My anime sketches

[fay]

These are only a few of my things. I'm only gonna show 3 of them so I don't clutter up the whole topic. These are some of my latest things and at that probably some of my best. I like some of my older stuff too though.

If you want to check out all of my drawings you can watch me on DeviantArt. I tend to update as much as I can :). Here is the link to my DeviantArt profile http://link2212.deviantart.com/

With all my drawings, including the ones on my DeviantArt page (in my sig), they have all been done on an A4 piece of paper and using nothing but an every day black pen and a pencil.

As for some of my drawings:

Here was a random one. I just felt like drawing Tails from the Sonic games
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e5/link2212/Drawings/Tails.jpg

This is my newest one. Just finished it this morning. Yoruichi Shihoin.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e5/link2212/Drawings/YoruichiShihin.jpg

This is my second newest one. Toshiro Hitsugaya. This is the one I think I done best. When trasfering the picture to the PC however there seems to have been some marks on it. Not sure how they got there.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e5/link2212/Drawings/ToshiroHitusgaya.jpg

[Ellea]

Aww, Tails is cute. And you're very good at shading. I like it.

[Mimo]

wow is that marker drawn? i like that shine on the pants! very cool :3

[fay]

Haha actually I just used your every day black pen to colour it in. Trust me when I say using a black pen takes hours upon hours.
With Toshiro I think I spent about a good 3-4 hours just doing the black.

With all my drawings, including the ones on my DeviantArt page (in my sig), they have all been done on an A4 piece of paper and using nothing but an every day black pen and a pencil.
I think I should update my original post with that.

[Kyrith_Ranger_Pso]

Woah ur really good especially if ur only usin a pen and pencil

[fay]

Thank you :)

[Waki Miko Syamemaru!]

Pretty damn good fay. I'm actually quite envious of your skills. Just keep drawin babe and like they say, "Kid your gonna go far...".

BTW don't drink and draw. Scotch doesn't help you improve your craft. Thats only for journalists and grouchy authors/editors.

[fay]

Thank you Miko.
Only thing is I noticed you said babe. I'm a guy :P
I can't really got for now though. I 22 in like less than 2 months now Too old lol.
I still need a lot of practice. I only started drawing about a few months ago. Before that I hadn't drew anything since I was about, um, 7 or so.

[Waki Miko Syamemaru!]

Thank you Miko.
Only thing is I noticed you said babe. I'm a guy :P
I can't really got for now though. I 22 in like less than 2 months now Too old lol.
I still need a lot of practice. I only started drawing about a few months ago. Before that I hadn't drew anything since I was about, um, 7 or so.

Protip: I call everybody babe. Guy and girl alike. It freaks some dudes out but I generally do it either for the lulz or to see how a person's sense of humor is.

[fay]

Its alright lol.
After playing PSU for about 2 years with female characters I got used to people saying strange stuff. Even had a few guys hitting on me once :/

[Jared_T]

Its alright lol.
After playing PSU for about 2 years with female characters I got used to people saying strange stuff. Even had a few guys hitting on me once :/

Join the club. :) I had a male character when I first started the game but I deleted him. And my (as well as common) philosophy is if your going to play a game for hours I might as well have something nice to look at. :wacko: Although I'm not sure what that says about me regarding my loli char.

And if I'm going to comment in your thread I might as well say something about your art work. It's quite impressive for a beginner I especially like the drawing of Tōshirō Hitsugaya. But the anime style maybe easy and versatile, but I see everyone drawing in that stile. I recommend that you don't get locked into it and try other styles and media until you settle into your style. You may end up back drawing anime-ish when your done but you will learn a lot in your travel. Just my 2 cents.

Oh! And your not old 22 is still just a kid. :p

[qoxolg]

I agree with Jared on the anime style stuff. If you really wanna get better, drawing real humans will help you. You'll eventually develope a style automaticly.

I am also 22 and still getting better. It all depends on the effort you put into it.

[fay]

Thanks guys.
Any recommendations for what I should try to start drawing?
I did try a real persons face at one point but that just turned into one big fail. I can do shading an stuff but with a real face there is just too much depth to get at.

I did start trying to draw game characters. Its similar to anime but still different at the same time. I'll need to work my way out bit at a time I think.

[Jared_T]

It's hard to pick where someone should start drawing. And I don't think I'm qualified. I however started with comic books as reference, then went to real life portraits, then I played with Anime style and ended back at a comic book style. I try to keep in mind all that I learned through the process, and I am always leaning something with every picture.

So what do you want to know? If you want instruction on drawing portraits we'll help you out. If you need help with proportions and perspective we can help you there too, however that involves a lot of personal taste. And there are a lot of tutorials on DeviantART as well.
(note: when I say "we'll" and "we" I'm referring to the PSOW forum community, however if you want my personal instruction you can always PM me.)

[fay]

Yeah mate that would be great.
When I first started drawing a few months back the main problem I had was getting proportions correct. You can see this easily in my earlier work but I think I've started getting better. One of my latest being Toshiro Hitsugaya. I definitely think I've improved there.

perspective i'm alright on I guess. I think I can still learn stuff in this area.

When it comes to just drawing portraits, I started with that kind of picture: anime portraits anyway. I would really appreciate any help you can give me in drawing real faces though. Getting the general outline shape an stuff isn't too bad. Thing that gets me is that a human face is so in depth. Its all just one big gradient of shades. Though I can easily tell what parts are shaded it just doesn't turn out right.
So yeah if you think you would be able to help me with this then I would be very grateful.

I like to try and keep improving my skills and I know this is a really different area, and a hard one at that. It will definitely help me improve.

