You drawing people!!! Help

[VP-]

So since I am going to a real school next year I am going to be taking lots of real art classes again, one thing that I have always struggled with is drawing. Do any of you have any tips or good reads to help imrpove upon drawing? The n0r is an elite master and needs no tips or teaching so he was of no help, naturally talented bastage! Make me a fucking pottery flower vase Mr. Jerm.

[Ignatz]

I took a design course last year, and went into it feeling very apprehensive because I felt I had very limited drawing skills. What I found was, if you just sit down and force yourself to do it, you will do better than you think. Your first several attempts may suck, but if you draw every day, and keep working on each piece you begin, you will quickly find yourself producing at least acceptable results.

[ReCoN]

people think being really good at drawing is some elite ability that not many have. its just like anything, the more you practice, the better you will get. and youll get a lot better really fast. after a few classes youll most likely see huge improvement in your ability to quickly sketch something and how well you put it in proportion. id also say most of the other people arent going to be amazing. im sure youll be fine.

[pos]

i got decent at drawing from tracing the outlines of the faces. Then i got used to how to draw faces. Just takes time and practices, this is definitly an abilitly you can train yourself to be good at.

[Griffith-]

One thing I would say.. is practice practice practice. The only way you can better yourself is to study and practice. Get books, magazines, websites, any kind of reference that shows drawing theory (anatomy, figure, shading, etc), color theory, and general art knownledge. Spend time (maybe 1 -2 hours a day, if you can spare it) just doodling and studying. When I first started to get into figure drawing, I spent maybe 2 weeks straight and about 3 hours a day just going over muscle masses, bones, how the muscles move with motion, how clothes move, how your joints move. It's a long process but in the end its very rewarding.

Now depending on what you are going to be studying you will have to adapt that to your needs. Since your going to an art school it will probably be alot of still lifes and figure drawing. Brush up on your charcoal/pastel drawing.

[matt-]

Yeah, just practice and it will come.

I honestly couldn't draw my way out of a paper bag. I spent maybe 3 or 4 months drawing every day for about 3 hours and I went from absolutely terrible to semi-decent.

It frustrated the shit out of me for about 2/3's of that time.

[VeeKaChu]

Heh, I was one of those "sketchbook" guys in HS- always had one, always scratching away at it. The one thing I remember that really helped me was an assignment in art class to simply make a copy of a photograph- any photo- with pencil. It's a lot easier than trying to draw something "from life", in that it never changes. Just do that, a lot, it will help.

Oh, and study up on perspective- although as a talented photographer, you should already have a clear grasp of that.

[Droz37]

yeah it really does come down to practice.
I took a 2 year class on art and design, it was hard at first to pass some bad drawing habbits I developed over the years I was just drawing on my own but after that my drawing really did get better.

it helps if you know how to hold a drawing pencil proper too in order to get the correct flow and motion that good shapes have. if you were to only hold the pencil and use your wrist it would limit your range drastically.

one thing I leanred at school is to really understand the weight of the object you are drawing, an example would be muscles on a bone - you need to be able to draw how the muscle would hang from a leg bone, so that would be something to look into and one other good tip is the feet on a person, like before try to add a feeling of the weight of the person, if you were to draw a foot with a round heel it wouldn't make much sence right ? well instead of that make them have a flat heel so it will better display the actual weight of the person.

one artist that has always impressed me has been Feng Zhu
I love his characters and his environmental concept drawings.

check out his site here:

http://www.fengzhudesign.com/