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[GlyphGryph]

And pretty much everyone who wants (excluding obvious exceptions, though there are fewer of those than one might think since they even have wheelchair football) can still learn to play football well, to the point where they can enjoy playing, where everyone involved can have a fun time, and where the game can be fun to watch. They can learn the rules, they can build the skills and reaction time, and they can play football well. I'm assuming (pre-post edit: and appear to have been right) that Vector is not looking to compete on the world stage - she just wants to be decent at a hobby and feel like she's making progress, which is something almost anyone can do in regards to art.

If there is a "knack" for art, most artists don't possess it. Working really fucking hard at it, usually because they want it REALLY BADLY, is how most artists, the vast majority of them, become good artists. Repeated, studious effort is how you improve.

I'd say the biggest problem is that most people have a "knack for" making up bullshit excuses to account for their intentional inability.

[Eotyrannus]

I like dinosaurs! They're easy and fun to draw!

Back to seriousness, a world-building project can be quite fun. Observe my own, and know that this has been an entertaining project to make, instead of just a chore.

[Pnx]

(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)

This is actually a really good point I should have covered... Having the right tools will make succeeding a hell of a lot easier.

Speaking of which, what were you going to use to draw? Just a #2 pencil, and a sketchpad?

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, that was part of the same thing I asked - I can offer you more specific exercises, and tips, and resources to look at if I know exactly what medium you're working with. But advice on line widths isn't going to mean much if you're sticking to mechanical pencil, for example.

[Vector]

Yes, I kind of started to figure that out when people were complaining about my shading and line weight being boring, when I know damn well that it's been one of the things I'm historically better at.

So yeah.  Mechanical pencil and printer paper, like a real mathematician--as I have my entire life   I realize I need to get different tools to draw like I want to, but I don't know what to buy.  One of those little metal cases of different kinds of pencils and an art eraser, I guess?  I have a sketch pad already.  I can get those other things when I move.

[Pnx]

I'd would recommend at a bare minimum getting a set of artist's pencils, and a kneaded eraser. The kneaded eraser is a pretty fantastic tool.

You may also want a ruler for straight edges, depending on what you want to do.

[freeformschooler]

You can art with a stone tablet and a chisel. No one's criticizing the line widths of French cave drawings. Seriously, I understand shading to an extent but only if it really hinder's the viewer's understanding of things. People pick nits about technical stuff way too much. It's like programming, once you do it enough, the medium/language is only a small fraction of it

That said, it won't help you that much but them graphite pencils (I think that's what pnx was referring to) feel soooo goooood to put on paper if you want to waste some money

[Pnx]

Yeah, I was talking about graphite pencils, the artists version has different hardness of graphite in them, with HB being the middle of the road and then the H's being the harder pencils and the B's being the softer pencils (I remember it is Hard and Blunt respectively, though I'm not sure what they actually stand for). A higher H is harder, a higher B is blunter. Most people generally work mostly with HB, but the H's can give crisper lines, and the B's can give darker darks (though I think most people trend towards using the B side of scale more).

I recommend getting a couple of HB's, and a couple of B's and H's to work with. They're honestly pretty cheap, you should be able to get a set of pencils + kneaded eraser for about $15 or so.

There's other art supplies I might recommend, like a better sketchpad (I don't know what you got, but generally bigger and heavier paper allows you to go further with your drawings), plus maybe a drawing board and some tape... but you can probably do fine without those.

[GlyphGryph]

There is no problem to working with mechanical pencils! Mechanical pencils are, in fact, my second favorite medium, personally! (A nice pen, a micron or a really smooth ink roller, is just immense fun, but...)

It's just that the techniques for mechanical pencils, the sort of styles you want to aim for and the things you should try to focus on and the techniques to making them look good are quite different from, say, artists pencils. Mechanical pencils have significant strengths, and you want to play to them - they are clean, they are sharp. You can get nice, finely defined edges and consistent line widths. This is really great for lots of art styles!

But it means that if you do something like shading, you have a very limited amount of techniques for doing so that look good. Those sharp edges mean fills generally look atrocious, and cross hatching isn't nearly as attractive (in my opinion) without varying line width on the hatches. My advice would be... don't. Don't worry about shading. Focus on doing really good linework and detailing, because really good linework is something mechanical pencils excel at.

Considering working with a straight edge at your side - draw buildings and other objects with clear straight lines or smooth curves. Take a pile of gears, and draw that pile - be careful to track how the lines overlap and fall under each other. Find areas where things don't actually look good on paper and make it a little less lifelike (avoid tangents!). Go to an alley or pick your favorite building, and have at it. Don't draw things head on - find things that are jutting out at angles, but have clear lines that differentiate them from your surroundings that you can seize on.

Once you think you've got some really nice basic linework with mechanical pencil, I'd recommend scanning it in and going digital, or taking up inking - both are really nice to work with off the clear images you can create with a mechanical pencil, far easier than with more "arty" pencil mediums. And that's where you'd learn to do shading and varying line widths and stuff like that.

Or you can decide to do shading with the mechanical pencil, but unless you're careful or using different leds the shading will generally be strongly "directional" and will often seem pretty sketchy - the larger you draw, the less obvious this will be, but a "smooth" shade is a bit harder to achieve.

For your sketching exercises (which you should be doing all the time), carry a stack of sticky notes or something, and whenever you're not doing anything with your hands, fill that paper with interesting lines and curves. Just relax, and let it go, and build up from what you're drawing. Start in a corner, and just detail your way to the opposite corner, filling out the whole thing. Do not erase, and do not return to areas you've already filled! Try to figure out, if you make a "mistake", how to make it work and keep going. This is pretty fun with mechanical pencil, and gets even more enjoyable if you switch to pen.

Note, none of this is to say you CAN'T do really awesome shading work with mechanical pencils - you totally can, and people do! I just don't feel that doing so is playing to the strengths of the medium. Also note that you can get mechanical pencils with a range of leads as well, which are much closer to the traditional range of pencils, and renders most of the points I've made here moot.

[Vector]

Eh, I've previously done cross-hatching with tapers via mechanical pencil, and light fills, just fine.  I've considered inking as well but I just don't have the right materials for it.

And haha, I do the stray line thing some already, so it won't be hard to make it more of a habit.

Anyway, I've decided that the first thing I'm going to learn how to draw better is eye sockets, so we'll see how that goes.

[GlyphGryph]

Would you like some explicit tips on drawing eyes, or learning to draw eyes? Also, what sort of style are you going to go with, and what sort of eye? Going from a reference photo?

[Grand Nagus]

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."

This isn't about how good you are at art at all then. This is about your perceptions and insecurities. Topic would be better 'How do I get over my insecurities ruining my favorite hobby' On which I have no advice.

[Vector]

First going to go for copying from an anatomy textbook, then photos of skulls, then skulls with skin and organs and things from different angles and light sources.  Then I'll try updating the way I draw right now and see if I like it or not.

No tips right now, will holler back when I've done a little (and, like, actually purchased materials).

[GlyphGryph]

Why start with the eye socket, by the way? Isn't that effectively invisible once you've layered all that stuff over? Not that it hurts to have a sense of the underlying structure, certainly, just seems a bit odd so far as places to start go. But still, doesn't sound like a bad idea - copying from the anatomy books is sure to be beneficial, and skulls are decent drawing targets on their own, for learning proportions and cheekbones and positioning and stuff. When you finally get to full eyes, remember that you'll be dealing with lots of fine details, so you'll either want to practice drawing quite large so you can capture them, or "faking it" (which is honestly a bit more fun, where you try to capture the essence of something without actually being able to draw it).

Good luck!

[Vector]

I like them.