Are you on DeviantArt? You should add me in it. I can also add you. Makes it easy to keep track of people lol.
Just for the record. Do you play PSU on the PC or the 360?

[SabZero]

You have to learn to crawl before you walk.

That means you have to learn the basics of drawing (perspective, anatomy etc) before you can stylize people and things. Don't start out with anime or any other style.

Read Betty Edwards "Drawing on the right side of the brain". Do gestures. Do negative space drawings. Still life. People on the train/in coffee shops etc.

For perspective, I like David Chelsea "Perspective! For comic book artists".

Link time
Everything you need to know about portraits (http://www.portrait-artist.org/)
Good digital art tutorial about basics (must read) (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm)

Most importantly, practice, don't mind experimenting (especially in digital art where you don't waste any physical materials, plus you get as many saves as you want). And do use references, that means real things, not comics (or the photoshopped messes that is fashion magazines).

[fay]

lol I must have started off hard then. It was anime I started doing :/

Thank you for the links but are they not more for digital art. I haven't really tried it before. I did do things like graphic editing and creation for two years in college. I was never good at creation though.

I still want to keep my main focus on hand drawing but I might give digital another go. With digital there are so many people who is good at it that i'll never get to that stage though. Hand drawings are always unique :)

[qoxolg]

Of you stand out digitally you will also stand out with pencils and paper.

The main reason why you should learn drawing anime style, is because you'll learn how to draw the wrong way. Anime style has one purpose: being easy and fast to draw for tv productions. Most people drawing anime style have no clue why they draw the stuff they do. They simply apply all kinds of tricks (pointy chins, triangle mouths, square eyes, pointy nose, Etc)

[Sayara]

The best i could suggest about doing a portrait is to toss out any assumptions of what you see. and rather just draw what you see.

Example http://www.informl.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/green_apple.jpg
Don't draw this apple like how you normally would see any apple, (with that curves and stuff) draw exactly what you see, THIS apple.
that concept of "draw THIS apple, not ANY apple" works on portraits, "Draw HER nose, not anyones nose."

Might i suggest yoinking some of those cataloques that come in your sunday paper, (should be like K-mart, Kohls and stuff) and try this approach on them

[SabZero]

Thank you for the links but are they not more for digital art.

No. The principles of visual art are the same independent of medium. The portrait one is all about using a pencil. Please visit them.

I wouldn't recommend digital unless you have a tablet like a Wacom. Using a mouse is counter intuitive and bad for your wrists.

[Jared_T]

Yeah mate that would be great.
Are you on DeviantArt? You should add me in it. I can also add you. Makes it easy to keep track of people lol.
Just for the record. Do you play PSU on the PC or the 360?

No I am not on DA never took the time to set one up. I'm also on the PC.

Nice recommendations everyone. I really like SabZero's as I have read all but one of your references. Will with drawing portraits your mainly doing just what Sayara pointed out. You trying to draw what your seeing, the way you see it. Not just some random picture or pose out of your head. I find it easier and at the same time tougher. With drawing real life portraits I don't need to think up any pose, expression, or have to solve any perspective issues just look at the subject. However you have to make it look as close as your skills allow to the model. Some times when I do real life portraits I take several photos and play with lights, I use the photos if the model is not able to hold a pose for at least 15 min.

[Lockon Stratos]

JAMIE BOY!!! hi.... about the dude who said he goes female characters because they're better to look at... im on his page. (i used to question peoples sexuality but its a scenic view no other reason). About the art, tails is the most accurate but also the easiest. Yoruichi is my fave but i already told u that. YORUICHI FTW!!!!

[fay]

Yeah I think i'll have a look over those links when I get a chance then.
I'll try a real life portrait at some point and i'll post it up so you can see it. If it looks really really bad like last time though then I might forget to upload it lol.

Last time I tried it turned out...strange. Didn't look like a person.

[Jared_T]

Well if the model is willing, than when you upload your portrait include a picture of the subject so we will have an idea of how to best advise you. But if the model doesn't want their picture uploaded we'll probability just go off what we can infer from the pic.

[fay]

I wasn't thinking of just getting someone over and draw like that.
I had planned on asking someone if I can use one of their pictures from Bebo etc.
Is that maybe a bad idea?

[Jared_T]

Nah. If they a willing go for it.
Drawing from a picture is fine. It's no different than you using an anime picture as reference. Like I've said before I used pictures before if my subject is unable to sit still for a long time. Usually because they had to leave or are children. Here is a portrait (http://www.outlawed-sleep-productions.com/images/Gio&Kirsten_1600-1200.jpg) that I did almost completely from photos I was given. It's not my best work but they were happy with it and it looks a lot like them.

[qoxolg]

The only problem with photos as reference is that the photo itself can look quite confusing (like the sitting girl I did a little while ago). In real life you get a better sense of depth and perspective..
Other than that photos work pretty good for me, though it's hard to find photo's with interesting poses, perspective and full body shots.

[SabZero]

Try morguefiles.org - royalty free stuff.

[fay]

That portrait you done is good. I highly doubt I could do anything like that. It actually looks like a 3D image but thats probably because of that background.

That link didn't work :(

[SabZero]

That link didn't work :(

Sorry, I should have checked it. Here it is http://www.morguefile.com/
Edit: WetCanvas has an image library too. Do read the conditions though. http://www.wetcanvas.com/RefLib/

[fay]

I had a look over those sites. Pretty useful for all those pictures.

I have to be honest here. I tried drawing something of that style but its strange. I just can't motivate myself to do it. I think its because its a style I don't really like. All though anime and cartoons style is easy, its something i'm interested in so it keeps me wanting to do it.

Hmm. Ill try again at some point.