I need help with drawing

[Dromond]

I've done a bunch of painting this semester and have been making decent profress in that. However I realised I haven't done much drawing and have found that my drawing skills/style is just not what I want it to be. All through highschool I was told not to outline stuff because it flattens the image. While I think that this is true to some degree, and it let me work more on shading and modelling, my skills in the line departement are super weak. I suck at anything like gesture drawing, and all of my quicker drawings look like a mess. I'm also guilty of "hairy lines." I can't draw one good contour line and stick to it to save my life. This all makes it extra difficult to do concept and from-memory type work. I think I need to become more familiar with illustration and comic-type techniques. Any suggestions on which direction I might move in? I'm rather stumped on how to breack out of the way I've been drawing for some time now. You can look at my drawings (or paintings for that matter) here:

http://photos.yahoo.com/dromond.rm/

[The_Dude_Abidin]

hey man, I checked on some of your work and its not bad. What I would suggest is try to do some line drawings. Simply line. use a hard lead pencil and with out pressing hard sketch in your subject whatever it may be. then use a pen for there on out, ball point, felt , (I like micron or precise v-point extra fine) the finer the pen the more detail. The point is to use ink. In most of your drawings you focus on tone. Focus on the line this time. I have to agree with staying away from tracing because you have to develop your own line quality.make yourself stay away from tonal and just use line. After a while vary the line wieght(thick to thin) to show shadow and lighter areas and just give it some practice.Hope this helps.


The_Dude