Learning to Draw
Beforehand I want to warn all you readers that I'm not a great
writer, neither am I a good one, so please make an effort to
understand my poor attempt at writting an article...(BTW: I will
refer to my self and the techniques I have adopted, beacause it's
easier for me this way)
LEARNING TO DRAW, AND HOW
As an inquisitive person, the question of education and its
many forms have always appealed to me. Being a person who loves to
learn new things (but ironically, hates school), I have spent
a lot of time to figure out what is the proccess of learning, how to
maximize it, and the many different ways to learn.
Seeing that this article is for the FanArtHQ (plug), I will
be speaking mostly about applying these techniques to the drawing
field. However, I shall also wander into the basis of education,
techniques in learning, what should be learnt, and establishing
schedules and regiments. I can hear you guys snoring, so I'll just
start now.
Note: I know I'm going to get messages from people saying that
I'm wrong about certain subjects. I decided not to write this
text in a neutral fashion, beacause some of the techniques
that insist you follow are in my opinion, the best ones.
INDEX
1. The Basis of Learning, And What You Should Know
2. Adapting The Basis of Learning To Drawing
3. What You Should Concentrate on
4. What and How Should You Copy
5. Good Drawing Habits
5.1 Setting a Regiment
5.2 Scheduling Your Drawing Time
6. Conclusion And Best Wishes
1. THE BASIS OF LEARNING, AND WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The process of adult* learning is accomplished through the
repetitive mental intake of the desired subject that is wished to be
learnt. In other words, if you want to learn something, you gotta do
a lot of boring repetition. Theres no other way to learn, unless you
live in Masamune's world an you've got a I/O jack on your neck.
However, we don't, so you're going to have to do it the hard way.
Knowledge is one of the most gratifying things in a human's life. The
process of learning it, is not. Learning may be fun at some point but
can get very long and teadious at other times. Learning may not
appeal to all, but everyone, to some degree, wants to learn.
* (things learnt between the ages of 3 till dead)
Learn what? Learn a language! Learn to play an instrument! Or
most important to the members of FanArtHQ, learn to draw. Drawing may
be one of the most easily accesible forms of self-expression, and in
some cases the most universal. People say music is the language of
the world, and I sorta agree, cause even if you were buck-naked,
floating in an empty box, you could still sing or play a hambone. But
art comes in a close second. Now without further ado, this is what
you should know about learning...
Learning: Here are some important facts you may want to remember..
-Some good sleep, or at least _some_ sleep...I'm talking
to you Simon.
Scientists, the goofy loners in the white suits,
have discovered that sleeping has more function
than to simply rest your body, it also sorts your
short term memory and decides what stays and what
goes. So if you don't get much sleep you don't have
time to record as much information in your long term
memory, and you wont have much space the next day
in your short term memory.
Here an easier description for you computer jocks
out there. When you do stuff during the day, it's
recorded into your RAM, and at the end of the day
when you turn yourself off (sleep), your CPU tries
to decipher what's in your RAM and whether or not
it's important. If the CPU decides that it is
important it stuffs it in your hard drive, then
continues this proccess until you turn yourself back
on. This whole proccess explains Dreams, some say.
You just happened to tap into your subconsious while
you're sleeping, and you ses a bunch of weird stuff
happening.
-The brains optimum performance and its relation to time
The brain stays at its peak ability when in learning
mode for 15 minutes and after that it's a
downward shute.
Heres a simple graph:
15 minutes : 100% Learning
20 minutes : 90% Learning
25 minutes : 85% Learning
30 minutes : 80% Learning
35 minutes : 75% Learning
40 minutes : 70% Learning
45 minutes : 65% Learning
50 minutes : 60% Learning
55 minutes : 50% Learning
60 minutes : 40% Learning
65 minutes : 30% Learning
(These results may differ depending on the person)
So when you draw to learn, keep it short, maximum 30 minutes.
