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[AllThingsLive]

Art. Art has always amazed me. Along with psychology, philosophy, computer science, and anatomy, art is such a wondrous thing. I've never been good at art however, I could never draw much more than a stick man, nor could I color to save my life. It just doesn't click in my head. So, I was wondering, and this is for all you artists that are reading this; how can I learn to draw well, and then move on to using color in an appealing matter in different techniques? Drawing on its own seems like such witchcraft to myself, but when color is added (Especially monochrome color schemes) I just think "How does the artists know how those colors go so well together, and how'd he thing to make this part darker, this part lighter, transition for deep blue to a calm shade of violet here... etc". This is a skill I'd love, LOVE, to achieve.
So. Where do I get started? I've done a lot of looking around and I hear a lot about the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," but what do I know? If you know any really good books, online lessons, or techniques for learning to draw and eventually color well, please recommend them.
Thank you very much for your time and for all the help you may/may not provide.

[Vector]

Practice.

I am a fairly competent doodler/artist, and I can tell you that the very most important thing is lots and lots of practice.  The basics can't really be taught through tutorial.

[Ibid Straydrink]

+1 for interest in a real artist's ( in sense) perspective on this.

I recently sat down with an old friend of mind who has developed quite a knack for three dimensional characters that began several years ago as stick figures, along with advanced shading and now water colors. What I learned from him, if I understood correctly, is that it begins with a simple attempt. After that, you consider your technique with a critical eye and focus on how you treat the subject in relation to the space and techniques at your disposal.

So basically, it's greek rocket surgery.

[GlyphGryph]

You can't learn to draw from books, really. You can learn certain techniques that will help you in certain situations, certainly!

But mostly, like Vector said, practice. Find excuses to draw. Push yourself. Draw with confidence.

And don't just practice drawing, depending on where you want to go with it - practice looking, too. Seeing is nearly important as drawing in making things look realistic, and you're going to have to a do a lot of internalizing how things appear in order to draw well - until then, consider using references regularly. Even if the reference isn't particularly relevant, detail-wise, thats part of learning to see, picking out the important bits and knowing what to ignore. The most important skill to master is figuring out what you can leave out, what is least important.

As far as colouring goes, there's a lot more book-learning you can do there, but even then it requires you have a good grounding in seeing first. So you'll want to dedicate a good amount of time to practicing that, too.

And to help you on your way, I'd like to make a proposal.

Interested in doing some art trades?

[AllThingsLive]

Oh, I draw a TON. I'm constantly doodling, just trying to improve, but I never get any better. I just need to know how to see, I think ( As GlyphGryph said ) I actually picked up the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" today for a mere 2 bucks at the local book store. I've read the first 15 pages so far, and it seems like the author is going to attempt to teach how to "see" and put that down on paper with specific techniques that the reader is to practice. It seems pretty solid.
And as for "And to help you on your way, I'd like to make a proposal. Interested in doing some art trades?" by GlyphGryph, I have no clue what that means, man. Could you please explain?

[nenjin]

I found nothing so useful as pictures of various techniques in use and a very plain description of how they happened. Stippling, cross-hatch shading, various techniques for doing shadows, perspective....

The thing about perspective is, it's hard to teach. I have a friend who, before going to an art college, was a totally self-taught cartoonist/serious artist. He was gifted in every sense of the word. I drew for years in his shadow, totally in love with his work and totally unable to match it. And I would always ask him how he could "see" the things he was drawing before he drew them. He never could explain. But he would never come down on my art because he always maintained "it's a personal style everyone has. You can't separate someone's style from the process. Your art is always going to look like your art and you should be proud of that. Develop that."

So what I did was I started meticulously reproducing other people's art work. I started with stuff in high school art classes, then I moved on to some cartooning by drawing Dragonball Z characters, trying to emulate the style and the technique Toriyama used to create an anime I liked a lot. Then I'd just draw again, remembering all the techniques I'd practiced and incorporating them in different ways. I started creating my own DBZ looking characters without guidance, until I got pretty good at it.

I guess my advice would be: consume as much technical stuff as you can, as many stylistic ways of doing it. But don't ever mistake them for more than that; they're just tools in the tool box. How and when you use them, what perspective choices you make, ect....are all about your personal style. Look at all the flat, 2-d and faux 3-d cartoons we have now. Family Guy ect.... that may not be "high art" but it's very cohesive and has its own style even though its really quite simple. Find your style and never stop learning different tools to achieve it. 

[Duke 2.0]

 You pretty much need somebody to critique your artwork, point out awkward forms and suggest how you can improve. I spent a good deal of time stuck in a rut of doodling everything I saw but not improving whatsoever because I never showed my stuff to others. Gotta be confident and know how to have your stuff torn apart so you can learn.

 And while no tutorial can teach you how to do art there are a lot of pitfalls that make your life hell. Ask about stuff like you are doing now. Find out how people hold their tools, how different mediums work, what environments they set up in and how they psyche themselves up to the task.

 If you got any specific questions we'll be happy to answer them, but as usual the always doodling rule applies.

