Anyone who has any aptitude at drawing will be asked at some point “how do I learn how to do that?”, and it seems to me that when people care to go into a more elaborate response than “Practice all the time” they are usually advising people to read up on a lot of Hogarth and Loomis, and learn all of the fundamentals before they start trying to get creative. I think one of the best pieces of drawing advice for beginners I ever saw was once upon a time on DeviantArt when Modus Operandi’s artist Tish Doolin told someone that if you were just picking up a pencil and trying this drawing thing out for the first time, it’s going to benefit you more to draw things that you have fun with than struggling with dry fundamentals right out of the gate.
Learning to draw is a little like learning to speak a language, the younger you get into it, the easier a time you’ll have with it and the less you’ll remember the uphill struggle it took to get where you are. It seems that if you ask the majority of talented artists when they started to draw, they’ll answer “as soon as I could hold a crayon”. Bearing in mind that most toddlers and grade school children do not have the patience to pore over Bridgeman’s anatomy guides, it’s safe to say that many very talented individuals out there did not get the “proper” start that they recommend to others. It is true that getting the basics down will save you years of mediocrity, but frankly, learning to draw is hard. If it feels like a chore and if you aren’t getting any kind of instant gratification out of it, you’ll probably give up before you get anywhere. Like language, you don’t jump right int the thick of it off the get go. Start simple, imitate, immerse yourself, and keep at it to grow. If drawing sonic fanart is what it takes to get you going, by all means, draw some hedgehogs and work on leveling up to the point where you’re motivated to really get your elbows in.
THAT SAID, it is wholly possible to draw for a long time and not go anywhere. Unfortunately, it’s not just a “do it a lot and you’ll get good” situation, your advancement completely depends on how willing you are to expand your horizons. Without trying to insult anyone or beat a dead horse, take the comic Dominic Deegan, for example
These two panels are drawn six years and something like 1500 strips apart. I am not going to say that the art has not improved, because there is definitely a difference in his balance and structure between the first comic and the last, but it has not made the improvement that you would expect to see if practice alone was enough to make leaps and bounds. This is not meant to be an attack against the artist or fans of the comic at all, just an observation that doing a ton of drawing isn’t guaranteed to alter your approach to the craft (Maybe his personal non-comic related work has changed more? I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, I looked for some but I didn’t find any). If you want me to put my own head on the chopping block, this is what Six years of making a conscious effort to improve did for me. Still a long way to go, but you don’t have to look too hard to figure out which one came later. If you never try to figure out what you could be doing better and expand your repertoire, you will continue to make the same mistakes for as long as you draw.
Anyway, here are some bits of advice I have. Things I learned the long way that might help others hobble down that road to improvement. Obviously this is pretty biased towards cartoony stuff, cartoons take up something like 20 hours of any given day in my life so… well… write what you know, huh? I apologize for how long winded it is, If anyone knows how to do something similar to LJ cuts with wordpress, I’d be all ears.
Draw From Life
This is the cornerstone to improving, there is no way around it. Draw everything, this doesn’t just mean nude life drawing, draw people walking around at parks, draw people in mall food courts, draw people on the subway, draw animals at the zoo, draw restaurants and bars while you’re waiting for your food to come, draw your living room, draw your pets, draw everything you see whenever your hands are idle. I have piles of tiny pocket-sized sketchbooks that I keep on me just for doodling whenever the opportunity arises. Moleskine sells them in packs of three for ten bucks, dollar stores sometimes have little hardcover ones for a buck or two. I’ve gone so far as to rifle pocket-size watchtower bibles out of recycling bins and rebind them with scrap paper from discarded folders and legal envelopes. There is no reason to not have a sketchbook and a ballpoint pen on hand at any given time.
Nude and costumed life drawing is something I really have to recommend as well. I have seen people claim that life drawing is unnecessary if you can just use photo reference instead, but I would have to argue that this is not the case if you’re using the opportunity to it’s fullest advantage. Real bodies show you how anatomy works in a way photos never can. Imagine you’re looking at a picture of an engine, chances are you just see a daunting piece of machinery. But if you see an engine in real life, have the opportunity to turn it around and see what it looks like when it runs you’ll start to understand what’s pushing and pulling at what and have a little more understanding of what parts are most important and why. It’s just as important to pay attention to the model easing in and out of their poses and how the muscles and fat deposits bunch and fold and squish and change shape through the poses as it is to study the individual poses themselves. Personally I don’t have much patience for poses outside the 30 second to five minute range, that’s plenty of time to get down the information that you’re going to benefit the most from.
If you just dive into it and start drawing without any kind of research or instruction, you’re probably going to have a frustrating time. You want to know that idealized figures are eight heads high, the pubic symphysis is the halfway point of the body, elbows come to the bottom of the ribs, wrists come to the crotch, the forearm is approximately the same length as the foot, all that sort of business before you even put pencil to paper. A friend of mine gave me a very useful piece of advice when I was starting out at Sheridan, it really helps you understand what you’re looking at and speed up your progress if you research specific muscle groups and then go into a lifedrawing session paying attention to those parts of the body. Remember, the point of lifedrawing isn’t to make pretty pictures you can hang on your wall, it’s to improve your understanding of how the body fits together and operates. If drawing nothing but armpits and kneecaps for an hour is what you think you need to do to move to the next level, break out the newsprint and have at it.
I know Loomis is a favourite recommendation for artists starting out, but I feel like choosing him as your go-to guy is going to leave your art a little stiff in the end. If I had to pick my cream-of-the-crop anatomy books that helped me out the most personally I’d have to put Human Anatomy for Artists: the Elements of Form at number one with Bridgman’s Complete Guide to Drawing from Life and Hogarth’s Dynamic Figure Drawing as runner ups. Jack Hamm did a book on animal anatomy I’m quite fond of as well.
Structure is Key
I am of the opinion that structure will ALWAYS matter more than proportions. It doesn’t matter if you have you have the formula for drawing perfectly proportioned limbs tattooed on the back of your hand, if you draw joints and muscle groups with a clear lack of understanding regarding how things fit together and what attaches where, your characters will never look right. Conversely, as long as you know how things fit together you can stretch and squash the actual proportions as much as you want and still have an appealing character that shows you know what you’re doing.
