Help w/ learning - what to start with, progression etc.

[Phait]

I really don't know where to start. When I was younger I used to just draw, but now I'm at the point where I want to improve and I'm wondering what the hell I'm to do. My main learning priorities are anatomy and shading.

It just seems like theres so much one can do, so many ways one can go about learning the many, many things we can convey in art. I guess I'm looking for a kind of.. schedule or course of things to go through, like 1. fundamental shapes of human anatomy, 2. head 3. eyes 4. mouth... etc etc.

I'm not new to art.. but I'm mostly new to wanting to learn. So any of your thoughts on this would be great.

I'll be looking at online anatomy references that I've found links to on this forum, but I'm starting to feel that anatomy book I bought wasn't worth it :\ blahhhhhhhh *sinks*

[Lev_0]

Hey, there's a similar thread to this somewhere here with some good posts. Focus on learning to draw with structure/perspective more than anything else, read Kchen's threads to get an idea of what he teaches in what order- proportions, drawing simple shapes in perspective. Don't worry about shading for awhile, focus on drawing everything you can including the human body with structure/perspective in line, meaning you're drawing all the way around/through objects to really understand them. Anatomy will help but drawing everything in simple cylinders/cubes will be a lot more useful to begin with. There's a ton of info out there, too much actually hehe. I'd focus on one thing at a time rather than try to take it all in at once, starting with vilppu-

http://mag.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=Columns&column=vilppu&offset=20

Read loomis' figure drawing too at www.fineart.sk but I think you'll like vilppu a lot better to begin with.

http://www.scottmcdaniel.net/ - has some perspective help in the drawing comics section, think it's 1 of the best guides on the net. I'd get a good perspective book if you can though. Take life drawing classes if you can, blablabla do a search on the forum cause there's dozens of posts that ask the stuff you need hehe. Look up all the posts by Jason Manley too if you need some motivation.