[clover]

First I want to mention how excited I am to be at this place... my dream is to become an artist and I'm thrilled to be at a forum full of real artists!!!
Anyway, as a high school student, I guess it's really important for me to draw a lot and practice my skills but I'm sort of confused about it... Like are there any exercises to help me with some observation skills? To become more better in proportions and other things, I just need to draw more??? What would be good advice for drawing?

[ April 21, 2002: Message edited by: clover ]

[wigin]

Welp man.. there's no short cut.. Draw from life .. do some alot of model drawing..
Just practice practice practice.. Study anatomy.. go to the zoo and draw.. DO NOT DRAW FROM PHOTOGRAPHS...

anyways just do alot ...

youll eventually get better... Trust me... Might be hard a first and dont expect instant results...

[ZippZopp]

i actually found drawing from black and white photographs to be very helpful, in terms of shading. Personally, i thought that when i was working with just charcoal or pencil that working from a black and white photo can be very helpful. I had been having trouble drawing what i saw and not what i thought was there. Plus working in just monochrome initially will be a lot easier for a beginner

[Jucas]

I think you should grasp concepts based on life drawing first. Then photo graph work will be much easy, because you have better observational skills.

[Basse_Ex]

Life-drawing is undoubtably the most important skill, but drawing from photographs can't hurt you, unless you overdo it totally.

There are also some good books around on how to draw. For anatomy, I've always used George Bridgemans books. They're good to have as a guide. Just remember to lift your eyes up from the book once in a while and see how things REALLY look.

Draw alot. Draw everything. Don't just do figures or something. Do it all. men, women, kids, ducks, trees, water, aeroplanes, Nissan cars, faucets, cows, houses, skyskrapers, parking lots, lots and lots, shopping centers, horses, maggots, flies, washed-out country singers, telepohone wires with telephones calls from Istanbul, blankets, cups, cigerattes, south-american dictators, chinese gastronomical surprises, etc.etc.

For everything you draw, you will not only become better at drawing that thing, but a little better at drawing everything.

But... Life-drawing with models is the most important discipline. In some ways, it acts as the sum of all the other shit. It ties it together, in some weird way.