I know… I didn’t draw their feet. I really hate drawing feet. I’m not too good at it and I never know what angle to draw the feet at. Maybe eventually I’ll learn how to draw them.

I still need to name the character on the left. Maybe I’ll do that right now. Um… Pan… Pangan… Panganiban! Gani for short. He’s a character I kept envisioning in my head but I couldn’t get him from my mind to the screen until now. Does he look how I envisioned him now? Who cares?

I’m starting to feel restless about the ratios and after I finish the next how to draw guide, time to master the anatomy of the limbs, folds, shading and fine itty-gritty details. For now, let’s finish the tutorials on how to draw different ratios.

How to Draw a 1:7 Ratio Character

Start these characters off by drawing the circles. Draw 7 circles on top of each other for the one character and draw 8 circles for the other character. Then start figuring out where the shoulders, hips, arms and legs will be. For the character who is 7 circles tall, I placed the shoulders near the top middle of the second circle from the top. I had his hands reach the top middle of the circle in the middle, which was also where I put his hips. Of course, the feet are at the bottom. As for the 1:8 character, I decided to have fun and go overboard with the size of the shoulders and muscles. His shoulders could be found in the middle of the second circle from the top. His hips were placed in the middle of the 5th circle from the top. Wow, maybe I got a little excessive there.

When learning how to draw, sometimes its easier to start off with pencil on paper rather than going digital.

In the spirit of continuing chronological order, let’s do the 1:7 figure first. Determine the direction that you want the face to go. Wherever the face is turned, draw the eye farther away from the camera smaller than the eye closer to the camera. For the nose, figure out how much of the nose you want to show. The nose can really strongly define how the character’s face looks. Spend plenty of time on the face because despite how you draw the rest of the body, the face will define the character. Bodies with some mistakes can be forgiven.

For the body, it helps to draw the entire body before adding clothes. That doesn’t mean that the character needs to be drawn completely nude, but rather that you should draw the outline of the character before adding each detail. For this character, I researched different tribal clothing styles and tried to use colors from animals that are found in the character’s locale. The skin draped across the character’s chest is from a spotted deer hide. I’m not sure what the thing is tied to the center of the skirt but it looked interesting on a different tribal outfit and I felt it added some culture to his otherwise very practical outfit.

Go off and choose a color for your character’s clothes. There’s really no tricks when learning how to draw colored characters that I know of. When designing the clothes, I first intended to use colors from animals that could be found in the Philippines. I used the Philippine spotted deer for the fabric wrapped around his body and then inputted that color into the color scheme generator. The other colors were chosen using this generator. Of course, you don’t have to use the color scheme generator. But I wanted the character to have colors that worked well together.

Choose a skin color. Luckily for me, I noticed that one of the colors that popped up on the color scheme generator looked like a really convincing dark skin tone. I only lightened it slightly so that the lines could be visible. As for the hair, I tried to use a color that was almost black but not so dark that the lines separating the hair weren’t visible.

Here came the fun part for me. Adding the spots for the spotted deer hide and the pattern for the piece of fabric in the front. For the fabric in the front, I kept the design simple and used a color that was compatible with the color of the green fabric. For the spots, I added varying sized dots and blurred them out. Okay, I actually used brushes from here. For the blurring, you can use a kleenex to rub the edges of the spots in order to make them blurry. If you’re using a graphics program, you can use the blur tool.

Next, I got really experimental. I decided to give the character a good amount of shading, but I’m not sure how it turned out. The light is coming from the left, so most of the shading is from the right. I didn’t want there to be too much shading on his face, since I didn’t want to obscure the features. In addition to the light source, one of the things to pay attention to when shading is where the dips in the muscles are. On the neck, I paid more attention to the muscles than on the rest of the body, creating really defined shadows under his chin. I created these shadows on Photoshop by creating a new layer and drawing black on the areas that I wanted shaded while setting the opacity on the layer to 50%. Maybe it needs to be lower.

I used less pictures in this one. Do you prefer that I use a gazillion pictures showing each feature being drawn or a few pictures submitted at milestones? I guess maybe I should break things down with each feature when I’m trying to demonstrate how to draw a very specific thing. Hmm.

The next tutorial will be coming really fast. I already drew and wrote the tutorial and all I have to do is type it up. Until then…

Best of luck in your endeavors,

Alex

For this how to draw guide, I will use the 1:5 ratio. This is not a good ratio for drawing chibi but rather for drawing an adolescent or short adult. The following character will be drawn.