Do something else, don't insist on continuing. Draw off the
top of your head, do something that doesn't take too much thought,
go take a walk, watch some TV, or play a game. Do something else
for at least 5 minutes to give your brain a fresh start when you
get back.
-Repetition
There are many different factors a brain uses to
decide that something is important and must be
remembered. One of them is fear and pain, like not
touching something thats really hot. But I hardly
doubt we want your brain thinking that art is a bad
thing, so we are going ot use a different method of
learning: Repetition. To remember what you need to
know, you have to see it often, and live in it.
2. ADAPTING THE BASIS OF LEARNING TO DRAWING
"So how does all this junk apply to me?" Well, for
repitition's sake it helps to watch a lot of Anime and read Mangas.
Make sure you immerse yourself into the style. But more importantly,
repeat the copying of drawings you like, but we will get into this
later. Also, some people aruge that the draw better when there half
awake at 3:30 am (stares once again at Simon) and maybe it's true,
but I would hardly agree that you could learn as well at this time,
unless your job is a night, and you sleep during the day. So get some
good sleep. I recommend at least 8 hours, but the least I would
recommend would be 6 hours. And make sure its good sleep, comfortable
bed, cause your back is going ot ache a lot quicker, thus hindering
you progress. And remember folks, keep your learning periods under 30
minutes. Please heed my words, just DO IT. Don't go past this time.
If you don't have an excellent chair you'll wreck your back, so a
five minute break may be a good opportunity to do some good back
execises, or read up on a manga, or just keep on drawing some
doodles, anything that isn't brain intesive. Just make sure your
breaks are 5 minutes or longer.
3. WHAT YOU SHOULD I CONCENTRATE ON
Ah yes, the controversial topic. I will give you a straight
answer here: when copying, get your nose out of that manga and into
any kind of anatomy book. First off, a lot of manga is hideously
disproportioned, "Marmalade Boy" is all I need to say here. Second,
learning how the internal structure works is very important:
knowing the protrusions of bones and muscles, how a head is shaped, and
knowing how to draft an image before drawing it. Of course, I see
people who haven't done it this way and have rather impessive results,
but, I have a feeling those people would be stumped if an occasion came
along to draw a person looking up at the camera while having the
torso rotated 40 degrees and bent another 40. with arms coming
straight towards the camera. And anyway, doing it this way give you
an edge, and a higher degree of critisicm capabilities.
You shouldnt completly ignore mangas either. To take back a
little of what I said, if you are concentrating on drawing anime, I
think you should split learning anatomy and anime half and half. I
wish I had done this beacause, my art does need a bit more of an anime
look to it. Use your favorite comics as learning material, and
this brings me to another subject.
What mangas should you draw from? Your favorite? Maybe. All
of them? Yes, definately. You should copy from the most different
mangas you could find. I copy from Clamp to Masamune, from Takahashi
to Satoshi (RIOT). You should diversify you knowledge by copying from
different styles of comics, even the ones you hate. I'm sure they have
something that you will find usefull later on. This way, you dont
have to worry as much at losing your style, although, personally I
think that losing your style is a B.S. concept. Your style is what
you retain from what you have learned. In fact, you can't lose your
style, you can only improve it. (BAHN: This sentence doesn't make
too much sense because of the double negative. I'd just drop it--So
don't waste too much time not copying, although I don't recommend
always copying either but we will get into this in the next section. )
Although this might not interest most of you, I really think
you should concentrate on every aspect of the manga. You should learn
how to do special effects (explosions, gun fire, riccochets), sound
effects and their relations, text balloon placing, lettering, and most
important of all, backgrounds. I don't know why people don't practice
their background drawings. If anything impresses me about mangas,
it's their breathtaking backgrounds, beautiful mountains, towering
buildings. The essence of manga: iconic characters set in a realistic
backdrop, thus making all the character's expressions seem ten times
more lively and stunning. Learning to draw architecture, trees, water
and so forth can only help you. There's is nothing I hate worse then
seeing a person draw a beautiful girl with an awful looking
background.
