Excercises for a complete newbie

[djmojo]

I'm looking for a kind soul to give me some detailed excercises that can get me started on drawing from the ground up... assume I know nothing and need to learn everything.

for example.

what should I be doing first... a couple pages of simple shapes? lines? really fast sketches or thumbnails of figures?

everytime I try to practice I get discouraged because the task Im trying seems too hard for me, but I dont know where I should start... so I can just say "yes this seems too hard but I should be able to do it" and then move up from there... its hard to explain what Im looking for... but Im sure someone will understand :)

basically I want some examples of what I should do as I progress from the very start... and if you have examples of each one that would be great too... (like if I should do some quick form drawings, what they should look like and what things I should focus on...)

yeah I know Im basically asking for art school in a forum post :) but I believe in you guys :P lol... no seriously, I dont need professional instruction out of this, just things I should be doing as a complete beginner... tired of drawing like crap... need something to keep me busy on those long bus rides.

[Daunting]

Well since you said that everytime you draw you get discouraged because what you think your drawing is too complex at the moment. Start with very simple things. Draw from references simple things like arms or a leg and keep on studying that. And try not to burn yourself out, go out and look at other people's artwork and just remember that all have been where you were and you're just as capable at being excellent as anybody here.

[Chяis]

Try drawing simple cartoon characters, I usually draw alot of my friends in a cartoon form, (sorry I haven't posted any actually but I don't have a working scanner and neither do my friends).

Mine are usually pretty complex but start dawing really easy ones, design you're own style of drawing them too. :hatsoff:

[Diluc]

Welcome aboard djmojo...

I would like to see what you do... so post a cpl of sketches or final drawings that you did in the past... or better some recent stuff...

Well,...instead of drawing complicated stuff I would start drawing just shapes,... squares, circles,... lines,... etc..etc... so your hand gets dirty,... and you get confortable with the pencil,.. pen or whatever... He is your friend... remenber if you don´t get along with your friend... he won´t do what you want... :nohope:

So Good luck, and welcome again...

waiting for seeing something from you...

DiluC

[djmojo]

heh thanks for all the responses guys.

Yeah I try to draw simple things, but I have trouble drawing without trying for detail, and then my detailing is absolutely horrid...

I also heard that I should do cartooning... I used to and I've heard I should do reality first then learn to exagerate it.

Simple shapes Ill do and post those ;) lol but my other drawings, will not be ready for a long time... I know I should post for critique anyways, but I dont like them at all,...

[Chяis]

Learn to draw the outline, (rough sketch) of what you're looking for then go for the detail.

[Murlodont]

I'm something of a complete begginer myself--having no training with this sort of drawing, and it shows in my sketches, when nothing seems to go together correctly.

My largest problem is proportions right now--I'm not even going to start concerning myself with details until I can learn proportions. My teacher has given me advice on doing everything in 'eye width' for the face, and 'head length'/'foot length' for the rest of the body. However, it's not really working for me, so I am going to try a different approach.

I had a simple idea really--to learn my proportions by doing simple lines in the shape of arms and legs, not really going into detail so that they are distinguishable figures, but so that I know which piece of the body is how long and so forth. The outcome is something of a stick figure, but as I'm going for length, it's actually being quite helpful. I'm not sure if this is a great idea though, just a begginer's thoughts.

Stephen

[Mike Frank]

Thing is that art is a big multiheaded beast, sometimes we may just want to practice different aspects of it at a time.

To help your line quality, try drawing lines in different styles - elegant or linear etc. While drawing the line try to make it lighter or darker without picking up the pencil. Try doing studies where you dont pick up the pencil at all. Try setting a bunch of dots down on a page and drawing straight lines in between them.

To start with values - draw just little squares of value in a scale, have it go from 1 to 10 or whatever you want, and try to keep the amount of increase/decrease between the values equal. Also try varying the direction of your strokes and hatching to get different effects. Try doing the value practice using the spacing between strokes as what shows the decrease in value.

For forms and stuff pick up a basic book on perspective and/or check out some of loomis' stuff at www.fineart.sk Practice drawing box forms, spherical forms, cylindrical forms etc. Try to combine the basic objects, like draw a box combined with ball, or box and cylinder, etc. Look around at some things and try to reduce them down into these basic shapes. For instance, put a box ontop of a cylinder and you got a mallet. Or put a couple of cylinders together and make a flashlight, or whatever you see around you.

Sometimes you going to need to push yourself to try and take all of the knowledge you got and set it down and really try to make something worthwhile. Sometimes you going to need to just play around with ideas and see what happens and not concern yourself with the quality of the drawing.

To really understand what you need to do - you need to draw (you can learn all you want but you need to practice) and you need to think about what you're doing and why. Read a lot, look at other artists work, look at the world around you, and then try to translate the fundamentals and ideas down on the page. Look through other people's art here and check out their critiques and try to understand why they get those critiques, see if it applies to your work. Post your art here sometime and maybe we can help you out some more.

[djmojo]

Okay so I started drawing last night, using a pencil with no eraser, so all lines stay... the first thing I tried to draw was my guitar...

the proportions were wrong soo many times, when I finally sort of got it right... well I'll post the picture and you'll see ;)

then I tried drawing my alarm clock and it was turning out well butthen I realized I didnt have parallel lines going, and it looks like one of those non symetrical artsy alarm clocks, lol.

then I drew a random crumpled up sock on my floor (you cant really tell its a sock but it was hard to draw. the sock turned out the best, I guess because I couldnt just "pretend I knew what a sock looked like" I had to draw exactly what I saw, cause it doesnt look anything like a sock at all in that big mess :P)

I dont know if I'm going about drawing the right way but this is the sort of method I developed last night while drawing and it seems to be useful...

draw a line, what ever seems to be the most important line in what Im drawing, then start drawing around it, basing proportions on "eyeballing a comparison" between new lines and curves and the length of that line, and then as I get more lines, I have more to compare with... and it gets easier... is this a good way? or should I try to lightly draw tons of shapes underneith and then do what Im doing now on top? or in this early stage should I not even be worrying myself with these details? and just do really rough 3 minute sketches that look like crap? (most other people have a nice sketchy style I just love, mine is horrible :P)