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, I'm gonna second the sharing and critiquing - having people to draw with so we could point out flaws in each others works has been a big help to me.

The next bit is don't draw inside your comfort zone - don't just doodle if you want to get better, push yourself. Make every drawing a puzzle that you have to figure out. And when you show someone that finished piece, its a lot easier for them to figure out what obvious thing you might be missing.

Anyways, an art trade works like thus:
I request a picture of you.
You request a picture of me.
You draw the picture I requested and send it to me - I critique and offer constructive feedback.
You do the same for the picture I sent.
(Those second two bits aren't necessary for it to be an art trade, but considering the point of the exercise, they will be here)

It's actually an amazingly useful tool for improving your skill, in more ways than one.
(Especially since drawing to a request is a completely separate skill on top of the others also worth learning, heh)

[AllThingsLive]

Alright GlyphGryph, I'd like to do that sometime. Meanwhile I'm going to try out this book and look for as much technical information I can find. I have a habit of finding a topic that I really enjoy, getting burnt out on it, and then turning my back on it for good, so I'm going to try to take this whole thing slow and steady.

[RedWick]

I start by scribbling and doodling, then picking stuff out of what I put down and expanding on it.  When I do, I end up with stuff like this:

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6185/6027262373_c79ea30c60_b.jpg

You're going to draw a lot of crap.  I've started a ton of drawings, but only maybe 7 or 8 ever got to the point where I felt comfortable calling them done.  They'll never be finished though, as I can always see how they might be improved.  However, my dad, engineer-turned-artist, always tells me "Just move on to the next piece."  As you do more and more pieces, you'll find that your technique gets better and you'll have a greater eye for composition and such.  If you get stuck on a piece early on in this process of refinement though, you'll never give yourself a chance to grow as an artist.  You'll get frustrated and burned out.  Just something to watch out for.

[Mindmaker]

I plan on picking up a couple of "How to draw Manga"-books soon, as 'simply doodling' doesn't give me the desired results.
Let's see how this works out...

[AllThingsLive]

So, in this book, we had to draw a self portrait, a portrait of a person from memory, and our hand. This is meant for us to have to look back on after completing the book to see our progress. But after doing these drawings, we're also to inspect them and critique them. Sooo, I thought what better what to get criticized then to show on the Dwarf Fortress forums?
So, here is my self portrait :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I would've smiled, but I was afraid that I'd smile differently each time, as well as when I did smile, I laughed because of how goofy I felt I would upload a picture of myself, but I can't seem to find my camera's USB cable.
And here's the hand, I won't upload the memory picture because it looks more than childish, haha :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For my self portrait...
- My eyes are distanced/sized differently
- I think the nose is a tad too long
- The lips just look funky
- The ears, they just look wrong, haha
- My hair, I don't think I got that sense of depth right at all
I think the biggest issue here is the spacing and placement of the eyes and nose
And for my hand, it was supposed to sort of be reaching out, but I don't think I captured that too well.
And yes, my shading is atrocious, lol.
Alright, your turn, rip me apart.

[GlyphGryph]

Okay, good news first: You aren't bad at all. You look to have a pretty steady and a halfway decent eye for detail. Not a bad starting point at all, to be honest!

The problem areas are (as normal), proportions, depth, and foreshortening.
My suggestion is to take some time and concentrate on the basic shapes first.
Do that self portrait a couple of times, but don't bother with any of the details - just simply mark where things will go in different positions, get a sense for size and placement. Use guidelines, and focus on edges.

Try not to draw faces straight-on, its really one of the hardest poses to do well, especially if you don't have a good feeling for working with basic shapes yet.

[Duke 2.0]

 A technique for handling proportions is to just sorts scribble in the shape of the face, the general shape of the eye sockets and where your mouth and nose go with simple lines. Nothing details or large, but a quick 20 second sketch of where things are. After a few dozen of those you start to shape up a bit with where things are supposed to go.

[Shook]

Although i'm not a terribly skilled artist, i've learned a few tricks by now:
- Eyes and ears are pretty much dead center on a head, height wise. To help visualize that, you can draw a cross on the head before drawing the face. The hair takes up a surprising amount of space on the noggin. The face-cross applies for anything where you have to maintain a heading, really.
- The upper head can reasonably be approximated as a sphere. After this, it's pretty easy to visualize the lower jaw as a trapezoid shape.



In fact i don't even know if i'm doing it right, but it looks pseudo-decent to my inexperienced eyes. Actually, i think it's better to use an ellipsis to shape the head, since this man ended up with a thunderdome for a head. Oh well, learn from your mistakes. And mine, in this case.
Anyways, my point is that your self portrait is pretty good, but the face is a bit long (unless your face really is long). Probably just the nose, as you mentioned. The lips look fine, except they're rather narrow (again, unless your lips really are narrow). It's a bit hard to tell without the picture, really.

Also, to repeat what everyone else said, practice is gooooood. Experimentation too. Try doing stuff you normally wouldn't. If it sucks, lesson learned. If it rocks, lesson learned! This is obviously easier on a computer, but bear with me, i'm only a pixel artist.