After that, I’ll be covering how all the other different ratios can be used. Of course, she doesn’t exactly have a 1:5 ratio, but when I originally drew her with a perfect 1:5 ratio, she looked really weird.

How to Draw the First Circle

Draw five circles that are the same size and stack on top of each other. On the top circle, draw two horizontal lines that curve slightly upwards. These lines will represent the eyebrows. Draw two lines that slant upwards and towards each other, with their opposite ends touching the eyebrows.

For the eyes, draw lines that travel horizontally and curve upwards. Each of these lines travel downwards and wrap around at the points of the lines that are the farthest away from each other, forming almost half circles. The half circles form full polygons by forming points as the open ends of the half-circles close. Within these closed polygons, draw curving horizontal lines that curve upwards. These lines are near the top of the polygons. This will separate these eyes into two different sections. In the lower section of each eye, draw a vertical line and have that line curve to the right.

Noses are very tricky organs to learn how to draw. Some cartoon artists completely omit the nose or try to draw minimalistic elements of the nose, since the nose is difficult to draw attractively. I try to draw the areas that are the most shaded. Also, I read that with characters with some ethnic backgrounds, the nose needs to be more emphasized. For this face, most of the shading will be on the left side. So draw two vertical lines that curve to the right slightly. For the nose, draw a vertical line that curves to the left. When you reach the bottom of this line, have the line travel horizontally to the right while durving upwards. Reverse the direction of the curve where you want the middle of the nose to be and then reverse the curve again. Finish the other side of the nose with a line that travels horizontally and curves to the right.

Draw two curving horizontal lines that connect together. These lines will curve upwards. Then draw one horizontal line that curves downwards. These lines will connect at the ends, forming a polygon. In the middle of this polygon, draw a horizontal line that curves downwards slightly.

Ears can be as simple or as complex as you want to make them. Gosh, you don’t even have to draw them. In this case, I’m just going to draw a simple curve.

Since the head is tilted a bit to the right, the shape of the edge of the face will look different for each side. One side will be a gradually curving line where the line curves downwards and to the right. On the right side, draw a line that travels upwards while curving somewhat downward. At some point, this line will curve sharply outwards before returning to the path where it was originally traveling. This is the cheekbone, a feature that some people have more pronounced than others.

To draw the hair on the forehead, draw two waving lines that are close together, eventually meeting at one point.

To the right of the strand you just drew, draw several curving lines that travel to the right and curve downwards and to the left.

On the other side of the head, draw a similar strand of hair that consists of two lines that wave and connect together.

At some point on the strand of hair, draw a line that travels downwards with the line curving downwards and to the right.

Attached to the curving line, draw another strand that curves downwards around the ear. Again, this is two lines that connect together at a point.

Draw a line that travels upwards and waves. This waving can be slight or pronounced.

On the right side of the head, draw several more strands that are clumped on top of each other.

Finally draw the top of the head. Do not draw a perfect curve unless you are drawing a cartoonish character. Most people have imperfectly shaped heads and the top of the hair often consists of different clumps, which will cause the hair to not be perfectly symmetrical.

Draw lines that connect to the bottom of the head. Since the head is turned a particular way, the part of the neck that is farther away from the direction that the head is turned will appear more curving, while the other side of the neck will appear slightly closer to the center of the head.

In the next post, I will draw out the rest of the body as it covers the rest of the circles. In that post or the post afterwards, I will add color and shading. Then I’ll be drawing the 1:6, 1:7 and 1:8 ratios. If you would like any particular characters drawn using these ratios, email me at sketchinghouse@gmail.com. I’m going to try to talk Marisol into doing a how to draw chibi characters, since I have no experience drawing those types of characters at all.

See y’all next week,

Alex

Paint.net

Pros

I think Paint.net is the best starter program for those just learning how to do digital art. Paint.net lacks a lot of bells and whistles. The program runs a little faster than Photoshop and much faster than GIMP. In fact, I still use Paint.net for really simple edits because it runs faster. Also, their filters rock almost as much as Photoshop’s and you can download free plugins in order to expand your arsenal.