Proportionately, this is completely unlike any human you’ll ever see. But it’s structurally sound so you aren’t left feeling like “wah-hey, I don’t think this guy knows his chops…” This applies to just about anything human or human-like from talking animals to sponges, as long as the connectivity and overlap operates in a way that makes sense and reminds the viewer of something real they’ve seen moving around, you’re gold. A short PDF I see bob up every now and then on Disney Story sketching (I’m not going to track down the download and pass on a link for fear of rousing the ire of the House of Mouse, but it’s out there) identifies to this sort of exaggeration as “scale” and cites Composing Pictures by Donald W. Graham as a further reference on the matter. The idea is that you are de-emphasizing unimportant areas and exaggerating the features that you want the viewer to pay attention to. This is really the heart of caricature.
Figure things out for yourself
Tish did a pretty amazing write-up on this over on her DeviantArt Gallery that’s really worth checking out for more of an in-depth exploration of the subject. The short of it is, things will ALWAYS look wrong if you learn to draw them from copying the way other artists have chosen to stylize them rather than understanding how they work for yourself. This really seems to be a hangup that kids who learn to draw exclusively from copying anime or comic books have to get over. You need to think of a character as a three dimensional object sitting in space and figure out how to best represent that, don’t treat them like a composite of two dimensional symbols. People who base their entire artistic repertoire on what they have seen someone else draw will never really understand why they’re making those choices, so everything they make is going to seem slightly off-kilter. This doesn’t just apply to cartoonists, I have heard professional portraiture artists complain that their students just learn the formula to drawing a face, place those features on the head, and end up with something incredibly flat and uncanny valley.
Figuring out how to draw by studying “this is how artist-I-like draws a nose” or “this is how artist-I-Like draws eyes” is a little like playing telephone. The artist has created something one generation removed from the original image they were trying to capture. You drawing what they drew is another generation removed from that. Things can become lost in translation and if you don’t understand why an artist chose to represent something a certain way you won’t be able to move the character properly, apply those conventions to other situations, or alter the idea to suit the requirements of a different setup. THAT SAID;
Reference other Artists
It actually seems a pretty common occurrence that people who want to draw cartoons then focus on nothing but realism have a really hard time with their cartoons when the time comes. There’s some myth out there that stylized drawings are “easy”, so once you learn to make “real art” you can just backtrack and do anything. This is not the case, drawing cartoons, figuring out the right amount of exaggeration and making an obviously abstract 2D representation of something real look like it has life and mass is a whole art form unto itself.
Referencing is not the same as copying as I just finished defining it a couple paragraphs back. Referencing is just studying how an artist handles a situation so that you can decide a way that you might want to approach a similar situation in the future. Referencing is figuring out the hows and why of style conventions, copying is just accepting that they do work and taking them for yourself. Referencing is a tool that helps you make decisions for yourself and grow as an artist, while people who flatly copy their idols at their absolute peak will only ever be just as good as an imitation of someone else. If you spend your life following someone, you will always be behind them.
We are all the sum of our parts, every one of us is influenced by everything we ever see, hear, say, or do. What we bring to the table is our interpretation of all of those happenings, which we try to present in the most appealing or interesting way possible to the best of our abilities. Studying the ground other artists have already broken is nothing but a tool to help us figure out how to look at something from a new perspective, and there’s no reason to shy away from it.
All Art is Self Taught
When I was a kid I learned how to draw through my own trial and error and the occasional piece of friendly advice. Then I graduated and went to an art school and realized that… well… art school is just a venue that saturates you in trial and error and friendly advice. Art is not like math or physics where anyone paying attention to a lesson on how to apply an equation will learn how to properly execute it. Learning to draw or paint is similar to learning a martial art, someone can explain the mechanics of it to you but you won’t be able to properly execute it without the practice and dedication it takes to train your hands to sync up with what your brain wants them to do. A school cannot force you to learn or succeed, you can only ever go as far as your own motivation will take you. Chances are if you learned to draw well enough to get into an art school, you’ve already been working on that self-motivation.
People will debate ad nauseum over whether or not going to university to learn how to draw prettier pictures is a worthwhile endavour. TRUTH! Everything you learn in an art school you could probably find in a book somewhere. TRUTH! Your grades aren’t going to get you a job, your portfolio is what matters! Does art school really make a difference? WELL THAT DEPENDS. Basically what you’re paying for when you go to a school for art are deadlines and connections. You decide how important that is to you. Are you a highly motivated individual who treats learning like a job, lives in an area with a flourishing artistic community, makes sure to be a prominent figure in the local art scene hitting up all of the appropriate conventions, community projects and mixers to aggressively make your name known, and apply for as many jobs as you can find? Yes? Then no! You probably don’t need art school!
My story, I was born and raised in one of the most sparsely populated corners of the world, just far enough south of the arctic circle that we had trees. There is no “art scene” there. Aside from the high school art teacher, I was the “art person” in town. I moved to Southern Ontario to go to Sheridan for animation when I was 17, had my first paying network television job the summer before I turned 21, got hired to work on a prime-time Comedy Central series around the time I turned 22, and had a job lined up working on an MTV cartoon in Hollywood by my 23rd birthday. If I had stayed in Northern Canada trying to teach myself everything and find jobs without the help of any of the friends I made at school, I’d probably still be in Northern Canada trying to teach myself everything. School gives you a clear deadline for when they’re going to kick you out of the nest, so you have a very firm date that you need to make yourself come off as a presentable professional by.
Constantly Challenge Yourself
Around the time I was 15 or so, I saw someone on an internet forum complaining about artists who fill their galleries with nothing but drawings of the same character standing in the same pose over and over again. And it’s true, I’ve seen many an artist in my travels who draws a STELLAR Disney-style animal character standing in a 3/4 pose and smiling. And nothing else. Around that time I made it my goal to quit cold turkey and never draw another character just standing there and not doing anything. It’s easy to become comfortable drawing one thing and put all of your effort into polishing that off, while neglecting everything else, it’s why you see so many people who draw competent 3/4 views of characters fall flat on their faces as soon as they need to draw a profile or back of someone’s head. If you don’t try to draw something, you’ll never learn how to draw it.
Drawing a lot of talking heads and people standing in flat 3/4 views not doing anything isn’t doing anyone any favours. It’s boring to look at, it’s boring to draw, and no one learns anything. It’s not hard to add some visual interest to a character’s pose and it’s a quick way to wordlessly flesh out their lives. Remember this strip from back in November? Okay, now imagine it looked like this;
WOW. THAT’S HORRIBLE. I wouldn’t want to read that comic, I can tell you that. The characters are uninteresting, the body language and reactions make the joke flat and irritating. It was easy to draw, though. If the strip looked like this I could update every day! I don’t know who would read it but boy howdy there would be a lot of it.
