One of the problems that you often come across in an art education (particularly trying to find one online) is conflicting advice. People will tell you how to use reference, that you shouldn’t use reference, that you should always reference, that you can only use reference in a certain way, etc., etc. While I’m going to hopefully disprove a couple of the myths in this post, I’m also going to discuss how to deal with your own advice troubles.

First - Find original sources. Do not take some idiot on deviantart or tumblr telling you something as the gospel truth. Yes, I’m aware of the irony, and let me address it: very few of the things are from my mouth alone. I try to have sources of professionals saying what I’m passing on (and believe me, it’s easier not to look those things up), or, barring that, I try to provide examples where you can see the principle in action. When I can’t do that, I make it clear that it’s worked for me/not worked for me/otherwise make it personal. “They say,” “Artists should…,” etc. are all big red flags - they’re citing a non-existent authority to back up their opinions.

Second - Look carefully to see whether it’s a principle or a rule. For example, realism is better than drawing anime so you shouldn’t draw anime is a common trope. However, it does have a kernel of good advice in there: you need to learn how to draw in a non-stylized manner (if you look at any major art school they will emphasize drawing without stylization in their curriculums). However, it’s been taken to extremes as “always” or “never” and it essentially made into a rule in extreme cases.

Third - Look for harm/benefit. Drawing manga will not ‘hurt’ you, in the same way drawing a page of circles will not hurt you. It will still help you with pencil control, the manga drawing can still help with composition, etc. However, it is also not the most helpful thing to be drawing either. There are additional benefits to drawing without stylization that you won’t get sticking to manga - better knowledge of the body, concept of solid forms, etc.

Fourth - There isn’t “right” and “wrong” in art, but there is “effective” and “ineffective” (and legal and illegal). While I’ll probably default to the old “right” and wrong” sometimes too, there isn’t one right way to do anything in art. The problem is that oftentimes our mistakes “look wrong.” I’m kind of splitting hairs with that example, but it becomes a larger issue later on. A lot of people say “tracing is wrong” and it’s not. Tracing is a tool, just like any other artistic technique. It is ineffective in terms of learning everything, but it is effective in terms of transferring an image, especially in a crunch, but it’s ineffective in that you can’t rely on tracing for everything. It’s also efficient for focusing on one skill. The only time when it’s “wrong” is when it would be illegal in terms of copyright infringement or possibly false advertising.

Fifth - Stick with your field if there is conflict among professionals. Occasionally you’ll find dissent between professionals on a technique, in that case stick to the best professionals or the ones in your particular field. Take the advice of a veteran over a newbie, and if you’re interested in comics, look especially to what the greats in your field are saying. In addition, follow the general consensus of professionals, because there will be a few odd birds out there who say something different. Now, these odd birds may have effective advice, but stick to the consensus before experimenting with the deviations.

Sixth - Silence on a subject is not agreement. If you find an artist that doesn’t discuss their references, that does not mean they don’t use references. They may not want to go into their process, particularly on a business website, but that does not mean that they deviate from the people who have spoken out. It’s very hard to find a professional artist that says “Don’t use reference” so people will point to the silent ones, or sometimes artists that no longer use reference (after using reference extensively for 30-40 some years). Don’t let this fool you; silence is not a statement either way.

Well I hope something in this post is helpful to you guys! Still no computer, so my posts are still few and far between. Sorry!

In the last post I talked about learning the rules before you break them, so I thought I’d take today’s post to discuss “the rules.”

There’s a saying: “There are no rules in art,” and I appreciate what it means: there is no one right way to do it, especially when it comes to creativity.

However, when I discuss “the rules” and such, the rules are more like guidelines and natural effects. For example, a classic rule is that the highest contrast (largest difference between dark and light) should be at the focus of an image. In reality, you may find a situation where the high contrast area isn’t at the focus. However, you need to understand the principles behind the rule; that high contrast draws the eye.

The rules describe what happens and where you generally want to apply it.

In addition, I’m trained as a commercial artist. As a commercial artist, you’re expected to be able to deliver consistently, so you have to be aware of the rules and how they work. Once you really understand the rules, you can know how and when to break them.  

The next post will be more instructional.

This post may be unpopular with some readers, but I thought I’d bring it up now.

In the last post I asked you to copy a photo without stylization, and I’m sure some of the readers of this blog are not interested in drawing realistically. I understand that. I like drawing in a more cartoony style myself, but everyone must learn realism.

All stylizations are ways to draw real things and all stylizations are based on drawing realistically. You can think of stylization as an adaptation of reality.

If you were trying to create an adaptation of Robin Hood, you would need to go back and read all the legends, do research into the actual time period, etc. Without that research, you’re limited to what other people have done, and you get a knock-off. Even if you’re do a fan project or adapting someone else’s story, you still need to do that research. If you have any sort of visual, you’ll have to design things that were never in the original story. If you are creating a second story, you’ll still have to incorporate new elements, and understand some of the subtle things the previous author did to make the characters come alive.

The same thing is true of art. All artists have experience with drawing realistic people, and have a great knowledge of the human form. When you copy their style, you’re copying without understanding the base they’re using and without understanding the reasons for their decisions. What you get is something similar to Walt Stanchfield’s “lazy lines.” You miss the important details. In addition, you can only draw what you’ve seen before.

This isn’t a judgement on whether stylization is good, bad, lazy, etc., it’s not a judgement on any particular style, and it’s not even saying realism is a better style. The point is that drawing realistically (without stylization) is the base of all styles.

As sort of a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I thought I should clarify drawing Vs. doodling. They’re very similar, but drawings have purpose, a reason for being. This seems like an odd place to draw the line, especially because some doodles may look better than some drawings.

This is an important distinction to make because doodling won’t get you very far - you need to be trying to do something with a drawing. Classically, you’ll be trying to learn anatomy or something like that, but that’s a little too limiting; there’s a lot more to a good drawing than anatomy. There are various goals you could be working towards in a drawing: gesture, anatomy, emotion, composition, etc. and each is a valid thing to strive for.

This may sound like a lot, but I’d bet that most, if not everyone who’s reading this has done this before, even if they don’t think so. Diagrams are drawing, not doodling. They have a distinct goal - they are trying to communicate effectively. This seems like a throw-away objective, but it’s critical one. It’s easy to get lost in how exactly to draw the hands, but it’s far more important to be able to communicate pointing, even if it’s not perfectly rendered. The comic xkcd is a fantastic example of effective communication with little detail. Even pictionary is great practice. Instead of creating a fully rendered elephant, you need to communicate elephant as quickly as possible, with as little detail as possible. This is great training for creature, character, and graphic design. For all three disciplines you’ll need to be able to extract and refine what communicates “elephant.”

To wrap up this post, I encourage everyone to actually think about their goal for their current drawings are? Is it a successful picture, a clearly delivered message, a new design, a study on anatomy, or what else are you trying to draw?

So for the first post - where do you actually begin?

First thing is that drawing anything is better than drawing nothing. Later on I’ll be talking more about what you should be drawing, but more than anything just draw.

A common theme is that life drawing is the best way to learn, and it is. However, when I started out I said to myself “I should only draw when I have a live model.” I excused myself from so many hours of practice that way.

As an extreme example - some artists will practice drawing just by doing circle after circle; it helps them with pencil control.

Draw as much as you can, whenever you can.