Cons

Paint.net is kinda skimpy on its features and their brushes really suck. The only brush that’s useful at all is the basic brush, unless you’re creating simplistic designs.Paint.net also doesn’t have a lot of the features that I’ve grown to love and rely on when using Photoshop. They have the lasso tool, which allows you to select specific parts of an image you’re working on. But they lack the polygonal lasso, which is great for artists who don’t have steady hands. They lack the pen tool, which makes it difficult to select very specific sections of the art and also makes it difficult to create complex polygons with curves (though they do have the curves tool). But for me, the most unforgivable sin for Paint.net is that they lack a blur and smudge tool. Without those tools, a lot harder to blend different parts of your image together. They do have the blur filter, which can replace the blur tool if you select certain portions with the lasso tool and you have a really steady hand.

GIMP

Pros

GIMP has most of the really important features on Photoshop. They have the coveted pen tool. They also have the essential blur and smudge tool. I can’t remember if they have the polygonal lasso or not. But that tool can be replaced by the pen tool easily. They have some good filters and plenty of plugins. This is a good program for those who want most of the features of Photoshop but never want to pay for the Photoshop program.

Cons

Oddly enough, the size of GIMP’s brushes are limited. This is a strange feature, since it can’t be that hard to increase the size of the brushes. GIMP also has the slowest running time. When using GIMP, I was met with frequent crashes. Also, for some reason, the lines that I created using the pen tool weren’t always perfectly smooth.

The Moral

Adobe is a little absurd charging nearly $1,000 for their Photoshop programs. Yeah, Photoshop is seen as the absolute best graphics program out there for most digital artists. But how do they expect starving artists to ever afford that much money?

Download GIMP http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.6.4-i686-setup.exe

Download Paint.net http://www.dotpdn.com/files/Paint.NET.3.36.zip

Alex

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hi, everybody! Marisol here. Alex offered some ideas for free programs, but if you are heavy into digital art and you enjoy doing it, there are programs that are under $100 available. Yes, they’re not as fancy as any of the Photoshop CS programs, but they are just as good. Alex mentioned that there is Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter, both of which have their pros and cons. I own both and I was fortunate enough to receive them free with my Wacom Intuos Tablet. However, both programs are well worth the money if you’re willing to spend it, especially if you’re really in to digital art.

Photoshop Elements

I happen to like Elements more than CS. Sure, Elements is what the title implies: the elements–your really basic digital tools. As Alex mentioned, Elements doesn’t have a pen tool, but everything else about it is great. You have your blur and burn tools, which are essential in digital art creation, but you also have the option of creating brushes and downloading brushes like its nobody’s business! Photoshop Elements has fantastic calligrapher brushes which make up for the lack of pen tool. However, I never really understood why the pen tool was so important. Basically, if you use the right pressure and you go along in small strokes, any brush can dublicate the pen tool look, but that is my opinion. I’ve never had a pen tool and when I did use it, I found it difficult to handle.

Photoshop Elements is basically the same as PSCS, just without the bells and whistles. A lot of the features are the same and the program is easy to use. Personally, I love Elements because of some of the cool effects you can create with it. There is a photo fram feature and a feature where you can create Andy Warhol-esque images. Very cool. Photoshop Elements is the best bang for your buck.

Corel Painter

Personally, I am not a fan of Corel Painter mainly because I find it difficult to use. Sure, the features are great, but I find the program to be glitchy and lacks that special oomph that makes it a great program. The drawing feature on Corel Painter is hit and miss because sometimes the lines pick up, others times they don’t, no matter what the pen pressure is. I find it to be very lax on features, however, it’s a great beginner’s tool. If you are a beginning artist, practice with Corel Painter, but I highly recommend you download the free trial. However, a lot of hardcore artists do use Corel Painter and love it, so maybe I have had bad luck.

Marisol

Elderly men do not dominate manga and cartoons, but you can sometimes still find them playing a few important roles. These characters are given extra lines on the face to emphasize wrinkling and the sagging of a face. The elderly face usually has some features that are drawn out more than you would with a younger face. It seems like the older a character is, the more realistic the features are drawn, while the younger the face, the more details you omit. For instance, some young children do not even have mouths drawn. The elderly face can be really complex and the extra angles can end up requiring some really innovative shading. For this drawing tutorial, a more simplistic face is going to be drawn.

Draw a line that curves upwards. This will be a tiny line that represents the corner of the eye. Then draw a second line that travels outwards, curving slightly. Finish with a long, curving line that represents the bottom of the eye. These will be the eyelids.

Draw two curving lines in between the two eyelids. These will represent the irises. Notice how the entire eye isn’t completely shown. Instead, the top and bottom parts of the irises are covered by the eyelids.