I'm not going to cover this subject in the article, but, you
should learn about the beginning of manga and consequently, anime.
Not only is it really intresting, but it will help you in idealizing your
art into a more authentic form. The only thing I can recommend here
is reading "L'Universe des Manga," a french book. There's also
"Manga Manga: The Wonderful World of Japanese Comics," while not as good as
"L'Univers des Manga, " its still pretty good, and its English. Also
you should consult anything that has to do with Hakusai, a Japanese
artist of the 18th century. If you do want to learn more, go consult any
large library.
4. WHAT AND HOW YOU SHOULD COPY
To answer the first question: Everything. You should copy
_everything_ that you deem important in the growth of your art. So if
you want to learn how to draw humans, you should draw their clothes,
their hair and any props that they might be using. Yes, even props.
How else are you going to figure out how objects coorolate with the
human body? Personally, I would advise that you copy more then just
the human body. You should diversify, maybe draw the nature that you
see in the pictures, maybe the buildings. I don't, however, recommend
copying a whole page, as this get long and boring, and a lot less is
learned during the proccess.
How You Should Learn: This part will be more like a gathering
of ways to copy and less of a paragraph, for ease of reference so
that if you should want to try them out they are easily accessible. A
note: all techniques should be tried before deciding on wich one to
use.
(1) Tracing? Don't!! Tracing is like learning to sing
by lip-syncing. Your brain is not even trying to grasp any concepts,
and it's a complete waste of time.
(2) I think the most popular one would be what I call
"straight copying", where you simply copy what you see onto another
piece of paper. Probably the simplest and most effective, but there
are better ways.
(3) Bone reconstruction. This is for more advanced
artists, the ones that know a bit of bone and muscle structure
simplification. How do you copy bone structure? Instead of following
the contour..you reconstruct the image by placing simplified skeletal
form and shapes where apropriate, then you skecth the skin, then you
sketch in the clothing. Thi might take about 3x longer, but you learn
6x faster. Knowing where the bones go, and where the clothes fall on
the body, help when you when your drawing without any visual aid.
(4) Line study.... You do this by copying lines from
an image, but only the lines. The result of a line study should be a
bundle of lines that have no sense. What is the point of line
studying? It helps refine your pencilling abilties. Giving you an
idea of the curves that are used in hair, arms, etc. This should
also be coupled with inking (Pen Nibs).
(5) Pose sketching, is done by taking a pose from an
magazine, manga, or muscle magazine. Then as you lightly sketch in
that pose, you draw something on that frame. Don't copy, just
keep it as something in your mind. It could be completely different than the
person you took the original pose from. This helps you to discover
body dynamics, and how limbs are hidden behind the body. very good for
people who just can't draw people in a conventional pose.
(6) There are many other more complicated ways of
lerning, and if you think they deserve to be put up here, send me
E-Mail at dikudiku@hotmail.com
5. GOOD DRAWING HABITS
5.1 Setting a Regiment
What is a Regiment? It's the process you will take to
learn. An example would be: Copying for one hour each day, then
"free drawing" for another. A regiment should be set up to fit around
your life, unless drawing is your life, which at that point a regiment can
be much more complicated. You may have a regiment now, without even
have knowing it. In any case I will give some examples of regiments to
follow.
(1) 3hrs/Day: Pick a subject you want to learn about.
Do 30 mintues of copying. Next 30 minutes, without looking at what
you where copying, try to draw the same pictures you had copied, to
see how much you retained. Next 30 minutes, you will find out all the
stuff you didn't retain from the original copying, then concentrate
on that. Next 30 minutes, redo step 2. Two hours have passed
now, they will go by quickly. Now concentrate on all the stuff that
you want to adopt, eyes, ears, hands, trees, etc. At the end of the
thirty minutes. Now for the last 30 minutes, you draw a free hand
drawing that's relationed to what you have just been studying.
