yo here’s a useful tip from your fellow art ho cynellis… use google sketchup to create a model of the room/building/town you’re trying to draw… then take a screenshot & use it as a reference! It’s simple & fun!
Sketchup is incredibly helpful. I can’t recommend it enough.
There’s a 3D model warehouse where you can download all kinds of stuff so you don’t have to build everything from scratch.
reblog to save a life
This is an incomplete tutorial, and it drives me crazy every
time I see it come around.
We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to
a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of,
but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of
using it.
Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:
How do you populate your backgrounds?
Well, here’s the answer:
If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to
that environment.
The examples above are great because they show how to use the
software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of
their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their
environment.
How do you fix this?
Well, here’s the simplest solution:
This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and
comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and
it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that
polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background
and an environment.
Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine),
people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like
there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they
currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.
Your creations live in a unique world, and it is as much a character as
any other member of the cast. Make it as believable as they are.
Other super obvious in hindsight trick that makes people go “Oh shit why didn’t I think of that”, if you’re moving a character around in perspective, just put the same point in their body on the horizon line at different sizes and you can get an idea of how big they should be that close to the camera
so i looked around for something like this but all the ones i found were like HEH SUCK YOUR OWN DICK DRAW YOUR OWN BORING OCS FOR 30 DAYS DRAW HOMESTUCK FOR 30 DAYS DRAW YOUR OWN BORING OCS AS HOMESTUCK FOR 30 DAYS etc which w/e is fun buddy but i don’t find that shit helpful so i made my own that i can do. these are meant to not be super heavy time investments since i have a full time job and i need something i can spend like 2 hours tops on anyway here
DAY 1. paint a BG
DAY 2. draw a figure in perspective
DAY 3. STILL-LIFE DAY don’t go crazy but you know, challenge yourself maybe do something a bit more complicated then a rubber ball in direct sunlight
DAY 4. draw a animal you’ve never drawn before
DAY 5. paint a picture using a limited palette, you can get those anywhere but here aresomesites
DAY 6. draw a figure in: 1 hour, 30 min, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds
DAY 7. put your ipod on shuffle and play the first song it gives you. illustrate that song. if you have a zune get the fuck off my blog you heretic
DAY 8. 2 POINT PERSPECTIVE DAY
DAY 9. draw the same picture 3 times with 3 different compositions
DAY 10. STYLE DAY 1 - pick a artist with a unique style and emulate it!
DAY 11. STYLE DAY 2 - pick a artist with a unique style and emulate it!
DAY 12. STYLE DAY 3 - pick a artist with a unique style and emulate it!
DAY 13. watch a movie or episode of a show that you find visually appealing. while watching draw thumbnails of shots that catch your eye and try to articulate why it’s visually appealing/why it works
DAY 14. paint another BG but it has to be different than the one you did DAY 1 SO if you painted a outdoors scene, do a interior if you painted a tree try some water w/e
DAY 15. do a lineart, then swap with a friend who also did a lineart and color each other’s pictures. if you don’t have friends then make some ok
DAY 16. paint a portrait of your favorite celebrity (mine is adrian brody!!)
DAY 17. do another limited palette picture b/cuz they’re easy and fun but this time after you’re done INVERT THE PALETTE (CTRL + I in photoshop) AND PAINT A DIFFERENT PICTURE whoa
DAY 18. close your eyes and draw 3 random shapes with your non-dominant hand, then turn those shapes into legit draws
DAY 19. MAGICAL GIRL DAY FUCK ok go to here and draw the first 3 you get. i guess you could use any of the other generators but why would you want to?
DAY 20. pick a body part you have trouble with, find a bunch of photo references (or use yourself/a friend that you should have made by now) and fill up a whole page/canvas with studies
DAY 21. 3 POINT PERSPECTIVE DAY
DAY 22. random.org 1-648 3x. gijinka the corresponding pokemon no cheating yes metapod is 9 kinds of lame but do it anyway this is about growth i’m already trying to make it fun quit bitching. if you don’t like pokemon go to wikipedia and hit “random page” until you get 3 animals and gijinka them.
DAY 23. draw the keyframes of a walk cycle
DAY 24. this is a project i did in my intro to drawing for non-majors class (aka confused business majors who need a fine arts gen ed and couldn’t get into ceramics). pick a ancient culture that you’re interested in (aka not contemporary japan you giant child) and find a sculpture or piece of art (3D works best) that really speaks to your heart or some shit. render it as realistically as possible. this may seem odd but it was a weirdly engaging project for me except you have it easy b/cuz i had to recreate it on a 4ft x 8ft canvas in ink and, while engaged, i also wanted to fucking die the entire time (almost 2 weeks) so that’s the feeling you should be aiming for here
DAY 25. YOU’RE GETTING BETTER EVERY DAY DAY! find the oldest picture you have and redraw it for a quick and dirty self-esteem boost
DAY 26. have a friend draw you 3 very rough gestures and then you finish them. if you still don’t have friends you have bigger problems than needing to work on your art i gave you 10 days to find a buddy which is pretty generous i think
DAY 27. pick 3 basic geometric shapes, design 3 characters utilizing those shapes
DAY 28. find a book, open to a random page and draw the 2nd sentence
DAY 29. pick a character (whatever) and draw them happy, sad and angry. be consistent and push the expressions/pose
DAY 30. real talk nobody ever makes it to day 30 i could pretty much say anything here and it wouldn’t matter at all. i’m making this day about me, this is my day, national johre day. draw yourself god tier while listening to really cool music. pretend you are really a god wearing cool pajamas and have amazing powers and are not actually a disenchanted alcoholic woman lost in the financial abyss of post-university life christ almighty help me
