#im not sure if you were expecting a tutorial ?? on how to stylize things? or just like a generic how to draw

[popfizzles]

Hey, I've asked this question before but I will ask again. How did you learn to find your art style? Like how did you learn to draw?

<:)? I don't know what kind of answer you're expecting, since my answer is usually mostly the same each time someone asks!!

I drew bad for a long time!! I continue to draw bad!

Every time I try to draw something new I've never drawn before, it's bad the first few times. That's just a part of the process.

And then, I do research online, look at reference images, look at other artists and see how they choose to tackle things, learn and then adapt to a style that I prefer better.

I practice. I draw every day. I beat my head against the wall until something looks sort of presentable.

Don't forget, each time you see a post by me, that art is just one single successful attempt at drawing compared to the 15+ sketches that weren't good enough to continue.

Sorry if this isn't what you wanted to hear 😅

[same-side]

hiiii! i just wanna say, i adore your art. second, im teaching myself to draw and while i can draw simple basics (mouths and sometimes eyes if im lucky), im still a beginner. ive watched many art videos and im still a bit confused on wtf im doing. so i just came here to ask if you had any words of wisdom for beginners? could be anything from what tablets to buy to simple mistakes to avoid. ive read some of the other posts here and have found it all extremely helpful so far! Thx for all you do!!

Hey there! Thank you so much!

I would put a read more but tumblr is broken. I’m trying to cover a lot of varied thoughts in little points, so if there’s anything you would like me to elaborate on or otherwise have questions on, feel free to shoot me an ask or dm me!

General

I think the biggest thing to remember is not to compare yourself extensively to others. A little bit of comparison is healthy... But too much will destroy your confidence, motivation, and take the fun out of art. Particularly if you are comparing yourself to someone older than you (life experience and coordination come into play here) or that has been drawing much longer (practice). 

Additionally... If you’re not having fun (and you’re not getting paid to do it), don’t force yourself. If you find yourself being frustrated or bored with art, don’t force yourself to do it. That’s how you burn out and get art block! This applies to parts of a peice, too! If you don’t feel like drawing a face or a hand today? don’t force yourself to finish it. Come back to it later when you aren’t as frustrated or are getting better results. Even if its a week or a month from now. Honestly, at any given time I have probably ten headless bodies in my drafts. That’s okay! I just come back to them when I’m ready to do the face. And don’t be afraid to abandon something if it doesn’t feel right!

Something that also doesn’t get said enough.... take care of your body! I never knew when I started art, but artists are supposed to do warmup sketches and stretches and muscle exercises! I didn’t do any of this, and i went through a period of a few months where I was drawing for 5ish hours every single day. I developed carpal tunnel from it! So remember to take care of yourself. Take breaks, stretch, remember to eat.

Practice

Practice!!!! Even if its just for fifteen minutes every day. Or twice a week. But if art is something you really want to get good at, you have to put in the time and effort!! You can’t expect to draw an hour per month and be on the same level as someone who draws an hour a day!

I know I say this a lot but I think the biggest thing is just reference! If you don’t know what something looks like, look at a picture of it when you draw it! To go hand in hand with that, though, don’t just copy what you see! Learn from it and apply it! So take, for example, a shoe! pay attention to the way the heel is shaped, the location of the eyelets for the laces... how large the toe is, how steep the top! While you’re at it, look at other styles of shoes as well, and compare them! See what makes it look like a boot versus a trainer! And then the next time you draw it, hopefully you’ll remember all the things you learned the first time around!

I do lots of studies that serve no purpose other than to teach me things! I use referencing/studies to learn about color theory, shapes, and anatomy in a real environment. For example, hands or fabric folds! Oftentimes I’ll do them timed (20 or 45 minutes) so that I don’t fixate on perfecting things, just on the process itself and what I can learn from it. This also helps with getting better acclimated to your software and more coordinated with what you’re doing. Repetitive learning, like with playing sports. 

I’ve realized a lot of people don’t quite understand what a study is? Basically you just look at a photo and try to replicate it so that you can learn about lighting or color theory or textures or anatomy or whatnot. So here’s an example of a timed study.

