Adobe Photoshop is loaded with brushes. Oftentimes, the quality of your lines and your artwork depends on the brush you use. Because of that, before you even get started drawing your first picture, you should experiment with brushes to find the brush that will be perfect for whatever you’re trying to draw. I’m going to go through each distinct brush type for each brush category, experimenting with the brushes and hopefully figuring out what each different brush can be used for.

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Tags: Alex, animal, anime, artist, Artists, brush, brushes, circles, draw, drawing, Drawings, eye, Eyes, figure, lines, paint, Painting, Paintings, Photoshop, photoshopped, picture, pound, side, Star, strokes, tips, tools, Travel, tricks, Work

Arms can be some of the most pain-in-the butt parts that you can ever learn how to draw. The way the arm flexes, twists, stretches and raises can really drive an artist crazy. There are so many ways that an arm can position itself that I’d be insane to try to cover all arm positions in one tutorial. So in this drawing tutorial, I’m hitting arms that are mostly straight and downwards. Whew, here goes. Click to read more …

Tags: Alex, Art, artist, Artists, character, characters, draw, drawing, Drawings, drew, face, figure, lines, side, Travel, Tutorial, Tutorials, view, Work, write, Writing

The horizon is not that hard to draw. At the very minimum, you can draw a horizontal line straight across the screen. But figuring out where you put the horizon line is important when figuring out where your character is on a plane. Imagine that the star of your show is standing on a beach and the cameraman is pointing a camera directly at her. Do you see a long stretch of land with your character standing at the tip-top of the horizon.

Do you see your character wandering up a large expanse of land.

Or are you staring at your character from the tip-top of a tree?

Regardless, the horizon will dramatically change the way you see the picture.

Tags: character, characters, draw, drawing, Drawings, figure, lines, picture, Star, Tree

Hmm, we haven’t had an art tutorial in awhile…

I’ve been working on a picture of four women. They’re all walking towards the point-of-view, which of course means that the ones closer to the camera must be larger than the ones farther away. I want this to look as proportionate as possible, so pow! I whipped out the sliding dummy.

You might be thinking “argh! Sliding dummies? What are you talking about?”

The sliding dummy is a nice tool that removes some of the pain of giving a character the right size in proportion to other characters on the page and the point-of-view (which is basically the lens of the imaginary camera that photographs the picture). When characters are walking in different directions, the sliding dummy makes it easier for the artist to figure out where the heads and bodies are supposed to go. If you are first learning how to use this awesome technique, I recommend you first draw a scene that has a back wall. Maybe its just me, but I find everything easier to visualize when there’s a flat wall to place the imaginary dummy up against. I have a picture that I might as well make an indoor picture. You can start with a character or a background first when drawing, but I mostly prefer a character because that’s usually the most important part of the picture for me. Click to read more …

Tags: Art, artist, drawing, figure, illustration, Perspective, proportion, Tutorial

I decided to create a digital character and see how far I could go in a drawing tutorial. First a little sketching. Then some line cleanup. Lay over some lineart. Erase the sketches beneath. Add details. Add color. Do cell style shading. I don’t get how professional digital artists pull that off in 6 hours. I worked on this guy for 6 hours and I was able to get the lineart done only. Now at 11 o’clock, I’m yawning too much to even see my keyboard. Since I’m on break, I want to see how far I can take him. Maybe I’ll even add a background.

When drawing or painting, the artist has a boatload of choices. Painters can choose between watercolor, acrylic, and oils. Sketchers can use graphite pencils, regular pencils, or go straight to pen. Digital artists can use a mouse, tablet, or pen tool. You can even combine different tools. For instance, you can start off with graphite pencils on drawing paper, then scan the drawing with a really good scanner, and then use the pen tool to replace the rough sketch with smooth lines. You can even print out a piece of digital art, fix a mistake, and then scan the image again. Click to read more …

Tags: angel, Art, character, drawing, fantasy, figure, halberd, sketch, sketching, staff, wand, wing, winged, wings

Sorry for the delay in posting. I had to work today and Alex and I went to see a movie Saturday.

We all need a little guidance in life, some of us more than others do. Heck? Really, who doesn’t need guidance? It’s a crazy world out there, full of cruel people who just want to chew you up and spit you out. The world is also full of people who get angry for no reason then make you feel like it’s your fault they’re ticked off, even though you have no clue what the heck you did, why they’re angry, and why they are the real-life embodiment of Frosty the Snowman. Sometimes, you wonder why you even open your mouth at all, even if it is just to let off steam (and not to be accusatory or force someone to do something) in order to feel better. I feel better about life, but some individuals, sheesh, need to lay off the Metamucil; too much can put you in a crappy mood—pun intended. Either way, there’s nothing more depressing than a cold shoulder, hugging an ice cube, and sticking your tongue to a frozen flagpole ala A Christmas Story, which, by the way, is about my hometown at Christmas. HOLLA! Click to read more …

Tags: figure, guidance, guidelines, lines, skeleton, touchpad

New artists sometimes panic over proportions. I remember when I first tried drawing at age 7, all my character’s hands were bigger than their heads. Later on in life, I struggled to draw legs that looked right. My legs looked enormous while my bodies looked like oompa-loompa bodies.

Well, it turns out that I wasn’t completely off base if I were a Japanese cartoon artist. Really short, stubby arms and legs are the style found in chibi-style drawing. Really long legs are common in Shoujo manga, while really big heads are given to characters in order to increase their comicalness. Click to read more …

Tags: anime, cartoon, cartooning, chibi, comic, draw, drawing, figure, manga, Perspective, profile, proportion, shoujo, sketch