked with learning to make a clay pot in 2 weeks time. Half of the group had to make as many pots in those 2 weeks as they could, while the other half got to use that time to make just one, but as perfect as possible. As you can probably imagine, the quantity group made a lot of really ugly pots, but at the end they had a fairly good grasp on which techniques worked well and which didn't. The quality group all made 1 nice looking pot, but they were a lot more frustrated by their learning process. The moral of that story is to not stare blindly at your art if you can't make it work. It's okay to just put it away and start fresh. It will speed up learning and it keeps frustrations at bay.

That totally makes sense. But now the big question: how do you motivate yourself to practice a lot of drawing fundamentals? Honestly, I find doing 1000 figure poses ... a bit boring.

While you learn less doing quality, the motivation to produce something nice, and your individual ideas instead of something generic, is higher.

PS: sorry again very verbose. Don't feel pressured to answer, I'm not even a paying student, haha. 🙃

[Nix]

On 3/10/2024 at 5:40 PM, DeltaAro said:

That's how it's for me. E.g. the very little bit of practice I have is using 7 or 7 ½ heads proportions. Manga is around 6 heads and that's only the beginning, literally every proportion is different... I simply cannot draw manga.

You mean not yet! True, the proportions are different, but realistically, no living human fits the vitruvian man either. For example, my arms are really long and I have a friend who has a huge torso. But just as in real life, in manga the arms still attach to the shoulders and the eyes (although huge) are in the middle of the head. So looking at what manga does different and translating that takes practice but you are well on the way. Please don't call your drawing embarrassing, it is part of an ongoing process to get better at drawing.

On 3/10/2024 at 5:40 PM, DeltaAro said:

Now, the negative attitudes towards certain books (usually poor Chris Hart) were more substantiated: that they teach you a bunch of ready-made "recipes", tricks or easy hacks to repeat - but not universal drawing principles.

I guess I overthink it, one should notice if one gets stuck with a book, right?

That's exactly it: Anyone who is just looking for a quick 'hack' to draw something nice on a birthday card will love what Chris Hart has to offer. But if you really want to learn the principles, you will find that those books are not enough. And then you move on.

And your points on the ancients are right too. We also must not forget that drawing in the middle ages used to be a means of telling stories without using words since most people couldn't read. Showing a compelling story was more important then drawing an awesome building.

On 3/10/2024 at 5:40 PM, DeltaAro said:

But now the big question: how do you motivate yourself to practice a lot of drawing fundamentals? Honestly, I find doing 1000 figure poses ... a bit boring.

While you learn less doing quality, the motivation to produce something nice, and your individual ideas instead of something generic, is higher.

 

Well the trick is to not do those 1000 figure poses in a row ;) Contrary to the experiment where the students had two weeks to produce as much as they could, a natural drawing process is much more organic. Get yourself a simple, small notebook to take with you and some drawing tools. Bonus points if it all fits together in a small pouch.

Pro tip, don't go looking for a 'nice' one, because then you'll never use it. The more generic it is the better. The one I'm using at the moment does have a pretty cover, but the blank covers the store sold had lines and I personally dislike that:

Try to fit in short bursts of doodling during your day. If you travel by bus or train, that is great for drawing quick life drawings. Studying real people works better then drawing from pictures, but if you find that a bit daunting then pictures is fine to start with. Set a timer for yourself, 5 to 10 minutes per session is perfect. That timer will force you to look for shapes and lines instead of making a detailed, realistic drawing. My life drawings always look sort of cartoon y, because that is my preferred style. I have to make an effort to draw a 'real' person. But this person waiting for the bus was basically a walking cartoon:

When you feel like making something nice, you can use one or more of those quick sketches as a base. So variation is key here to stay motivated.

On 3/10/2024 at 5:40 PM, DeltaAro said:

PS: sorry again very verbose. Don't feel pressured to answer, I'm not even a paying student, haha. 🙃

I don't mind, I love teaching and I don't need to attach a price to everything I do ;) Anyway I hope this was somewhat helpful.