Create a duplicate but reversed version of the eye you just drew.

Draw a line that slants downwards and to the left. This line will be beneath the eyes in the middle of the face. Yep, this is the nose. This line will then suddenly travel downwards and to the right, forming a right angle. The corner of this right angle will be rounded.

Draw a broad line that curves only slightly downwards to show a slight smile. This character is meant to be somewhat older, so I put slanting lines in the corners of his mouth that slant downwards.

Between the nose and the mouth, draw two lines that start somewhat near the nose that curve outwards and travel down towards the mouth.

Draw some curving lines beneath the eyes.

Draw two curving lines somewhat beneath the mouth that are small and very curved. Start drawing the jaw. The jaw will be less pointy than usual on this guy, since sagging skin will make his jaw seem wider.

Draw the rest of the head. Have the lines that make up the head slant outwards as they travel upwards. When you’re ready to draw the top of the head, draw a curving line that connects both slanting lines.

Draw the folk’s ears. Draw a curving line that starts at the edge of the head, curves and then travels downwards a long way becoming more straight with a slight curve. Have the line curve at the bottom until it touches the side of the head. As for the inside of the ear, you will probably need a human model
. No matter what, the ear is always drawn with curving lines near the edge of the ear within the ear. What’s tricky to draw is the opening of the ear canal near the ear lobe.

Draw the hair however you’d like, though it’s a bad idea to draw every individual strand.

Alex

So I’ve been busy with school work, tutoring and orientations, and freelance work. So far, so good on all fronts. I am able to keep up with everything, I just need to stop procrastinating so much. I have the ability to finish things on time, I seriously do, I just don’t. The other day, I finished 4 articles for one of my jobs in under 30 minutes. This week, it took me 5 days to write a one page paper for a class. Um… bad me!

Okay, now for the art stuff.

Tala asked me for some old drawings of mine, and I was surprised I still had them! Looking at some of those old drawings, I am amazed at how much I improved over the years! Right now, I feel like my drawing ability has been sub par, but overall, it’s improved immensely! My porportions have gotten better and my realism has improved. Let’s take a look, shall we?

ANIME DRAWING

2002:

A picture I drew in 2002... wow!

Wow, this was one of my first anime drawings I did. This was when I first met Tala and we worked on her story, Future Tellings. Kitana’s (silver-haired chick) face looks decent, but everything else is just… off. Look at the arms; they look so wooden! The dresses have no shape nor is there any movement. I didn’t shade much in those days, either. Kitana’s cat ears look stuck on, like little pink triangle-shaped gum. Wow, I can’t believer I thought this was good! And Kojiro, his hair was gold and he a tattoo! And his muscles look like a muscle suit! I should have ditched this! But then again, I’m glad I didn’t because now I know where I need to improve more on.

2002-2003:

Here’s an anime-ish drawing of my OC, Tsuyoi Seishin. She’s cute and an overall improvement from my 2002 attempt at anime drawing. I attempted shading this time, although barely noticeable. To me, the head is too large for the body and the outfit is still shapeless. My light source is a bit eratic and the overall look is sloppy. The lower arm is still too long compared to the upper arm, and the hand is still disproportionate. I improved overall, but there is still room for more improvement.

2003-2004:

So here’s Mayu (left) and Kotou. I improved a lot in 2004. My shading improved a lot with this. My proportions improved also. Notice how my clothes started to have more shape? However, I still feel as if the heads are way too large and Kotou’s legs are bent at an odd angle. I practiced depth, as well. Although there’s shading and a horizon, the image still feels 2-dimensional. My light source is still a little wacky, also. I also enhanced this image digitally; this was when I got Photoshop for Christmas.

2005:

Whoa! Psychodelic! Obviously, I loved Photoshop too much! This was an image I did when I got 7,000 pageviews on Deviant Art. This is my character Kitana. I love this picture! I think my shading was awesome and the proportions are great. My light sourcing also improved. However, I still have the issue of gigantic heads! GRR! But the outfit is cute and there’s more depth. There is still room for improvement.

2006-2007:

This is another favorite picture of mine. I think this shows my improvement the most. I learned to add depth and folds in the clothing more, as well as more detail. And finally, the heads aren’t gigantic! Woo! However, I still need to work on arms…

2008:

This is my most favorite! However, this isn’t really anime, but my own twist on it. This picture shows my growth over the past few years the best. The shading is great and I love the proportions. The hands are beautiful. However, I can still improve on the eyes….