Additionally, don’t avoid!! We, as humans, have a tendency to avoid things that make us uncomfortable or are difficult. But it will make you a better artist in then end. When I first started, I absolutely hated doing fabric. I felt like I wasn’t good at it. So instead of avoiding drawing clothing, I sat down and did studies and sketches of different kinds of fabric. By the end of this learning period, I became comfortable with it and grew to enjoy it. These days, I adore sketching clothes, and it’s why my pants and shirts and things tend to be detailed instead of stylized in line art. If you don’t like drawing hands because you feel like you aren’t good at it? Sit down, look at a bunch of pictures of different hands, and practice it. By the end, you’ll be more comfortable, you’ll have learned something. Even if you feel like the drawings you ended up with aren’t good, you’ll still have learned, and that’s what matters!

Style

I worked on basics before I tried to develop a style. I made sure to start with a very realistic method at first, so that I could be sure I understood how fabric folds, anatomy, and realistic expressions worked before I tried to stylize them. I think in the long run this approach really paid off for me. It also allowed me to be conscientious of what elements I was absorbing into my artwork. I hear from so many artists that they started drawing when they were younger and into anime or cartoons or things like that, and tried to emulate it. Because those styles became so ingrained into their artistic skillset, it becomes near impossible to iron out those influences and get rid of them later. So starting with realism is a way to ingrain proper anatomy and other good practice into your artwork.

One way to develop style is to take a look at the artwork of someone you admire, and try to list out the things you like form their style - perhaps the thickness of their lines, or the way they do eyes. Do this with several artists, take all those little details you like and try them out! See if you enjoy using them in your own drawing process! Think of it like a grab bag or a pick-n-mix, sprinkling in the elements you like here and there to create something new and your own - not just copying another artists style word for word.

Don’t worry too much about it though; don’t allow yourself to become anxious or fixated on “achieving a style”. Its a natural ever evolving process that comes with time and practice. I know a lot of people get hung up on style, but just take it one day at a time!

Also try to keep in mind what style you’re going for as you begin drawing. And I don’t mean that like sailor moon vs. ghibli. I mean that as in, is this piece going to be a painting, a lineart, a lined painting, cell shading...? It will help you in the longrun if you narrow down the broad kind of style you use, and refine from there. 

Workflow

My workflow for paintings is very different from my workflow for lineart and cell shading. A full tutorial on how I do paintings can be found here! A process video for how I cell shade can be found here!

Everyone is going to have a different method that works for them! You just have to experiment and find out how you like to draw! For me, personally, I use color blocking for painting (see the tutorial above) and a spine method for lineart. How the spine method works is that I will draw lines that represent the legs, arms, back, etc. so that I can determine the placement, length, and composition. From there, I’ll add a dark outline that actually shows the shapes of the body. Then, I’ll use thinner lines to add details. This is the method I’ve found that works for me. Another commonly used method that I’m sure you’ve seen is representing body parts with cylinders and cubes. There are lots of good tutorials out there on breaking down bodies into shapes like this!

Something that I do is if I’m not quite happy with a part of a drawing, I don’t just erase it. I duplicate the layer so that I always have the original copy, and then I make changes from there. Sometimes I can end up with five or six different versions of the same arm or face that i’ve made minor changes to. And then I compare and pick the one I like best, or condense all the parts I like from each version to make a “best” version.

Tools

Currently I use Procreate and the standard Ipad with Apple Pencil. Prior to March I was using a Wacom Bamboo Touch and Photoshop Elements 2008. I find its harder for me to do full paintings in procreate, but its made my life a million times easier for lineart and cell shading. The pen pressure is phenomenal, and I also adore that its wireless / active screen instead of plug in like the wacom. The programme itself is intuitive and easy to get the hang of; it simply lacks a lot of the neat tricks that photoshop has, like rendering (lens flares, for example), gradients, and gradient maps. Try testing out different trials of programmes... firealpaca, photoshop, autodesk, whatever it may be! What works for me may not work for you!

[thedappleddragon]

