#my family is full of artists who always encouraged me but also never yreated me as a beginner lol

[bluravenite]

Hi! So I just got an iPad and Apple Pencil to start drawing with and I was wondering if you had any advice for someone just starting out? I just love your art so much. It can be about just drawing in general or drawing digitally. I've got Procreate on my iPad. Thank you for your time.

Oh hi!! I'd love to help! I've been drawing digitally for about 7+ years now but only started using procreate in August! Art is about continuous improvement!

I'll try to go as in depth as i can below the cut ⬇️⬇️

I would also like to make it clear that i am a mainly self taught artist with no formal art education!! So anything i say pertains to my OWN experience learning and what has personally helped me!! But it may be different for you depending on your level!

(this is a very long post sorry for ranting so much lol i just want to make sure you can actually take away some good lessons from this!!)

At first it was very confusing and frustrating because i was used to Clip Studio with a drawing tablet on my laptop, but what helped me get comfortable was doing lots of studies at first, nothing serious just kinda going through each brush, playing around a lot, drawing portraits of people and doing some life drawing exercises!

These are some of my first procreate drawings i did!! They were portrait studies where i was trying to get a feel for the program.

I do recommend doing lots of studies as soon as you can, do a mixture between drawing for your own personal amusement and also more serious studies, but mainly what has helped me is getting into a hyper fixation (lol it's funny but it's true)

The key to familiarity and improvement is consistency, draw A LOT!! Take notes every time you do something you think needs improvement then note it down and then practice that! but don't lock yourself into trying to be good at one thing only, If something is stressing you out, just leave it and work on something else.

As for drawing in general, it depends on what you want to improve.

I recommend if you want to improve on anatomy, what has helped me a lot is using resources online to practice how you would inside a classroom.

Watch videos on gesture and figure drawing, and google websites that give you life drawing poses (dm me if you need i can share some resources I've used before!) And then try to learn how to do that.

That's what's helped me most with poses, using a combination of gestural and structural drawing

However when it comes to anatomy, that gets more complicated, looking at real human bodies helps a lot, but you also don't need to study and memorize the 7000000th muscles of the body and how they attach to each bone. However, ART IS ABOUT OBSERVATION!!!

Look at yourself in the mirror and make note of how your body moves!! How do your muscles pull and stretch your chest when you lift your arm up? How does your body accomodate the extra skin on top of your shoulder when it's moved up? How does your ribcage stretch and your skin bunch up when you stretch your torso to one side? When you are sitting down how does your body accomodate? Looking at all these things taught me a lot more than trying to memorize the scientific name for the 3rd ribcage muscle that I've never had to name lmao, learning however the GROUPS of muscles can help!! Especially when drawing buff men 🥹👍 they have like 7 different muscle groups in the torso lmao, AND LETS NOT TALK ABOUT THE BACK MUSCLES CUZ DEAR GOD I HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN THAT FAR YET IT SCARES ME🧍🫶

I am also currently trying study more my value distillation when drawing (see picture), that's something i struggle a lot with when working with light and shadow!! So I'm trying to get better at it, (a good YouTube search on value distillation) will give you a good idea of what i mean.

There are very many good resources out there but i will say this!!!

Don't oversaturate yourself with knowledge because it will stress you out when you know all these academic terms and cannot apply them into your work.

Watching one video will give you some information on how a technique works, you can then rewatch it and try to work along with it, and then practice it a couple more times on your own, but don't expect to be good at it, or understand it immediately.

Drawing is about continuous improvement and you never really should stop learning and experimenting.

PLEASE!! if you ever need help with anything!! Do not hesitate to ask other artists!!

@coreyvoss has helped me figure out a couple things and i am sure neither he or i are opposed to trying to help you out finding some resources if you need! I am eternally grateful for Corey's expertise and encouragement!!

I am very proud of you for already taking initiative to want to learn and engage with the community, i am really honored to know that you like my work, it's the only thing i could ever ask for, and i wish you the best of luck in this journey!!! Digital art is a great tool for artists, but remember, you make the art not the other way around💖🫶

Sorry I'd there's any grammar mistakes, I wasn't expecting such a long post but i genuinely do hope you are able to take something helpful from it.