Looking around these forums I see a lot of really great artists - people who's talents are without peer. In these same forums, I see people who's passion for drawing and art far eclipses their present ability to express on paper (or computer, or whatever other medium) their visions. If you are already a great and talented artist, then nothing here will be particularly useful to you most likely. But if you are a beginner or would like to learn some techniques for drawing, then I hope that maybe this will help out a little bit.
Depending on time/availability/interest I will go into more depth with more subjects regarding drawing, such as specific body parts, image composition, coloring effects, or even more specific tutorials like photoshop brushes, filters, etc.
When I first started to learn to draw when I was a kid, there was no internet (god that makes me feel old), so there were no online tutorials to look up (luckily today there are many great ones!) So my journey began with Marvel's "Learn to Draw X-Men" book. I was obsessed with superheros at the time - instead of doing my tests in school, I drew pictures in the borders. This book showed me step-by-step how to draw Marvel-esque characters, or at least showed me the basic fundamentals of it. A little later on I got a "How to Draw Manga" book. Although a very different visual style, the basic fundamental steps were identical!
The more styles I looked up, the more I learned that almost no matter what style you want to draw, there was a basic fundamental foundation behind all of them that can be applied. In college I took an art class for fun and lo-and-behold - they taught the exact same principles that I had learned from my drawing books as a kid.
And now onto the guides:
#1: The Stick Figure
Spoiler
So for this first little guide, I am going to start with showing the power of the stick figure.
Yep, all those X-Men comic characters, manga characters? All of them started their life as a wee little stick figure. The concept behind this is simple: you can quickly and effortlessly layout the pose, action of the figure you want to draw in about 20-30 seconds. Don't like the pose, or not what you had in your head? Take 5 seconds to change it, instead of wasting a lot of time drawing a picture to come to the same conclusion.
Here is my example stick figure to start with:
Very basic. It is a crude representation of the pose I want for my picture and the rough anatomy of the figure. You can scale the anatomy however you want to fit whatever style you want to represent. I want to go for a slightly more "normal" look, not overly stylized. I like to use circles for the various joints of a character, and everything else is pretty much just quick, loose lines. This took about 15 seconds to whip up using the mouse on my computer. You should not spend much time on this.
The next step is a little bit more involved. My drawing books I had referred to this as "adding pipes", this is where you draw basic shapes to start representing the anatomy of the figure. Here is my example, drawing on top of my stick figure:
Everything is still very loose, very quick. The drawing is 90% cylinders and circles, nothing fancy, but it gives the idea of what I want from my drawing, the proportions, the pose. From the "pipes" I can now tell it is a female character, whereas the stick figure did not lend itself one way or the other. This process only took about 2 or 3 minutes, still using the mouse on my computer. This is still a step you don't need to spend much time on, just get the basic shapes in there and move on. Practice makes perfect!
So after the "pipes" is where you start to refine the drawing and turning it into what you actually wanted to make in the first place. The stick figure and pipes are just there as visual guides for you to go over. So with that in mind, I started drawing the clothing for my character and adding a little bit of detail on top of the stick figure and pipes:
With those detail in place, I have a really good idea of what everything is going to look like. From this point on, the rest of the drawing is just filling in the details. I am not going to go into coloring or anything at this point since this first guide is meant to just provide the very basic concept of using a stick figure to create your character. When you have been drawing for a long time, you might not need to sketch out stick figures and pipes anymore, but for a lot of people the stick figure is an excellent guide to work with.
The most important part of drawing though is practicing. My art teacher had us do 50-100 stick figure sketches very fast and very loose in a variety of medium (ink, charcoal, graphite) just about every class. When it came to drawing live models in class, being able to quickly sketch a quick stick figure outline of the model was an essential skill to have because the model would change poses every 5-10 minutes.
Yep, all those X-Men comic characters, manga characters? All of them started their life as a wee little stick figure. The concept behind this is simple: you can quickly and effortlessly layout the pose, action of the figure you want to draw in about 20-30 seconds. Don't like the pose, or not what you had in your head? Take 5 seconds to change it, instead of wasting a lot of time drawing a picture to come to the same conclusion.
Here is my example stick figure to start with:
Very basic. It is a crude representation of the pose I want for my picture and the rough anatomy of the figure. You can scale the anatomy however you want to fit whatever style you want to represent. I want to go for a slightly more "normal" look, not overly stylized. I like to use circles for the various joints of a character, and everything else is pretty much just quick, loose lines. This took about 15 seconds to whip up using the mouse on my computer. You should not spend much time on this.
The next step is a little bit more involved. My drawing books I had referred to this as "adding pipes", this is where you draw basic shapes to start representing the anatomy of the figure. Here is my example, drawing on top of my stick figure:
Everything is still very loose, very quick. The drawing is 90% cylinders and circles, nothing fancy, but it gives the idea of what I want from my drawing, the proportions, the pose. From the "pipes" I can now tell it is a female character, whereas the stick figure did not lend itself one way or the other. This process only took about 2 or 3 minutes, still using the mouse on my computer. This is still a step you don't need to spend much time on, just get the basic shapes in there and move on. Practice makes perfect!
So after the "pipes" is where you start to refine the drawing and turning it into what you actually wanted to make in the first place. The stick figure and pipes are just there as visual guides for you to go over. So with that in mind, I started drawing the clothing for my character and adding a little bit of detail on top of the stick figure and pipes:
With those detail in place, I have a really good idea of what everything is going to look like. From this point on, the rest of the drawing is just filling in the details. I am not going to go into coloring or anything at this point since this first guide is meant to just provide the very basic concept of using a stick figure to create your character. When you have been drawing for a long time, you might not need to sketch out stick figures and pipes anymore, but for a lot of people the stick figure is an excellent guide to work with.
The most important part of drawing though is practicing. My art teacher had us do 50-100 stick figure sketches very fast and very loose in a variety of medium (ink, charcoal, graphite) just about every class. When it came to drawing live models in class, being able to quickly sketch a quick stick figure outline of the model was an essential skill to have because the model would change poses every 5-10 minutes.
If there are any specific areas of drawing, coloring, composition, photoshop, anything else that anyone might want to learn more about, please feel free to let me know. I welcome any questions as well. Hopefully this info is of some help to someone :)