two in one because I fell asleep lol

ball state visit day!! I kept having dreams about sleeping in too late and not getting there on time, and the whole dream was tinted in shades of brown. (also I want to mention before I forget that the night before, I had a nightmare about a life sized spring trap living in the corner of my room that would walk towards you and attack like a slow weeping angel unless you stared at him with yellow glasses on. he went from terrifying to being my boyfriend for a moment and then back to terrifying before I woke up. I'm glad I have a desk in that corner of my room so I KNOW its impossible, even in a half-asleep headspace.) but I got up with plenty of time to spare, showered, washed my hair, had breakfast, gathered my things, and we were off! we left a lot earlier the I expected because my mom wanted to drive around campus and see what it was like and bring my sister along. the drive was pert straightforward until we had to take a bunch of weird directions to actually get on campus. we drove around looking at all the buildings (LOTS of brick, huh) and peeking into a couple of them. my sister and I walked through the woods a little bit, looked through the bookstore, and looked some of the photography pieces in the halls. eventually it got closer to the time my friends agreed to meet up, and I anxiously waited for them to walk up. thankfully they both arrived at the same time and my mom razzed my friend SO HARD for looking like a skeleton of a man while the doors/windows of the car were still closed. I got out of the car and we walked around the art museum for a while before they closed. there was a pop-art exhibit upstairs and a LOT of religious and abstract and historical stufff downstairs. they were closing really soon so we headed put and walked around campus and talked and warmed ip to each other since were had to be really quiet in the museum. we walked through some buildings and talked about classes and campus until we got to the bookstore building with the food court. I had actually been there a couple of times for jazz band competitions over the years in high school, but I was still a bit of a nervous wreck trying to navigate it lmao. but we had a nice lunch and I ate too fast and got hiccups for the rest of the got dang day. my friend paid for my lunch which was very nice of her, thank you friend :> after lunch we toured the rest of the building where my art classes would be next year. we walked into one room and someone left some BEAUTIFULLY stylized cartoony drawings that I found really impressive. after that we headed off to the dorms where they gave me a mini tour and we played an INTENSE game uno flip. then another, where we did shitty accents at each other and accused each other of being homophobic/abelist (JOKING, OBVIOUSLY. 2 of us are queer and 2 of us are neurodiverse so its fine lmao) and after uno we play a little whiplash until skeleton man had to go. he promised to play Stardew valley with someone else at 9. I had asked my mom to pick me up a little before nine, but unfortunately she had some trouble with directions and we had to spend a while walking around outside trying to figure out where the FUCK she was. we eventually found her lol. my mom and I drove home and talked about my day and got Burger King. I ate too much and got too full and had to lie down when I got home oops. I think I went to bed a little early 

and as for today, it was really nice and relatively uneventful. I woke up early after some tossing and turning and apparently taking off my sweatshirt in the middle of the night?? somehow??? since the weather was so nice I spent a lot of my time outside with my cat :) my sister talked me into going to goodwill, and while at first I didn't want to because looking through shirts at goodwill is boring, I went anyway because we would go to dollar tree afterwards. we took the car because we were in the main road less than 30 seconds and it would have been too hot to comfortably walk. it felt really freeing to just be able to drive somewhere! going to goodwill was actually a lot nicer than I thought it would be; it felt nice getting out of the house, although I now realize I had just been out all day yesterday?? meh. I kind of enjoyed filing through shirts with her until I got really hot under my mask. I wanted to check if they had any yarn grab bags, but to no avail. so we walked into dollar tree looking for snacks and possible art supplies. my sister lead me around a corner, and apparently they had rearranged the store a little because all the art supplies were on one wall!! I was actually pretty surprised at their selection of stuff; there were KNITTING NEEDLES! and chalk markers! but most importantly they had Y A R N! and pretty ok quality yarn, too. very nice cute pastel colors, so I had to buy one small skein of each of the six colors. earlier today I had seen a tutorial on how to crochet fairy wings from a wire frame, so that morning I took an old beat up pair of wings my sister and I had and stripped off the feather boa border and out away the pantyhose material in the middle. one wire popped out of place, so I gotta figure out how to fix that before I can continue. but after our shopping, we sat in the car and chilled. listening to musoc and I ate the cheezits I bought. we drove around a little bit, circling around the park once, and returning home, making sure to leave the car how we found it so dad wouldn't notice that we borrowed it. shhhh, secret mission. I changed into shorts, and we both laid outside in the backyard to enjoy the sun. my sister took the trampoline and I took the hammock. Lily came and hopped onto my lap for a while, and I pet her and did my best to shield her eyes from the sun. I almost fell asleep lol. eventually the house blocked the sun, so I went inside and stared making a frozen pasta thing. I split it with my sister and it was really good. I played some stardew valley, taking breaks to stretch my legs n stuff, but quit when I accidentally died in skulll cavern trying to get to level 100. I think I'll have to wait for the best luck day to do it, because I wasn't making great progress anyway. I'll just redo that day. anyhow I showed my dad the yarn I got (telling him my sister and I walked there), had some ice cream, brushed my teeth, and now im laying in bed with my cat, a fan on, and my window cracked open to hear rolling thunder from a nearby storm <3