It’s really painless to add some personality and make a drawing more entertaining to look at than “person standing in 3/4 runway pose”. These are some sketches I did for people on DeviantArt one month in a stretch of unemployment after I graduated and the economy had just bottomed out where I was doing five dollar internet commissions to pay my rent. Just giving them a prop to interact with or reading a brief description of their personality can be enough to tell a whole story with a quick doodle.
Don’t Hate on Successful People
How many times have you heard someone ranting about how much they hate another person’s art because the artist in question is more popular than they believe is deserved? Because it seems to come up a lot. There are so many variables that factor into a person’s popularity that aren’t “how good they draw” or “how good they write” it’s a complete waste of time to try to cut them down. It’s that whole “Oh well I could do that” “Yeah but you didn’t” situation that comes up whenever people discuss art. From my experience, artists who have great networking skills, meet their deadlines, and are pleasant to work with are the artists who continue to find work. It doesn’t matter how talented you are, if no one knows your name, you’re unreliable, or you always leave a trail of drama in your wake you aren’t going to have an easy time finding work.
As far as story writing goes, really, the simpler a story is the more people it has the potential to appeal to. You have to choose your audience because as soon as you start introducing concepts that make people think, you’re going to start alienating readers. You could craft your deep and moving magnum opus that makes people laugh and cry and feel for everything the characters go through, and it probably won’t get as many hits as the popular gag-a-day du jour. But really, is that the audience you were expecting your story to attract? The people who like to laugh at countdowns on The Oatmeal aren’t necessarily the same people who are going to appreciate the mounting political unrest in The Meek. Simple strips are like potato chip art, anyone can just chew through a stack of them without thinking about it. Big projects are the New York steak dinner of the webcomic world, ultimately higher quality and more satisfying but something you really need the time to savour.
Don’t Hate on Newbies
Everyone has to start somewhere. If you’re out tearing down people just starting out, you’re just being an ass. If you have any measure of artistic talent yourself, you went through those sloppy days too. This is what ten years of drawing did to one of the lead characters in a different comic story I tinker with on and off;
Few and far between are the fledgling artists who can’t improve without some practice and constructive criticism. You don’t have to sugar coat your suggestions and handle them with the kiddie gloves, but telling someone they suck and they should stop drawing is just being a dick.
Don’t Hate On Yourself
Everyone who’s guilty of getting into self-pitying sadness wank-offs, just stop it. Right now. There is nothing more annoying to listen to than an artist waxing on about how much they suck and how they’ll never get anywhere. I think Natalie Dee put it best in one strip where she points out that “all you’re born knowing how to do is eat and complain” or something to that extent. Yeah, I get it, all artists are invariably disappointed in themselves. Everyone sees nothing but the mistakes when they look at their own art, everyone is always measuring themselves up against other people and thinking they come up short and wishing they had done better. The only artists I know who don’t go through that are massively self-important ego maniacs. But honestly, if most people spent a fraction of the time identifying their specific issues and working on them that they do crying on the internet about how bad they are at their hobby, wow, they’d be published professionals by now.
And frankly, if someone compliments something you’ve done and you brush it off by saying you suck, you’re insulting their taste for liking what you made. And if you force them into a situation where they have to wax poetic and fluff up your ego to convince you to accept a compliment, you don’t deserve the compliment anyway. If you feel self conscious accepting a lot of kind words about something you made, don’t just brush it off with “bleh, I suck”, say something like “Thanks! I really wish I had spent a little more time on *insert problem area here*, though”. That way you show them that you appreciated the compliment, you identified your specific issue with the drawing that you can work to improve next time, and you didn’t turn the situation into a self-pity circle jerk.
I think the single most important thing they taught me at Sheridan was not to belittle myself. Sheridan is very much a school made to prepare people to get out into the industry and did numerous lectures on conducting job interviews and building portfolios. Basically, they told us that if you go into a situation saying you suck and apologizing for your work, any stranger without a reason to try to make you feel better is just going to accept that you suck and your work needs to be apologized for.
Bear in mind that being confident does not mean you need to lack humility. Honestly, I am well aware that I have a long way to go. I don’t have the skills of an artist to rattle off the same professional polish on a weekly basis that Boxer Hockey does, I can’t pull off the tangible atmosphere of Lackadaisy or the solid animated flow of the Meek. I don’t render like Modus Operandi or make clever witticisms like Nedroid and Hark a Vagrant. But I know that doesn’t mean I suck, it just means that I’m aware of what I need to work on.
Art is dynamic, it’s exciting because there is always new ground to break. There is no ultimate conclusion, It’s like evolution. There is always the opportunity for your abilities to grow and change.
Discussion (99) ¬
And if all else fails, pay someone else to do it.
Coelasquid, I love you.
Thanks for the article. :)
Much truthism. Especially the two first points I have identified myself: Some people have been drawing their whole life (which is to say, they didn’t stop somewhere in grade school like most people), and it’s clear it all comes natural to them. Myself I started quite late, age 16, and every improvement feels like a struggle (and yes, that does lead to lapses into self-pity), but looking back and realizing how much progress I have made always perks me up.
Further, I’ve seen many people who don’t improve at all, because they stay in their niche. I have a monumental more respect for people who actually have general, basic art skills, and can draw more than one style. With webcomics, I often try to see if they have some general gallery so I can see what they’re general compentence is. For instance, with the No Need For Bushido comic, the improvement in the art is veeeery clear, with better, more detailed anatomy, coloring, shading, layout and dynamics, but if you hit up the artist’ portfolio (just having a portfolio is probably a good sign to begin with), it’s very clear that it hasn’t got better just because he’s been drawing the comic for a while, but because he really tried to get better at drawing in general. Contrast with something like megatokyo, where it’s clear the artist has never broken out of his own, particular and sketchy variant of manga style. Even if you’re committed to a specific style, like anime, you could at least try to try other sub-styles, within that one.
I guess if you combine those two, the message becomes one of moderation. It’s not a crime to enjoy drawing something you enjoy and is good at, but sometimes you’ve got to leave your comfort zone and draw generally applicable things and the stuff you’re bad at.
Greaaaat article… Thanks for sharing your experience.
Depending on the editing view you use WordPress should have a button called “more” above the editor windows. If not, you can add the tag manually.