REALISM:

Now realism is my favorite form of drawing, however, I don’t work on it enough. My niece far surpasses me on realistic drawing and I hope to feature her on this site in the future. But for now, let’s see my improvements on realism.

2004:

no shading, no depth, not much of anything here. It’s a cute drawing, but as you can see, I’m still an amatuer at this point. My proportions are off, too. The arms look funny and you can’t really tell that’s she’s sitting. The hair is really stringy. I give this picture a D-!

2005:

This is a very pretty puppy. The fur looks nice, as do the eyes. However, the shading is poor. This is a nice attempt, but I can still improve.

2006:

Ahhh…. BoA Kwon. She’s lovely and I love her music. I did this picture as a tribute to her and if I gave it to her, I bet she would gag! The eyes are messed up! The face looks crooked and the hair is haphazard! Ugh! The hand looks weird and the shading is bad. How sad. Thankfully, I lost the hardcopy for this image.

2007:

This was right after I took my art class. WOW! Mass improvement! I can shade! I can create fur! Do you see?! Look at how I improved over the years! YAY!

Keep all your drawings, folks. Check back over the years and see how you improve! All artists can improve, even good ones. Check your progress weekly, monthly, and yearly. Keep striving for perfection.

Happy drawing,

Goodnight!

Marisol

I’m not even sure who this character will be but she’s temporarily named Angora. I might not even use her since I don’t hold on to characters unless they feel right. Maybe she needs some redesigning.

My story takes place in a setting inspired by pre-history Philippines. I’d draw her wearing the clothes that people wore during that time frame, but they mostly wore nothing. That reminds me of a museum exhibit I saw of Native Americans. Some of the figurines of the Native Americans were completely nude. That was so weird since I was shielded from all nudity as a kid and then I’m exposed to a culture that sometimes runs around naked. I guess I learned from that how values can be way different from culture to culture.

You might think “hey, she doesn’t look Filipino.” Well, actually she’s Negrito. From the research I did, Negritos settled in the Phillippines before the Austronesians, an indigenous group from what is now called Taiwan.

That is the initial sketch I started off with. I like that sketch and might use it for a different drawing. How did she change so much? A whole bunch of reasons. The main reason was that I wanted to practice foreshortening, which is something I need to learn how to do with the body. Well, I didn’t really succeed at foreshortening her because that is tough!

What’s foreshortening? Foreshortening is how objects seem deformed at different angles. I guess I made her arms somewhat foreshortened, but their sizes are roughly the same and not large enough to show a real contrast.

So now what? I drew new torso lines in order to make her body appear turned to the side. I also foreshortened her shoulders, making one appear larger and one smaller to indicate that one shoulder is turned farther away from the point-of-view.

Next, I made her sides more shapely and raised her chest. Now she doesn’t look like she has the body of a 90000 year old woman. (I meant to say 900, not 90000).

At this point, I decided to redraw her clothes. Why? She looked like she was wearing a kimono or tunic, which doesn’t really fit with her character. But nudity doesn’t work for me, so I made up some clothes. I also redrew her arms. I liked how they looked, but they look way too long right now. I think this is where I was getting tired two nights ago because her proportions are extremely out of whack. I started drawing her legs because I wanted to shorten her dress. With dresses, its really important that you draw all of the legs out in order to make sure that you have the proportions right.

I did a little resizing and drew out the basic shape of the head.

Then I drew her face. I was aiming for a face that was both delicate and Negrito, but I ran into a problem. Most cartoon and manga faces are European/Asian inspired. Rarely do you see other races represented. I really had nothing to go off. I wanted to emphasize this character’s ethnicity, but I also wanted to keep her features relatively simple. So I experimented with the nose and lips until I got the results that I wanted.

I also added hair, my favorite part.

Then I added lineart and widened her features. I don’t know why I did this and I think I’m going to change it back later.

As you can see now, I colored her. I don’t know if I gave this advice out yet or not, but setting your coloring layers on multiply allows you to color without coloring over dark lines. This is good if you have a hard time coloring within the lines.

Then I used a handy-dandy color scheme generator at: www.colorschemer.com/online.html

Just plug in the value for one of the colors you’re using and it’ll generate colors that are compatible. These colors should pop out more when put together.

So I drew her and showed her to Marisol and she drew all over her. She took her mouse and drew all these lines all over my drawing like it was nobody’s business (joking. I asked her to).

