[MightyMustard]

Hey guys. I doodled a lot during college and what not. That got me past the stick-men stage but now I want to properly learn to draw. I eventually want to progress to digital painting.*

I would like to learn as much as possible (working in the industry one day might be too much of a dream, but who knows?) but having a traditional education isn't a possibility for many reasons. ( too old, stuck in a sucky job etc. )

I'm curious about your education background. What to learn with what order? I can get to materials with not much problem but I don't have any idea how to create a study plan.

Could you guys give me some tips? How did you get to the point you're now? ( apart from studying your ass off obviously. )

[jonhopkins]

Hello, Welcome and hope to see you stick around :P.

Ok lets get into it

There really is no easy road to improvement it is all about how much time, effort, study and hard work you're prepared to put in. The more you do the better you will become, art is a skill and requires Honing your fundamentals - understanding; light, form, shadow, value, perspective, colour, composition, positive and negative space etc. Just as with sport you cannot be great if you do not work on your fundamental skills and knowledge.

Is really important to get these down. I think it's an ongoing process as artists learn they improve and desire to learn more to help them improve more, setting yourself small goals that you can fulfill leading you on the path to your ultimate goal will help keep you motivated. For example you could set yourself the goal that every day for 1 week you will do 1 page in your sketchbook drawing from life then at the end of the week review if you kept it or not and then if you need to adjust to accomodate time restraints etc do so.

Drawing consistently is also a great help to improve and keep track of your improvement and progress (hence the example above).

There are many great videos on youtube that teach art fundamentals and you can just learn by watching the artists draw as well. Feng Zhu has some great vids, Bobby Chiu, Sycra, Dave Rapoza (esp the critters videos) - they are doing digital art but the fundamentals are the same, they all teach in a way that is easy to understand. ctrlpaint.com is also a great site to learn with many vids.

As for my education background I did art GCSE and Fine Art A levels. After I finished my A levels I did not continue (nor looking back did I take the oppurtunity to really work as hard as I could have) to do a lot of art work, I drew from time to time (I always wanted to have an art related job but I didn't decide to put in the hard work until this year) but not really from life, basically because I spent most of my time drawing from photos throughout my art education and drawing from life was much harder and I wasn't very good at it to begin with because you have to be fast unlike copying photos or stuffed animals where they will always be still.

Some bullet points that could help you here ( these are suggestions not a set guide you should follow)

1. Start a sketchbook on this website and add at least 1 sketch to it every day. Scan in from your physical sketchbook what you have done.

2.Practice your fundamentals - studying one aspect of these a week then changing to another for the next week could be good

3.Learn from other artists, ask questions on the site, we're all here to learn and progress together

4. Work hard to become the best artist you can be.

5. Don't worry about the standard you are at, we all started out somewhere. (I havent seen if you have a sketchbook or not to see the level of your work but I'll check after this post )


I hope this was of some help to you.

[Baxter]

Johnhopkins pretty much hit the nail on the head. My educational background is pretty much identical to his. I went to University to study Fine Art after Alevels but found the course to be unhelpful (we pretty much taught ourselves which kinda defeated the object of paying someone to teach you) so i left and got a boring job. Now several years later I'm back on the drawing bandwagon trying to get better.

What Johnhopkins said has pretty much hit the nail on the head. Set yourself small goals, try to draw every day and try to draw from life as much as possible. Also one thing I found useful - which sounds horribly obvious but I often lose track of it anyway - is that you should try to understand what you are drawing rather than just mindlessly copying it. Keep asking yourself "why" all the time.

It's entirely possible to improve and learn by yourself though it requires hard work. If you want you can take a look at my sketchbook here: http://community.imaginefx.com/forum...ad/383550.aspx which is one of my more recent ones and compare it to my old sketchbook here: http://community.imaginefx.com/forum...ad/359018.aspx which was started about a year ago and you can see the improvement and change in direction that I ended up taking. Whatever direction you end up taking is up to you but don't be discouraged, everyone starts somewhere. Just keep posting and getting feedback and you will grow.

Anyway my weekly plan is as follows:
Monday - tuesday is anatomy practice. Each month I pick a subject to improve on and work on that. This month it's hands, last month it was arms.
Wednesday is studies from life & photos. Usually still life and scenery.
Thursday - more anatomy
Friday - Sunday - anatomy, plus full figure studies.

I pretty much decide where I want to improve and work on that until I get better at it. Knowing where to start is hard but breaking things down into smaller subjects really helps. Perhaps you could start with the fundamentals like line, shape etc. Check out Conceptart.org's begginers tutorials when it's back up and running. there is one called conceptart 101 which is very useful for a study plan.