Thank you very much for this article. :)
Excellent. Agreed on all points.
Man, this article is fantastic, a big “Thank You!” to you.
use the “more” tag
http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/more-tag/
to get similar functionality to a lj-cut
ah, thanks! This will help with my wall-of-text bombardments.
As for art continually getting better, I think Jeph Jacques (the guy who does Questionable Content) has been doing that for years. Just look at the first and last comic, and it’s undeniable. If you read through it all at once, you can see him doing better with one thing or another every two weeks or so.
Also, I really like learning the basic things about anatomy (the forearm and the foot are the same length, the elbow rests at the bottom of the ribcage, etc.) Once I learned that, BAM!, my human drawings suddenly looked leaps and bounds better. Also once I started thinking in 3D, pretty much everything improved. If I were to give specific advice to anybody, it would be those things.
Great article; solid wisdom, truth bombs.
Print it out and take it on your desk. Or I would If I had a printer.
I’m not nearly as good as I could be for as long as I’ve worked, but I HAVE gotten loads better and that keeps me going.
Totally agree! Compare today’s Ctr-Alt-Del with something a person drew in 15 mins: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3378220&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=86#post388285066
It’s like night and day!
I was wondering where those few new watchers on my DA came from. It puzzled me until I checked twitter.
I think what I’m trying to say is that nobody can tell anyone else how to draw, or that their problems are because of X Y or Z. The biggest threat to any inexperienced artist is these exact people: “Draw like I draw. Use my process. Do it like this.” They never offer any opportunities to give the person a chance to learn their own way of thinking. It’s like giving someone a calculator when they don’t know basic math. It’s crippling (and yes that happened to me >:0 fuck you winnipeg!!!) So the advice I gave you years ago (did I really? shiiiiiit man) was more like LEARN IT FOR YOURSELF. Else you’re one of those douchebags who draws the same pose over and over off of a template.
But yeah, I’ll cut this short and go get my DRINK ON (at 11:30am?!) since it’s my birthday, and I’m waiting for my friend (ollylawson.deviantart.com) to get online so we can paint and shit.
IT WAS GUD READING KELLY!!!
OH MAN HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Yeah, you told me that back in the daaaaae when I knew you as Sketchychan and we communicated over /ic/ :P But I was always anon, so you probably didn’t know.
aaaaaaaah my face is going to melt off hearing my old nickname. I did so much damage to all those budding artists~*~*~
LETS PARTY LIKE WE’RE NOT RIDICULOUSLY YOUNG BY ARTIST STANDARDS!
Another reason why I like drawing so much. Always room for improvement. Thanks for the clarification. I may have to direct a few people this way.
i like the ‘What If… Tim Buckley drew MGDMT’ strip
B^Utified MGDMT? Yeah, I laughed too :P
I might just email this to Buckley. Fucker needs to learn a thing or two.
I’d rather you didn’t try to pick fights. Remember, any time you do something related to this page, people are going to assume I was involved.
Thank you so much, miss Kelly. I always love reading your ‘essays’ (you’re a very good writer!), but this is definitely my favorite. This needs to be linked to, everywhere. Immediately. >O
OH AND I didn’t mean to put ‘essays’ in quotes to belittle their authenticity as writings! I just didn’t know what to call them.
Awesome words all around. Every aspiring artist needs to read this. :)
Something that I learned music-wise that kind of applies to the whole Reference Other Artists thing.
It’s pretty simple. There are a lot of bands who sound like Metallica, Helloween, Manowar, *insertfavoritebandhere*. They actively go out and study these bands (we’ll use Metallica as a test subject today) and try to copy their style. They’ll spend hours listening to their records, watching them play, imitating their movement and voices and playing style. They never come close, since in music you can never truly copy someone lest you be a clone from another universe. So these other bands end up sounding like ‘a shitty Metallica.’
What they should have done to sound like Metallica, is not to study Metallica itself but the bands that Metallica themselves studied. That’s why Metallica sounds like themselves and these other bands sound like a shitty rip-off. If you studied what they had studied, you wouldnt be 3rd generation removed. You’d sound much better than you currently do.
Can the same be applied to art? Sure.
Goes right along with “don’t copy but reference other artists’. Whoever you are trying to copy, had their own individual idea and built upon it. You are just trying to imitate them, which will not work. If it did we’d all be drawing cave men style with smeared poop since no one would have had an original idea since…kind of like Hollywood.
I guess I’m just trying to reinforce “emulate, don’t imitate”. Your individuality and outlook of the world (no matter how outrageously skewed it is) will make your work more you. And that’s what will help you improve.
Drawing inside the lines helps too. (BTW Thanks Squid, because I’ve been looking to get into drawing for some time now, but could never find any useful advice til now)
Good post. I’d disagree about art school being all about connections, though. You also learn how to critically analyze artwork and learn about the history to give your own work a greater meaning and context. Yes, you can learn to critique and learn art history on your own as well, but they aren’t things that seem so important when all you want to do is learn how to draw or paint. School provides fundamentals that people don’t realize they need sometimes.
Critical analyzation, I’ll concede, but I count art history as another “nothing you couldn’t get out of a book” thing. If someone is deciding whether or not they want to do the art school thing based on how difficult it is to figure things out on their own, presence/absence of art history classes probably won’t be the deciding factor.
I have to say one of the best things about art school so far for me has been making me do things outside of what I’d be comfortable with.
Yes, on my own I should be pushing my boundaries but it’s putting me amongst a lot of others who can give me ideas on how to do that exactly.
Oh wow yes, this is excellent. I am a self-taught artist and I have gotten where I am by doing exactly what you are talking about in this article. I love that you referenced the book “How to Draw Animals” by Jack Hamm… that book was a huge influence on me (mostly by helping me realize my absolute adoration of comparative anatomy!). My other “Golden Manual of Art Awesome” was the book “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” by Stan Lee and John Buscema. It’s showing its age a bit, but it has all of the invaluable fundamentals of drawing a figure, perspective, layout, and more. Even though I never had art classes, I now work as a figure model FOR art classes. Over and over again, the teachers are teaching all the same things I learned in these books. But even as I say this, drawing from life is unbelievably important. A book can’t show you how skin moves, or light, or the incredible variety present in human forms. It’s very inspiring!
Thanks for this. :) I’ve gotten good at not belittling myself in front of other people, but there’s something to be said for not even doing it privately.
Eeeeexcellent article, most of this advice applies in the very same way to musicians and composers as well!
