Flyingfins----absolute beginner---

[FlyingFins]

Hello.

I am quite eager to get into art, i suppose , realistically i’m hoping i can take art somewhere in my life, like eventually a career or something, but i’m not really to concerned about that at the moment. I haven’t really done anything arty for a while now,

The last time I tried anything was a year ago i think, and they weren’t’ very good, “they” being the digital art I made.


Anyway, I dropped out of college back in the uk due to financial problems, and am now working in Australia, in normal job, I do however wish to go back to the uk to take a course in illustration, but I need to take a foundation course first, that’s what i would do first of all, in a year, go to the uk for a art foundation course.

Good news: I can get into a foundation course quite easily, i done it before. Bad news: after foundation, a illustration course is a little bit ambitious, i failed getting into university a few times, my art just stinks.

So here I am, I got roughly 2 years before I attempt to get into an illustration course, a year before I try for a foundation course. So I have plenty of time to burn, trouble is I am really bad at art.

Sorry about the intro there, so long story short, I’m crap at art, and now I’m starting from the beginning. I’m pretty sure human anatomy is the beginning, so that’s where I’m going to begin, every spare moment i get when I’m not at work I’m going to be studying, i don’t have access to life classes at the moment, I’m going to try my best with Andrew Loomis Figure Drawing and human anatomy made amazingly easy by Christopher hart. There the best resources I have at the moment.


I know I’ve probably bored you, haha, and just one question. Is it vital to learn the names of all the muscles? Last time I tried teaching myself anatomy all the muscle names really overwhelmed me.

Oh, my name is Joseph and I’m 20, so I’m a bit of a latecomer to taking this seriously,

[FlyingFins]

I think i'm meant to be starting with proportions,
wow, this is difficult.

the head just seems, too small ...
this is the first task from the andrew loomis figure drawing book,

i'll keep up with the studies, and post them all in a large post maybe tomorrow, don't want to keep bumping this up just for single posts, haha,
i might get banned,.

if anyone has any tips about learning anatomy i'd really really love to hear them, thank you.

[DigitallyDumbfounded]

Hey. :)
That is definitly the right start!
Get yourself Bridgmans complete guide to drawing from life and all the Loomis pdf.'s and copy the shit out of them!!!
This is hard in the beginning but the best thing you can do is learning proportions and try using the stick figure/mannequin that Loomis describes.
Don't bother so much yet in your diagrams with going straight into the form but draw the gesture first.
Most importantly... DRAW! A lot! :^^:
Try and fill a sketchbook in short amount of time.
Good luck and welcome to CA. :)

[DoubleThink]

Hey there Joseph.

Realistically speaking, in 2 years time, with the proper dedication and that little bit of talent you won't even need to take any illustration courses.

What you need to do now is Draw Draw Draw.

There's plenty helpful tutorials on this forum to get you started.
The main thing I'd suggest is to draw from life. Start with simple things like boxes, cubes, balls...

Try and really look at those objects that you know how the object is made up. Take a box for instance. There will always be lines to the box that you can't see (the backside of the box) but you need to be able to see those lines & predict where they're gonna end up.

And if you're really hell bent on starting with anatomy, I'd suggest taking a look at Mentler's sketches. They'll teach you nearly anything you need to now.

So what are you still reading my advice for? Go draw ;)

[FlyingFins]

@DigitallyDumbfounded
Hey thanks. :-)
i had a little look on fishpond, (Amazon for Australia) and found a few Bridgman books that are related to anatomy and life drawing., so I bought them,
should be here soon.:-)

i remember ageees ago , a few years now, i downloaded the loomis PDFs. his great!, However reading from a screen though was very difficult, so i kinda gave up, but not this time, i'm pushing myself to really go through them.

I’m not going to let some computer reading problems get in the way! haha.
when you say draw the gesture rather than form, what do you mean by that? Is that like focusing mainly on the overall thing, rather then aiming for accuracy? i'm very new to all the technical terms.


@DoubleThink thanks for your suggestions,
Drawing from life, i will certainly give that a go, like normal everyday objects and stuff? Working out the major forms? is that ok do you think?
i did a little google for Mentler's sketches .and wow, his stuff is very good,

is there a main site where a lot of his work is hosted, or is it all just dotted around the web?

I found a cgtalk thread where a lot of his work is, i think it’s the same Mentler. http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=290076


Thanks for lending me some advice, here is a some more sketches that I digitalised:

thankyou for your help :-)

[pen-paper-renegade]

Doublethink said:

"Hey there Joseph.

Realistically speaking, in 2 years time, with the proper dedication and that little bit of talent you won't even need to take any illustration courses.

What you need to do now is Draw Draw Draw"


and I agree...i never studied but i draw since i was a child...lol im not great not even medium lvl...but because i draw as a hobby only,it's sumething i just do for fun...but if you study at home and draw everyday i have no doubt that you can acomplish everything you aspire...

not to mention that some cool guys in CA have posted art book links that are really usefull...if i get more time maybe ill read them all xD to see if i can put a little technick into my sketches...

oh and your going in the right direction

[DigitallyDumbfounded]

Hey. :)
When you go through the Loomis books he'll explain how to construct a simple "stick figure".
So, you're focusing on getting the proportions, arm lenghts, leg lengths according to head size, shoulder broadness... and so on, right.
Like this you're getting those proportions down (hopefully ;)) accurately and then you can build up the form around those guidelines.
Draw a middle line for your figures, some line for the shoulders and so on.

You can go to posemaniacs.com and do 30 second drawings.
You'll get the hang of gesture there! You can't be accurate, so what you're going to do is try and make the pose recognizable and the proportions correct with as few lines and as quickly as possible.

That's really a foundation that you can't start using early enough.
! (Really. ;P)

Also get Betty Edwards. And draw from observation don't do any unreferenced studies!!! It's a waste of time at this point because you need to reprogram your head first to draw what is there and not what you think is there.

And if you do this for the next two years you will be able to profit from studying, I think. :)

[FlyingFins]

@pen-paper-renegade.
I'm not drawing anywhere enough, i'm trying to find time, i think as i push myself more, maybe i'll be able to squeeze out more hours, thanks for the advice, and i truly intend to draw as much as i can, :-)

@DigitallyDumbfounded
wow, posemaniacs.com is actually really fun, i ended up laughing a few times, haha; i think i get what gesture drawing means now, no detail, all about the general form or feeling , or proportion of the model, right?

thank you for all your help. i really appreciate it,

heres some more stuff i done. i'm going to just stick with focusing on proportions and weighting, i see no point in moving ahead to muscles quickly, it'll just be a waste of time if i don't nail down proportions,

i tried pen and charcoal in a few, but that didn't lead anywhere, so i'm sticking with pencil again,