This is sort of like an artist’s version of proofreading. It really helps to have someone else look at your artwork before you finish it because they can see mistakes that you missed. Being an artist doesn’t have to be lonely.

I took her advice and adjusted her. But I gave her brown eyes instead of blue.

Like usual, I have to finish most of my tutorials in multiple blog posts. This isn’t because tutorials take that long, but because I have to write these in gaps of time between school and work. I wish I could write more tutorials, but time is always so short. Still, Marisol and I promise that we’ll always keep updating. We won’t be those people who stop posting out of the blue.

I love you all,

Alex

From a frontal perspective, features are mostly symmetrical. An artist doesn’t have to worry about the size of one eye in relation to the size of another eye. Drawing a face might become pretty easy, even routine. That is, until the artist is forced to turn the figure’s head. The eye that is closer to the point of view suddenly gets larger, while the eye moving away from the point-of-view shrinks. One ear gets bigger, while the other ear might completely vanish. The sides of the faces become distorted, with one side becoming rounder than the other. The face changes, and one of the illustrator’s biggest challenges is to adjust the proportions so that they look natural.

You might decide to play around with the size of the eyes and ears. You might distort the nose and mouth. You might change the sides of the face. But no matter what you do, the face looks flat or incorrectly proportioned. Not only are the proportions off on the face, but the face also lacks 3-dimensionality. In order to draw a face that is meant to be 3-dimensional, you could try to study a real 3-D model. But oftentimes, you will not be able to get the 3-D image to look exactly like the 3-D model. This is because you need to see the basic dimensions that make up a 3-D image. This can only be achieved by taking the time to draw out the guidelines for the 3-D model.

I decided to draw a quarter profile. This is the profile that is halfway between a frontal profile and a side profile. All the facial features should be visible, though the features on the side of the face that is turning will be somewhat smaller and farther towards the edge of the face. The ear that is closer to the turning part of the face will be less visible, while the hair on the opposite side of the head will be more visible. Constructing these guidelines took me 15 minutes and should take you even less time, since I had to keep stopping in order to save new files.

The first thing I did was draw the flat part of the face. This is the easiest part of the guidelines process, since you simply have to draw a polygonal with one side slightly flatter than the other side. The farther you want the head turned, the flatter you will want to make the turning part of the head.

Next, I added the side of the face. I drew lines that nearly duplicate the side of the face that is turning closer to the point-of-view. The character’s face looks like it is cut from a thin plank of wood.

Now I added guidelines. These guidelines are going to eventually help me map out the facial features. I had these guidelines extend past what I had already drawn, since I will be soon adding the part of the face that will be the hair.

The most important thing I did here was add the hair guidelines. Even though that part looks a little distorted and even though the ear looks tiny, I can always redraw this part. The key is to get the general idea of what the face is going to look like.

I also added the neck. My goal was to make the neck look as much like a cylinder as possible. I know that no necks look like tubes, but I’m just trying to get the general idea of how the neck will be shaped. I can draw over this later.

I added tons of guidelines so that I would have an idea of where the forehead, eyes, nose and mouth would go. By doing that, I now have a mannequin that looks carved out of wood. All I have to do now is clothe this mannequin with hair and facial features. The key to drawing these guidelines is to connect different portions of the face together while having lines stretch across the parts of the face where you want to add features.

Using Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, I created a new layer and drew all over the guidelines. The guidelines helped me position and size my eyes. The only difficult part was drawing the nose, so I drew a nose based off a reference picture.

I deleted the guidelines. How does it look?

To delete the guidelines, simply click on the layer in the layer panel that has the guidelines. You can delete the layer or simply erase the guidelines manually. All that’s left to do is color, shade, add screen tones, ect.

Extra tips for 3-dimensionality: look around a room full of stuff and try to see the 3-dimensionality of each object. Right now, I’m in a room full of computers and I can clearly see the cubic nature of the computer towers. A wooden chair directly in front of me has all sorts of dimensions, though the direction I am facing it, I can really only see the top, front, and left side of the chair. If I were to draw this chair, I would have to keep these dimensions in mind in order to make the wooden chair 3-D.

Drawing guidelines for every face might become really time-consuming, but if you are struggling to draw a quarter profile, you should try using guidelines until you have finally taught your eyes to see everything with 3 dimensions. Art and drawing is all about trying new ways to construct artwork.

Keep your mind open or else,

Alex