Oh man I want to stick this to my wall and read it everyday. I was definitely nodding throughout the whole thing, but the part at the end about hating on yourself was a really good wake up call. I get so frustrated with myself so easily, even though I know I’m constantly getting better, by measuring myself against far superior artists. Need to be better about just giving myself a good mental smack upside the head whenever I start, your article was a big help!
Also I chuckled a bit at the art school bit, I did two years of Illustration at Sheridan before dropping out because I wasn’t learning anything useful. God I miss having lifedrawing 5 days a week though.
I did Sheridan for animation right to the end. Third year is very poorly handled, they don’t seem to know what to do with it yet, but ultimately I feel it was worth it. Plus, you can’t get a work visa without that BA.
I feel like Illustration seems to have more people drop out because they aren’t satisfied with how the program was run that animation, though. Most people I know who left our program either did so because it was too stressful or they realized that they hated animation and working in the industry wasn’t what they wanted out of life. From what I’ve heard, it almost sounds like illustration is more “this is how to be an artist” and animation is more “this is how to get a job”. That’s all speculation, though, I’m sure the people I’ve talked to ranked in the more discontent end of the spectrum.
Yeah I really regretted not doing animation, I think it would’ve been much more useful.
The trouble with the Illustration program is that it branches into two streams and both streams are overly specific.
Interpretive Illustration is essentially a fine arts degree and just about as useful in terms of learning. They drop all the technical aspects of the program in favor of “polish your style” aka reinforcing your bad habits. (One guy only painted really stylized portraits of people with animal heads on a 3/4 perspective and refused to do anything else.)
I went Technical, since it was pitched as, well, learning how to do technical drawing with a big focus on basic drawing fundamentals. Unfortunately, once I got into the program I discovered that almost everything is focused on 3D modelling. Which is fine if you want to learn how to do 3D modelling, but I didn’t really see the advantage of spending 6 hours making a fork in Strata, when I still couldn’t draw a fork in any kind of complex perspective.
I think that both programs would be great if they were a little more balanced. Both of them badly needed more time spent on fundamentals. The main issue (I found anyway) was that the animators were pumping out 100 drawings for every 1 drawing the illustrators did, and unless you spent all of your free time drawing there was no way to get any better at anything they were teaching you by doing your assignments.
By the end of the year I was skipping almost all of my classes in favor of staying home and drawing comics and doing personal work, and was learning way more from that then anything I learned in class haha.
>WOW. THAT’S HORRIBLE. I wouldn’t want to read that comic,
Haha and it looks just like CAD! That comic sucks am I right?
>Don’t Hate on Successful People
Oh shit.
I don’t believe I mentioned CAD, said that I don’t understand the popularity of the comic or that I believe his notoriety is undeserved anywhere up there. I just said it looks horrible if you take something that could play with staging and acting and opt to execute it the safe way instead with flat talking heads, bland expressions, and no body language or environment. You’re the one drawing lines to CAD, and you have to admit, for all the flack he gets he is trying to mix it up more these days. So I’m inclined to believe he acknowledges the importance of acting and staging as well.
How plausibly deniable. :)
I know this is an extremely old comment that I’m replying to, but I would just like to point out something that has happened since then. Even though nobody talks about CAD anymore, it still exists, and the artwork has gradually improved over the 5 years since your comment. It is *surprisingly* great now! I guess “mixing it up more” worked out for him.
I find it amazing that he was able to not only push through all that harsh, harsh criticism, but even learn from it and become much better (even though his triumph has gone unnoticed as interest in his comic faded long ago). I would never have been able to get through a hatestorm that in a million years. That man has superhuman endurance and deserves all the praise in the world (but will never get it).
This was a great read. Thank you for sharing this.
This hits alot of key points that I try to maintain while learning art.
I am an aspiring cartoonist and I know well that there has to be a mix of actual knowledge of form and anatomy as well as control of a personal and unique style.
Very inspirational stuff here! Thanks a bunch!
I have to say, this has been a really good read, I’m recommending it to every new/unexpected artists I know, I’m very inspired to doodle more and more, thanks for taking the time to write this! :)
Now I need to stop being a cold turkey.
Forgot to mention, I wasn’t sure what the point of life drawing was, or how to approach it, tons of thanks for the tips! they’ll prove to be very helpful to anyone new.
BOOKMARK’D.
It was a long read, but I think it was definitely worth it.
Thanks for the tips!
Read and loved. I’m bound to send it along to my art inclined friends. I wish I had this back in high school when I doodled all the time. It’s still a good read nonetheless. Thank you for the inspirational words. (and analogies, by the way)
Thank you for taking the time to write all of this good advice out, especially the bits about not being down on yourself constantly, not being cruel to the new guys, and not being bitter toward the successful guys. Anatomy advice is common, and it’s not too hard to find someone who will tell you about composition or lighting, but the habits that help or hurt us as artists tend to get left out. I think that’s the most important stuff!
The thing I dislike seeing the most is the whole ‘you suck, stop drawing’ thing (we already talked about it, but I feel like it bears repeating). I’ve never understood why people think that’s an okay thing to say! Hopefully, someone will see this essay and be like ‘oh‘ before they even do it. That’d be nice.
I don’t know how to thank you for mentioning me, my comic, and my guide. I thought about it while I was running errands today, but it’s so hard not to end up with something awkward and sappy, ha ha. It’s really exciting is what it is. It’s surreal to make something and then have someone like it enough to mention it in such a positive way.
It’s really appreciated. Thank you so much.
Ahaha it’s kind of funny, I hadn’t read your thing for a while but looking at it again I realized the opening paragraphs to both of our writeups are almost identical! I promise I wasn’t trying to ape your ideas off! We probably just talk shop enough that you’ve seeded these thoughts deep down in my brain :P
I think advice like that is really important to spread around, though. It’s like something my dad told me once regarding his goal as a teacher “It’s not about teaching people facts, it’s about teaching them how to learn”.
This is very good advice and I have to admit I’ve been guilty on a few points you’ve made (drawing from photos, self-pity, etc.) The best part of this post is that I got to read some encouraging advice I’ve never heard before, so thank you for that! :D
There’s nothing wrong at all with drawing from photos, you just shouldn’t use photos exclusively.
Hey, I can draw as well as the old sketch in the “Don’t hate on Newbies section.” Maybe there’s hope for me yet!
