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[nenjin]

I was sort of artistically inclined at a  young age, so I didn't necessarily need to learn to draw...

But here's what really elevated my drawing skills: I drew other people's stuff.

Seriously. It sounds dumb but nothing makes you think about the process of drawing than replicating someone else's working and asking "How did they achieve that line? How did they achieve that kind of shading?"

For me it was Dragon Ball Z. I spent a good two years drawing DBZ characters. The eyes and eyebrows in particular (because they're so central to the character design) but also hair, shoulders....I knew enough to know I didn't want to learn how to draw anime musculature.

Doing that really opened my eyes to the process of design, how highly intentional somethings are. It taught me about how to work with perspective in a way vanilla art classes couldn't, because I cared a lot about the material and that helped the lessons sink in.

So my advice would be to find some art you really admire and start copying it. Not, like, tracing, that's worthless. I mean free hand. It will be terrible at first, be assured of that. But nothing worth doing comes easily. If people say you have a problem with female body shapes, go find some art of the female body you like and replicate it. Just draw it at first, don't worry about how accurate it is. When you're done, do a side-by-side comparison. See where your proportions are off, where your lines don't match, things like that, then repeat the process.

Another exercise that's very helpful (although it doesn't seem so at first) is drawing something you're looking at without ever looking at the page or lifting your utensil. Whatever you will do will look fucked up, but that's not the point of the exercise. The point of it is to get your hand and mind working as a team, building up those mental pathways and muscle memory, so your hand learns to starts creating what you see in your mind.

Once you have lines, perspective and proportions down, the rest kind of falls into place.

[freeformschooler]

Since you've now explained you want small exercises, have you read Fun with a Pencil by Andrew Loomis? It's a small, free e-book, but it's really fantastic. Even I can do those tiny exercises. As Loomis himself says in the book, only a ridiculously experienced artist can create the final outlines instantly. Most everyone else needs to go through some degree of "building" a drawing first to understand forms. The book is all drawing from the brain, but it's a good set of exercises to go along with any life-drawing you may or may not be doing.

[Eotyrannus]

Have you tried drawing other stuff? Personally, I find dinosaurs (specifically the two-legged ones) far easier to draw than humans. I've uploaded some to the internet, and there's a fairly natural progression between them, so I could make a basic guide to it.

[Pnx]

Ok, I said I'd upload some pictures of this stuff a while back, and here it is.

Spoiler: Perspective Drawing (click to show/hide)

This is the perspective drawing I was talking about, it's the sort of thing I think you'd enjoy, I'd recommend getting some video tutorials on the principles behind it. I found it very fun to do.

Spoiler: Self Portrait (click to show/hide)

This one didn't turn out all that great, I got the proportions a bit wrong, and I really rushed the hair, but I think the eyes turned out pretty damn great, and overall it was a good experience.


This is an earlier picture of the same thing, before I did the hair, and some other things. I figured I'd throw this in since I had it.

And since you really need a point of reference to tell how accurate this self-portrait is...


Ugh. Now you see why I haven't posted pictures of myself before. I'm really not photogenic, I swear I don't walk around with my eyes half closed all the time! Also I'm sorry about the blurriness and such, it's all the camera's fault I swear!

EDIT: I decided to rotate some of the pictures right-way round... also I seriously swear I usually don't look quite that ugly!

[Kashyyk]

Someone mentioned drawing basic shapes. This is good. If you break it down enough, absolutely everything is made up of some combination of circles, ovals, cyliders, lines, triangles and rectangles. Once you're confidant you can get the shape you want you can start building more complex things out of them, like people. That'll get all your proportions right, and then you just need to add details after that.

[DJ]

If it's just the technical aspect that's troubling you, declare yourself a naïve artist. If it's creativity, I hate to be a downer, but you can't learn to make art from scratch, you can just refine innate talent.

[GlyphGryph]

I hate to be a downer, but you can't learn to make art from scratch, you can just refine innate talent.

Luckily it's an innate talent that every singly human being on this planet that lacks some severe brain injury or developmental problem possesses!

[Grand Nagus]

I hate to be a downer, but you can't learn to make art from scratch, you can just refine innate talent.

Luckily it's an innate talent that every singly human being on this planet that lacks some severe brain injury or developmental problem possesses!

...but some are much better than others. Hate to shit on the optimism but some people have to WORK at it.
I have no advice other than to distinguish between criticism that's useful and criticism that's just parents trying to prove how much better they are than you at art. Once you can distinguish, you can fix real problems and improve.

[Pnx]

Everybody has to work at it, it's just some people were putting in effort into the skills they need without realising from an early age.

[Grand Nagus]

Everybody has to work at it, it's just some people were putting in effort into the skills they need without realising from an early age.

Semantics, some people have to work harder than others.

[DJ]

Most people could dedicate their entire lives to football and still never get to play in the Champions League.

[Pnx]

Most people could dedicate their entire lives to football and still never get to play in the Champions League.

Yes, but this is true of pretty much everything. In all likelihood you will never be amongst the best in the world at anything, but that's a terrible reason not to even try.

[DJ]

You should try just enough to see if you have a knack for it, and then concentrate on things that you do have a knack for.

[Pnx]

I'm sorry but, I really really frigging hate that kind of mentality, it's based on this insane perception of the way aptitudes work.

A lot of people seem to feel it's sort of like some kind of point buy system, where everybody gets a random number of points, some more, some less, and then they're assigned randomly to different attributes, like creativity, or spacial thinking, or whatever else.

This is not how these things work. These aptitudes are hard won, you might not remember doing them, but you put a lot of effort into it, and these will aptitudes will synergise with other aptitudes, and make other aptitudes easier to learn because of the overlaps.

Point is, that the more you learn and understand, the easier it gets to learn and understand, and if you just roll over and give up every time something gets a bit hard, you will never get anywhere.

[Vector]

You should try just enough to see if you have a knack for it, and then concentrate on things that you do have a knack for.

You know, I've published a book, have a degree in math from one of the top three universities in the world, and can speak five languages with reasonable proficiency.  Oh, and I have a high-paying job blah blah blah.  I'm on a sabbatical from math because I need to learn how to manage my stress for health reasons (repeated bouts of pneumonia of increasing severity).  I don't think it will hurt to try something I'm "bad at" now.

(For reference, by the by, English was my worst class for all of middle school--got a C average though I worked as hard as I could--I worked like five times harder than anyone else I knew picking up my first and second foreign languages, and math was my worst subject when I entered college.  Success is a product of opportunity and effort)

Hate to shit on the optimism but some people have to WORK at it.

Your point?

I didn't at any point say "I want to become a world-class artist."  What I said pretty much amounted to "well, I'm stuck and I'd like to be able to go back to one of my favorite hobbies without getting all worked up about it."

"I want to learn how to draw" means "I want to learn how to make things I will enjoy looking at," not "I want to learn how to make things you will enjoy looking at."