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drawing-prompts-ideas · 3 days ago

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"You have to learn anatomy before you can develop a style"

I focused on drawing for fun, not necessarily accuracy since a young age. Overtime, I naturally picked up basic rough anatomy, though it wasn't perfect, and still looked OFF if you were experienced. But it was definable, and not horrible, even looking back at it years later.

My style developed long before I actually put any real effort into learning anatomy.

And even then, rarely have I sat down and strictly focused on learning anatomy or any . I think I've done it 3 or 4 times for full-body anatomy, and a handful of times for various things I continued to struggle with and wanted to improve.

I sat down to learn feline anatomy after drawing almost exclusively cats for years because I recognized that I had places where I could improve and to help me learn better posing.

I sat down and learned various mythical beast anatomy because I got really into fantasy and wanted to draw the characters I was writing about. This was still after previously only referencing artists whose style I liked the depictions of those creatures. Despite being decently happy with my art, I wanted to make things more accurate and characters more recognizable.

I sat down and learned human anatomy because of wanting to do fanart for Undertale, which has a multitude of humanoid characters. But yet again, I was drawing these characters before then. This was the most extensive anatomy study I did, as I had never focused on humanoids before, and while I had been drawing anthro characters for a while, human proportions, heads, and limbs were huge struggles.

I sat down and learned anatomy for digigrade and partial-digigrade legs, hands, facial dimorphism, equine attributes, cervine attributes, and other various things I noticed I still struggled with and wanted to fix and felt ready to work on.

I sat down and learned body language, dynamic posing, facial expressions, clothing folds, hair, and other various things that weren't necessarily anatomy based in the same manner.

I didn't push myself to learn just because I felt I should. I dove into learning once I already had a basic understanding of each thing. The one time I DID push myself due to feeling like I should, it greatly discouraged me, as I didn't even have the basic understanding yet, so references and advice did next to nothing other than make me feel like a failure for not understanding them.

Overall, the best advice I can give anyone who is learning to draw or already considers themselves an artist is to keep that 5-year-old attitude of "I'm so good at this!"

With that attitude, seeing better artists' work you like makes you go "My art is awesome, but they're better!" rather than "My art sucks, their's is so much better." A small difference in phrasing, but a huge difference in motivation.

The first starts you off with pride and confidence in your work, and seeing artists you look up to helps motivate you to improve. Your self-pride and confidence are necessary because it gives satisfaction every time you improve, but doesn't let criticism hit too hard. "This drawing is awesome! Even if I did mess up this part a bit." It gives you a more accurate view of where you need to practice more.

The second has you having little to no pride or confidence in your ability, so seeing artists who are better than you discourages you from improving. Being too ashamed and perfectionistic about your work is a huge detriment because even when you can see improvement, it's never good enough. "I got a little better, but I won't ever be as good as them." It tends to end up with people burnt out due to pushing themselves to learn what they aren't ready for yet, lack of motivation to draw at all, and avoiding looking at art at all to prevent themselves feeling bad about their own art, and therefore slowing the very improvement they want.

artist friends: what are some art tips youve been given/have given that you now think are unhelpful/provably NOT true? for example - 'don't shade with black!' is one i used to tell people, until i realized its completely possible to do so successfully in diff styles

also - this is the tutorial that explained shading with black to me in a way that made sense! please check it out, its by datcravat on tumblr!

#art tutorials #art advice

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drawing-prompts-ideas · 21 days ago

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Redraw an OC you made a while back, but have them do something

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drawing-prompts-ideas · 23 days ago

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