I really enjoy these art advice blogs here on the site. I’m no artist, but I dabble in doodling when I’m bored in class and always enjoy imitating the art styles of various webcomics and trying to learn from them. Perhaps one day I’ll have a webcomic to call my own; I will have to keep practicing!
This is great, next time people ask me on drawing advice I’ll just send them here >:3
It made me feel guilty about the self-hate (though I know where it stems from: I was raised with a mindset that you’re either the top player or don’t count at all) but I think I needed someone to say what you did on the topic :)
I must say that I completely agree with what you’re saying. I was really hard on myself when I drew growing up, always comparing myself to better artists, better anatomy, etc. I usually threw my bad drawings away too, because I wasn’t “proud” of them. It was only until recently that I found some of my REALLY old drawings and found that, shit man, I’m so much better now than I used to be!
Now I’m seeing my sister go through the same process. She’s much like how I was, a bit hard on herself, dreaming of being in Science or Animation, but now I can tell her that things get better.
While I decided that Animation (or anything “art-related” – unless you include 3D polygons) was not for me, I think that learning to draw and improve on myself was a very valuable life skill. Getting good at something takes persistence, practice, and the ability to learn. In fact, very few people who are masters in their fields started off as prodigies.
Excellent read. I’ve drawn some similar conclusions, but you put it all together so eloquently.
For the LOVE OF GOD, will you just follow me around and like, give me life advice already? kthx.
I love your articles :D
“Don’t hate on yourself”
Stupid, stupid, stupid… ;_;
Coela, you are a very insightful person. Both this and your article on masculinity have helped me see the world a bit differently. I hope you continue making articles like this, as I would value your opinion on anything you write.
I’m also quite tickled that I was a fan of most of the things you linked, although I hadn’t heard of Modus Operandi and am looking forward to future comics. I also think you are awesome for all the things you’ve managed to accomplish. You are really quite inspiring.
I, a person on the Internet, think that you are a great person. Please add +5 Ego Boost to your stats and continue being the coolkid you know you are. (ps I know this is a giant buttpat exactly like you said you didn’t want sometime ago, but please enjoy it anyways.)
This was a wonderful read. Thank again, Coelasquid, for a wonderful article.
Now see, THIS is a very useful overlook on art. I used to go to /ic/ and see people post a picture asking for advice or a critique, only to be met with “KILL YOURSELF” or “LOOOOOOOMIS!”. Thank you so fucking much for making this!
I used to bum around /ic/ when it was for the most part a fun place to be. People were as harsh as you would expect a 4chan board that revolves around critiquing other people to be, but there was a lot of useful advice in there. I gave up when it completely degraded to trolls trolling trolls. That was like four years ago, though, it may have started getting better again.
I needed the ‘don’t hate on yourself’. I’ve realized it’s something I do all the time. I dance, and it was fairly obvious that I did it there, but I now realize that it’s everywhere. I never ever please myself and it has to stop. Thanks for the swift kick in the butt.
Man, I completely agree with everything you said. Except… I’m a little concerned for myself about one of your points. You mention how connections are incredibly important with getting any sort of art job, and truth be told I feel like I’m sorely lacking in this area. I have some friends who do art, but they either live far away or aren’t terribly serious about their work. As a sophomore at a non-art Ohio college, what can I do to ensure that I stay on track and find the people that might offer me jobs?
If you want jobs it’s really important try to connect with people. A lot of stuff gets around via word of mouth, so by the time you find a post on Craigslist all the friends of people in the studio have had first crack at it, and they usually come with prior experience and the recommendation of other people in the studio. If you want to do freelance kind of stuff, I don’t have a whole lot of advice to give. I’m not a fan of freelance because it’s so easy to get ripped off and taxes can get complicated, but that’s just me. I’m sure I’ll change my tune when studio work starts drying up. I know you should be wary of things offering “experience” and “portfolio” pieces because those are about as damaging to the artistic community as it comes. Someone once told me that artists are their own worst enemy, because they’re always willing to undercut each other and sell for less. Every time you do what should be a professional job for free you’re not only taking a job away from other artists, you’re taking a job away from yourself. For all intents and purposes you’re just doing charity at that point. And thinking in the long term, the more people are allowed to get away with free work, the longer they’ll continue to expect it and the harder it gets for everyone to find paying work.
As long as you don’t blacklist yourself at some point in your career, the first job is going to be the hardest. Until then all you can really do is try to make a stellar portfolio, apply to as many places as you can find, and try to do as much online networking (maybe try places like conceptArt and the like? Internet networking isn’t my strong suit.) If you want to work in a studio, it’s necessary to live in a place where studios are, it’s kind of a vagabond industry, if you don’t live in an area full of work (LA, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, basically), you probably have to be prepared to move.
To play devil’s advocate, the static pose version of that comic isn’t that bad. The other one has much better art but the joke is still the same. Sure, it’s not so much a joke as a character development vignette, and all the activity displayed in the art adds to that, but it’s a matter of priorities.
You work in animation so you know all about tradeoffs in time vs. complexity. Balancing the art with the story and with the update schedule is going to mean making choices, depending on what it is you want out of the whole webcomic thing (hobby, practice, job, a mix of all three)
It’s a bit like running a marathon, you need to set a pace you can sustain long term, the nimrods who complain about everything don’t give a damn if the comic they’re reading took 30 minutes or 30 hours, but the reality is intricate artwork takes time.
I guess what I’m saying is, for you that strip would be pointless, but for a different artist in different circumstances it would fulfill a goal.
First off, I would argue that it completely changes the joke to alter the acting and staging that much. Something said offhandedly looking away from someone carries entirely different implications than something said directly to their face. And everything that people learn from the non-dialogue driven action is completely lost. Like how Commander is the kind of guy who maintains a classic American muscle car. Or how Jared is the kind of guy who gives his Pokemon baths. Or how Mr. Fish is either tame or apathetic enough to cooperate with being cleaned off and rolls around to accommodate Jared’s scrubbing. Or even that Jared and Commander are on friendly enough terms that they hang around when they’re off-duty and Commander is out-of uniform. A very small amount of communication depends on what is actually being said, the rest is all how it’s presented.
