Welcome to Gaia! ::

Edit 9/7/09: Oh wow... I left for a while because the guild wasn't really active, plus I wasn't drawing much... now it seems a lot more active. Anyway, I have something new up.

Also, I'd like a mentor, but I didn't see any slots open... so I guess I'll wait. But just telling any mentors interested in opening slots, I'm really going to try hard now because I want to start my comic and get at least a chapter or two done before January.

my question is, are you going for a certain stylistic approach? or are you learning to draw anime or realistic?

If you wish to draw more realisticaly, the best way to do it is to take photographs and copy them, trying to get the most detail. Then you can try drawing people form real life. As you go your mind will remember details and such, so that when you draw without refference it will look more realistic.

For example, in your original character, the neck is a bit too long, and some body parts don't have the correct anatomic structure. The shading is not bad though! And the main proportions look ok, I mean the size of the head and the body, for example.

You could try drawing from refference and see how it goes, and then post the drawing and refference here

Original Character (New piece)

This is where I get confused. I've heard from so many people not to use art books, to use medical books (like Gray's Anatomy)... I don't know what to do... And I've also heard that you should start by copying a photo in every piece you do and then change the copy of the photo, and I've heard from other people that that's illegal and that you can only copy, for example, a face, or a hand from each photo, and then you have to put those together or improvise. All these different people say all this different stuff and I don't know what to do...

No, your wording is fine. I understood. I wouldn't go around saying a piece that was copied from a photo was original. If I were to submit it to dA, I'd put it in scraps.

I go to school online. I ONLY have photos of live models to use. I think the people that tell you that aren't speaking from experience but regurgitating something they heard in an attempt to sound like they know what they're talking about.

Not everyone will have a live model in front of them to use and live models don't exactly like to stay still long enough for someone who is just starting to learn to really study as long as they may need. It's best to use both. I've had a live model before. I use nearly only photos of live models now.

Anyway, I would check out some magazines or look around online (you may have an easier time with the mags since that tip of the head is common in men's fashion photography) and get a feel for what the jaw and skull do.

The best advice I can give right now is to start from the inside out. Look at skeletons. Look at how a skull is shaped. I think part of your problem is you're drawing from memory, but you haven't committed human form to memory yet. (I wish I could give you some pictures to look at, but I'm at the office.)

Really, it's best to try out sources and see what works best for you, rather than blindly listening to whatever people tell you. The greater part of art is experimentation.

In your image, his head looks like a water balloon. The rest isn't that bad, but the neck and head definitely need some structure. Think of the skull as a ball and the neck comes from that. The lower jaw is connected to the bottom of the ball, and falls in front of the spine. Your spine goes all the way up to the base of your skull. Feel back there and check it out.

You can use yourself as reference sometimes. Look in a mirror. Feel around your body in the areas you're trying to draw to get a feel of the shape.

You're doing good so far. Keep at it. biggrin

Eh... This was just done to try out some new markers I bought... I haven't been able to get any ideas for serious projects recently.

　

Edit: Okay, I have serious problems here. I read throught most of the tutorials in the sticky on in the main forum here, and I DID NOT UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT! I think I'm seriously hopeless. I'm dumber than a beginner, since I think some of those were made for beginners. Stuff they said should come naturally doesn't come at all. I can't see correctly. I have no imagination either. It's a good thing I'm not still thinking of applying to art school, or majoring in art, because if I tried to do that none of them would accept me and I'd just not go to college and live on the street and never get a job.