Frustration PLEASE HELP

[Dre_o]

I have become frustrated, as the title implies. Recently, I have received many great ideas for help and inspiration and I am thankful for them all. The problem is my drawing style and the style of these suggestions are tending to clash, leaving me with confusion and discord.

My style of art, at least at its current evolutionary point, tends to make me have challenges drawing proper perspective and multidimensional depth. Tingle has said the bodies of my characters lack depth, this is an example of what I'm talking about. I also have extreme trouble coming up with good foreground and background which leaves me with a mostly blank piece of paper which is never good.

It is not that I would not love to follow peoples links to websites that would give me huge amounts of help and pop-ups that would help me in the end; the problem is I would rather talk to a person who could give me advice and analyze my art. I find it easier to learn when I have live help.

Again, let me assure those who have helped me so far that you have done a good thing and assisted me forward but this is A CALL FOR EXTREME HELP. Also, keep in mind that I have knowledge of the basic workings of perspective, body ratio, shading, and the other basics. What I need is advanced help. Someone or somebody who is willing to take an apprentice shall we say.

In the end, my objectives are simple; first, and most important, I want to make myself better. Second I want to provide better products for the people here on PSOW and everywhere else I feel like showing them. If I can accomplish these objectives, everyone will benefit but, the only way I can accomplish these goals is if someone or some people will step forward to help me in this time of frustration.

If you will do me the honor of helping me, Please contact me in any way you please.

Dre_o

[Sayara]

Ok.
Practice.
Draw from magazines, books, anythings.
Refer to guides of human anatomy/proportion/perspective
or take the respectful class.

Nobody can sit down and tell you how to do it. You just got to go and do it.

[rena-ko]

indeed.
just never stop drawing. scribble away in every free moment you have. all sorts of things.

[Skorpius]

Ok, here's the cold honest truth, you may not like. Your drawing style isn't a style yet. It isn't evolutionary. It closly resembles ancient Egytian wall paintings, except your bodies are foward-facing, and you use two eyes. Practice the basics of drawing first, and build yourself, instead of freaking out.

Everyone is saying 'yeah yeah keep going', but I'll be the one to say STOP. Take an art class or two, then start again. If you don't want to do that, find your art teacher(s) and ask for book reoomendations, I'm sure your schools library would have at least one book.

When school was split from one core class to several classes per day, I chose art classes as my electives. 7th and 8th grade, I took Fundamentals 1 & 2. High school was the same: Intro to Drawing, Drawing 1, Drawing 2. There are a lot of things that have to be kept in mind when drawing something, it's difficult to give you all of that without giving you lessons for a month.

With that, the only other pieces of advice I can give you are these:

- Don't be afriad of messing up your drawing.
- Shadows are DARK, so make them DARK.
- Men are squares, women are hourglasses.
- Use images of the muscular system to study human anatomy. Some of the best drawings of human figures, before photographs, came from doctors.
- Learn about light, and light sources. Lighting is tricky, study it to learn how it behaves.
- Practice with non-human figures. The human body is one of the most difficult things to draw.
- Keep learning, and never give up.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Skorpius on 2005-11-22 11:59 ]</font>

[Neith]

Whenever I get bored, I tend to just draw. I draw anything- doesn't have to be a PSO character.

What Id suggest is take a breather, and go have a look at different styles- whether accurate muscular drawings as Skorpius has mentioned, even super-deformed art.

After having a look through some varying styles, I'd recommend just having a quick (and I mean quick) go at sketching similarly. Once you've had a go at a few, you might find that a particular person's drawings have certain details you want to use.

Most artists have a unique 'print' in their drawings- to understand what I mean, go look at some manga comics, if you can get access to some. Take something like the human eye, and look at how many different ways it is drawn, depending on the artist. Experiment with a few, and you might find some are easy to draw, and choose to use a similar design in your future drawings.

I would really recommend getting some anatomy pictures/books, whatever. Some of these books have incredibly detailed, but more importantly, accurate drawings by the load.

You may even wish to draw parts of the body individually, get practice on each part, and then slowly try and bring them together. It sounds strange, but try and watch people when they're idling around, watching TV or something. Say you wanted to draw expressions, draw quick sketches of the shapes the face can make.

Other than this advice, I'm not sure what else to say, apart from practice. Practice, but don't overdo it- you don't want to discourage yourself, or bore yourself of it.