One of my favourite examples of this is the song “Heaven on their Minds” from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, the 1973 version VS the 2000 one. In the original Judas has removed himself from the crowd to mull over the problems with the mounting popularity that Jesus is facing. He’s rehearsing this monologue with himself while he watches Jesus live it up with the crowd, it gives off the impression that he understands what a delicate matter this is, he isn’t sure how to approach it without alienating his friend and enraging his followers, and he needs to work up the courage to confront him face to face. This sets up the story for the whole rise and fall of the friendship that’s about to play out, because this character obviously cares a great deal about his friend and as anyone familiar with Western religion know, things aren’t going to work out too great for them. In the 2000 remake, it’s already a direct confrontation between the two characters, with Judas dogging after an already-downtrodden Jesus. Jesus’s lack of response carries a completely different meaning than it does when they’re separated by a mountain and a crowd of happy followers. Jesus’s downtroden attitude and Judas’s accusatory jabs at him cut us into the middle of their character arcs, where the friendship has already become strained and started to erode. The dialogue between the two is nearing on identical, but by changing up the acting and stage you tell a COMPLETELY different story. I mean here’s a blog entry talking about how the size and placement of word balloons alone can completely change the story you’re telling.
Secondly, I am not telling people how to finish comics here, I am telling them how to improve at drawing. If you’re content drawing comics for the sake of finishing comics, that’s perfectly fine. I don’t think that things like Dinosaur comics, Cyanide and Happiness, Natalie Dee, or XKCD would be more enjoyable if they upped the anatomy and dynamic staging, but those obviously aren’t art-heavy strips. My whole point is that if you want to be able to draw things better, you have to draw things that aren’t what you know. And when an artist is drawing fairly detailed characters that obviously show a requirement for draftsmanship, seeing them behaving that flatly is going to be offputting. The more a character shows the potential for acting, the more people expect to see acting. A stickman with a smiley face talking to another stickman with a smiley face can get away with repetition in a way that a complicated character design cannot. Of course, Even stick figures can improve with solid artistic know-how behind them.
Oh wow, words can’t express my gratitude. Thanks for the tips, and thanks for the fantastic comic.
Great post, I like the “don’t hate x” parts. I think I will try drawing again once I’m finished with the 4 exams next month. Maybe I will last longer this time.
Concerning the “everything you learn you could probably learn from a book” art school thing. I would say that almost every curriculum. I’m studying technical informatics and I do learn almost everything from books (or rather scripts but if you can learn it from a script, you can probably learn it from a book). I only visit lectures out of a fuzzy sense of duty (and because some profs add interesting ancillary information). I would say giving you deadlines is the most important part of any course of study(? Is that the right term?).
Though chopping the whole topic in many smaller subtopics is useful too. (And I guess my grades are actually important for getting a job)
THE RIPPING FRIENDS HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG
Goddamn, I just nostalgia’d in my pants.
Very great article. Thanks for the concentrated amounts of advice.
Although your example is a wee bit exaggerated and some of us are a bit better, the thing about 3/4 view is really hard to break. I’m trying to work on it myself.
Thank you, Coelasquid.
I am a self depreciating artist. I had reached a low point years ago and just stopped improving.
I was moved by your advice. I think I’m just going to suck it up and just start drawing. And the next time someone says “Wow, I like your art” I won’t tell them that it sucks. =)
Hi there. I’m new to this strip and have been just loving it. Maybe it’s sexist, but I was so surprised when I found out you were a woman, I actually called up a friend just to tell him. That aside, as busy as you are, I’m glad you’ve taken some time out to write things like this article. It’s an eye-opener. I’m not the best artist, but now I feel like an ass for telling my admirers (mostly family) that I’m garbage. I always figured that, to a person with no artistic skill, any amount of skill would look amazing…and that because they are my friends and family I couldn’t count on an honest opinion. I don’t hang out with many people “on my level”, that is to say, my friends believe I am the best artist among us and always call upon me when they need something artsy done (even if it’s not something I actually do). So perhaps, all that praise has made me a little arrogant in that I can’t value their opinions because, deep down, maybe I believe that they are “artistically stupid” and/or that they believe I am so fragile in this regard that it would kill me to hear their actual honest opinions. I realize now that this is absurd, and maybe I should give my friends a little more credit that that. So, for this, thank you.
Fantastic, fantastic post. I’ve been finding myself not gesture-sketching as much as I’d really like to, and the pocket-size notebook thing may be just the thing. I was thinking it wouldn’t be enough room to sketch, but then I realized I don’t usually take up a whole page on my regular Moleskine anyway, so!
I think I might start drawing again. When I was little, I had three things I wanted to be. I was either going to be a Superhero, a ninja, or a comic book artist because at least then I could make up the stories I lived in my head.
Growing up (barely) and having to live for myself kicked me off that bandwagon, I haven’t really drawn since I graduated High School. Reading this reminded me how much I missed it. Thank you.
(P.S. I love the comic, keep up the great work! :) )
interesting, a lot of this can be applied to other fields as well (being a writer myself the majority of the points felt very familiar)
all in all a great piece of writing ;)
Thanks for writing this! I’ve been thinking about it since last night and it’s been inspiring me to get out there and improve my skillz.
Wow, this was an amazing read. I’m a somewhat struggling artist, and I think I’ve drawn more this year than I have any other year. Since my senior year started (high school senior… and back in september), I’ve filled around 4 notebooks with drawings and concept art for characters I’ve created since then. I also noticed that I’ve done a few things that were written on here, and I’ve also learned quite a bit by finally reading through this whole story (I skimmed it when you first posted it…I’m glad I came back to it).
Also, this isn’t more drawing advice than anyone wanted. In fact, I would read this sort of thing on a daily basis (though I’m entirely sure you have better things to do than write for hours about art… You would get a neat cult fanbase for it though, hehe), because it really capitalizes on improvement and gives a neat little motivator for someone who draws (I should also mention that I appreciate the other tutorial you posted ages ago… the one with muscles and what-not).
Also, I’m a victim of the 3/4 view thing. Funny thing is, I noticed the trend a month or two ago and have been slightly irked by its recurrence in my drawings… Funny that I read about it here to.
Thanks again, this helped me out quite a bit!
Thanks for taking the time to write all of that!
also, reminded me of:
http://bitsandpieces.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/imageshow-to-draw-an-owl.jpeg
lolololol
After reading this, I instantly grabbed my sketchbook and practiced drawing perspective, something I’ve been putting off for months. Thank you.
Here in Michigan, we call it “clam-baking”
This article really helped me out, thank you first of all for taking the time to write it.
I really want to go to art school, but am worried that I am neither experienced enough or good enough to get in. No I’m not looking for pats on the back here, I just want some advice on what to do.
