Thread: So, I want to draw

I don't know where to start . I have started working on body proportions, but I can't find many good websites. What would be the best way to learn to draw? Draw humans and such, that is.

Good rule of thumb; arms are longer than you think. You could always practice, I suppose.. I think that if you practice you'll develop you're own style.

If you can get your hands on it, by purchase or borrow, look for Betty Edwards' "Drawing On the Right Side Of The Brain".

The hardest thing in learning to draw is getting away from the symbols you have learned to represent the things you see. Getting away from those and drawing what you SEE rather than what you think you see is challenging - and the results are downright stunning. Working though this book will encourage you tremendously.

There's a lot more to it, of course... but if you want to jump-start your drawing education, I can't recommend this highly enough.

http://www.drawright.com/

Originally Posted by pj

If you can get your hands on it, by purchase or borrow, look for Betty Edwards' "Drawing On the Right Side Of The Brain".

The hardest thing in learning to draw is getting away from the symbols you have learned to represent the things you see. Getting away from those and drawing what you SEE rather than what you think you see is challenging - and the results are downright stunning. Working though this book will encourage you tremendously.

There's a lot more to it, of course... but if you want to jump-start your drawing education, I can't recommend this highly enough.

http://www.drawright.com/

Thanks! Seems like a good book, I'll look into it

If you're interested in drawing people, it would be good to learn how Fibonacci sequences apply to the human body, especially when you are drawing hands.

The only thing that I don't like about the book (drawing on the right side of the brain) is that essentially everything it teaches you can be accomplished with one simple drawing exercise. Simply take a picture of a fairly complicated but recognizable object, or a person would work well for this, and turn the picture upside down and try to draw it. This accomplishes exactly what beef jerky was talking about. Since you are seeing this recognizable shape from a completely different perspective, you have no preconditioned beliefs of how it should look and so it is much easier to draw it how it actually looks.

Other than that, the best I can suggest when it comes to drawing people is just to look up some basic anatomy and proportion. The general rule is that a human should be roughly 8 heads high (that is, their head should be 1/8th the height of their whole body). When practicing to draw arms start out with someone hanging their arms by their side and just stand up and hang your arms to see how far down your legs they go (fingers should reach about half way down the thigh)