Usually I draw a full fledged image, but a couple sketches are fine
too. This last part will usually extend past the last 30 minutes, it
does for me. Remember, you can take 5 minute breaks within each 30
minutes, and as long as it doesn't go past that you should learn a lot. A
week of this and I'm sure your art will dramatically improve.
(2) A week's worth: This one is good if you want to
learn the basis of the body. This regiment concentrates more on the
anatomy. For sake of names, I called it the 5x5 weekly regiment. What
you do is, monday, you draw 5 images about the human anatomy,
important stuff like front view arm and the torso, five times. Then
Tuesday, you do the same, but with different poses, like the head
from the side, etc. In that same tuesday you draw from your
mind the 5 drawings you did yesterday once. The day after you do
the same as before but instead of drawing Monday's sketches, you draw
Tuesday's sketches once. So from Monday to Friday, you draw 30
sketches each day. Then on Saturday, you draw them all from your
mind. which is 30 again. You take a break on Sunday, and repeat
it all over again. This one really helps to remember vital body structure.
I have a couple other regiments that I made up, but I think its
better that you make up your own regiment so that it may suit your
needs the best. Make sure to have more then one also, as some
regiments are better for learning different things. Lastly, if you
have a good regiment, please send it to me , I want know what they
are and I will post it here.
5.2 Scheduling Your Drawing Time
Before I start with its relation to art, let me go on
about its relation to your daily life. I personally hate wasting my
days away watching TV, but its so easy to let yourself get sucked
into its mindless drivel. A schedule helped me to stop wasting my days
watching it. If I do watch it, I'm probably doing something else
at the same time. Setting up a schedule will help you maximize your
day....Here's an example of what a schedule will help you achieve.
Schedule your day every morning, scheduling everything right down
to when you watch TV. Let's say you wanted to watch Simpsons at 8:00,
then you just schedule it in. Then at 8:00 you watch it. But if you wrote that
at 8:30 you were to draw, or wash your clothing, then that will stop
you from watching the next show, and the next after that, unless you
don't have this problem ^_^*. So scheduling a time that you
will draw during the day is a really really good idea. It makes sure
that you get the practice you need, and it also gives you a hardcopy of
the amount of work you have done.
Personally, I use two different types of schedules, one is
easier and less hectic then the other.
(1) You just write in on a schedule a regiment that
you are going to use and at what time.
(2) This way is much like going to school. I set up a
weekly course table. So every hour I have a different course (I still
take a break ever 30 minutes). It goes a bit like this:
Schedule for Monday
8:00 - Free draw
9:00 - Copy BackGround
10:00 - Break
10:30 - Multimedia- (Brush, Ink, CG)
11:30 - Copy Manga
12:30 - Lunch
1:00 - Copy Effects
2:00 - Free Draw
3:00 - Break
Now there are a couple courses that are missing from this
schedule. I have 8 courses in all, spread over a weekly schedule. I
only recommend this to the person who has a lot of spare time, and a
strong artistic drive, as it may be hard to keep up to this schedule.
6. USING YOUR NEW FOUND SKILL
Using your skill doesn't really need any effort. You will
find that it takes about a full week before you notice what you have
learnt takes effect. One thing that I urge people to do when they
draw is picture what they want in their minds and stick to that
image, even if the result of the first few drawings suck and you are
tempted to change it. Keep on with your original idea. This way you
will develop a better skill for translating thought onto paper,
which will forever be helpful.
BEST WISHES
This is the end of my article, hope you learned something new,
and that it has helped you in some way. Thank you for hanging in
there, and I hope you do take some of my advice. If there is
something here in this article that you think I missed or something I
should have added, please tell me. Any comments and suggestions are
welcome, and good luck with your art ^_^
Bahn Shirow