I’m thinking of practicing and learning on my own for a while and building a portfolio and then going from there.
I really want to be a cartoonist though an I understand that I need a broad understanding of art as whole for this, but would art school be useful to me in this aspect?
Any advice is appreciated. Much thanks! ^^
aaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!
this is SO GOOD!!!
very good advice here!!! you’re such a smart person, wow. i am saving this article!!
i liked the whole article, but i really liked the part on artists not being so harsh on their own work, and belittling themselves. i encourage artists to be proud of their work!! it makes me so sad when an artist dislikes their own work.
here is my favorite part, because seems like a lot of people don’t understand this:
“It actually seems a pretty common occurrence that people who want to draw cartoons then focus on nothing but realism have a really hard time with their cartoons when the time comes. There’s some myth out there that stylized drawings are “easy”, so once you learn to make “real art” you can just backtrack and do anything. This is not the case, drawing cartoons, figuring out the right amount of exaggeration and making an obviously abstract 2D representation of something real look like it has life and mass is a whole art form unto itself.”
hehehe. i said the same thing to people recently! but sadly, they didn’t seem to get it… =(
to ririsama: i am a cartoonist too!!! i am in a regular college, not art college, because my parents didn’t want me in art school. =( so i can’t tell you what art school is like or how benificial it is. but. i did apply to an art school, and got in!!! don’t worry about being “not experienced” enough, just TRY HARD!!! =) to make a portfolio, put in several imaginative pieces, so it shows your personaliy and your vision. and also, include a bunch of drawings from real-life observation.
is there a website with your art? i’m curious to see what it looks like!!
thanks so much Sachiko for taking the time to reply. ^^ Also yes I’m on deviantart under the same name, but I’ve only been on it for a short while so there isn’t much on it, just mostly silly comics haha… ^^ also what art school did you apply for? I’m curious cause I’m looking at all my options. :D I’ll friend you on devart, thnx again! ^^
Aaaaaaa you touched on EVERYTHIIINNNG.
I like what you said people who mimic. In high school when I was all OMGANIMMMWEEEEE, all I did was copy from other animu artists or whatever mangaow i happened to be reading. did you SEE my improvement meme? HORY SHIT. It’s like, embarrassing, ahaha.
After I realized that that wasn’t the right way to learn art, I did that other thing you touched on. Thought about artists I like, and why I liked it. Slowly I started improving. My stuff has a lot of influences, but I hope it’s something unique that I’ve made my own.
ON THAT SAME SUBJECT: I like how you said “If you spend your life following someone, you will always be behind them.”, because it just reminded me of a friend telling me “People who get art from them are really just getting a Chinese knock-off Shen” while we were talking about someone copying my style. And it’s TRUE!
That last paragraph made me motivated. I love being motivated-I LOVE BEING MOTIVATED.
I’m gonna go and ART.
Do a lot of minor drawing myself. I tend to be self-deprecating about myself (mostly stating that I’m an “Amateur Artist”) but I do try and improve. My main issue is that I never draw backgrounds and I mostly draw characters in a stiff neutral “Standing” stance, though I guess I’m pretty decent when it comes to facial expressions.
I like this piece. Gets me thinking.
Thank you very much.
This article resumes what I’ve needed to learn since 2007 and I’m understanding truly only since about one month ago.
Everything what here appears is the truth. And even if sometimes I could fall on the self-deprecating thing, I still finally can appreciate what I do.
It was not easy. Years spent with an environment that doesn’t care about art -indeed, my fathers never really showed any interest on my artistic abilities, (except my dad that teached me about perspective… and that is), an environment where everything what you do that is “out of the system” is bad/mean and must be destroyed, and where “are you doing that? ahahahahahha how stupid” doesn’t help.
What can I say? Thank you very much for this article.
I was talking to Yuko last weekend for some additional drawing tips and she pointed me to a couple of gesture drawing applications – they toss up an image (either a render or a photograph) for 30 seconds at a time. You pull out paper and draw. One of those sites recommends doing this twice a day for five minutes (ten poses in each set); I pulled out paper and went and didn’t even notice how long I’d been at it until I had 16 poses and was running out of room on my paper.
So yeah, if you feel creepy drawing people in coffee shops, give one of those sites a go.
Wow, big article, nice advices… i love it, it help me to learn more about draw and the passion of make something by myself, thanks man, really!!!
P.D. I like this web, added to my firefox’s bookmarks.
So informative! I really found the part about whether or not to go to art school helpful, as I’m contemplating that right now! It was also good to see Dagget and Blue again, ;D
Excellent article, thank you. I must also thank you for showing me The Meek and Lackadaisy. I’m reading them through after following your links and they’re amazing. Keep up the great work, it’s people like you that inspire greatness.
Excellent advise. I loved your tutorials and your drawing style. And the professionalism you bring to these kinds of conversations is extremely beneficial to artists. Do you have other books/literature on the subject that you recommend? I’m particularly interested in stylizing but I’m open to any suggestions for guides/reference material on structure, anatomy, perspective, values. Anything to improve. Thank you! I wish I had bought a $5 sketch from you when you were doing them.
I came across this link in a “learn to draw” tumblr reblog, and gave it a read because I’ve been considering starting a comic but didn’t think I was capable of doing it. I don’t have much to say except that this is probably one of the most helpful things I’ve read, and I will be taking all this advice to heart. I often feel like I came into the art game kind of late because it wasn’t always a passion of mine and it wasn’t what I went to school for, so I sort of feel like an imposter in a real artist’s world. But this article really helped me to realize that continuing my efforts to better myself with practice and taking notes from artists I admire without getting down on myself because I’m not as good as them is exactly what I need to do.
And I love that you put in the tidbits about not hating on more popular artists, not hating on newbies, and most importantly, not hating on yourself. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that amazingly talented artists started with stick figures on the back of a notebook, so I find it very refreshing that you included some of your own work as examples.
Anyway, I love this article, it’s extremely helpful, and now I have a new comic to read :>
Great article. Really enjoyed reading through this as you got a lot of good points. I am pretty sure I`ll forward it to my friends if I hear them talk about art.
Why people still make use of to read news papers when in this technological globe the
whole thing is existing on net?
Trust me it is completely fine to make mistakes..they make you stronger and help in realizing what is better or best! The point is, just try to make as many mistakes as you can and make all those mistakes quickly because you are learning. Go for research, look for influential sites like Webcomics Hub and make a difference. Rest these awesome tips have already covered every detail.