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How to Draw - An advanced Introduction
11 years ago
In this journal i will write about several topics that people asked me about at some point or another, but just dont fit in the basic introduction ( see here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5347834/ ). What i will write here is purely my opinion, but has proven to be (mostly) right, so if you are drawing for a while, read on :D If you are just starting on, read on too!
Traditional or Digital?
This is the main question that people seem to be having - shall they start with traditional art or just plunge head first into the digital art? I could list the pro and contras of each, but it would be better if you dropped the whole notion to see them as the same side of the coin and just treat em like two different things! True, art comes out in the end, but the processes are quite different, so lets see both of them, starting with...
Traditional Art
IMHO, if you are new to Art, start with Traditional art! It`s easier, since you have the hand-eye coordination and can work faster and easier. This kind of art is easy to learn, but hard to master, since there are tons of different ways you can take! There are different kinds of tools to work with and on, so it also offers lots of ways to express oneself. The only downside that I can mention is the sheer cost if you decide to move into the "profesionall" corner of art and buy the more costly tools and art mediums like paper and canvas. But, what do you need to start off?
- Paper or a notebook (clear white)
- Standard Lead Pencils (With either soft or hard lead, soft is better for shading, hard is better for drawing)
- Eraser (Simple white one, preferable the small one, but you can have a big one too for cleaning out larger portions of drawing)
- Pencil Sharpner (Buy bout 10 of these, since you will lose them all the time ;3)
All this will cost under 10 bucks and will hold a while - For my sketching needs, i usualy get bout five A5 format clear white notebooks, two packages of soft pencils (10 per Pckg.), an good sharpner and two erasers and come under 10€ and have enough material for next 4-5 months, depending on my doodle needs - in case i need to doodle all the time, i might go back to get more sketchbooks ;3.
And that is your standard equipment - cheap and easy to aquire. But as said, going deeper into Traditional art will soon get costly! Since, you can draw with bunch of stuff - coal, mechanical pencils, pen, ink, water and oil colors, markers, colored pencils just to name the few. The paper cost will also rise, since not every tool works the best on every paper - Hammer, the thick white paper is quite good for ink and watercolor, but is waste of money to spend on if ya work with other, non aqua based tools (as far as ive tried it out). Working on other kinds of paper can also yield interesting results - water color and coated paper can be hard to combine, but the outcome can be REALLY good. I wont dwell on this for too long since i made the jump to the digital art in the time i had money problems and couldnt afford dishing out much for the tools of the trade and regrett it ever since - but seeing that i still have the lackage in money department, that wont change soon ^^;
Still, if you are new to Art, start with this! You can take your tools everywhere and doodle anytime you want. Also a big plus is the fact you can actually SEE where your hand is and can also easily turn the paper around, quicker and faster than on PC.
Also one thing that can put a dent into your budget is a flatbed Scanner. Dont bother with digital cams and such, since the bad quality of them will let your work look blurry and unpresentable. You can get good scanners for about 50 bucks and on. Skip the cheap crap and get yourself a HP or Cannon scanner, since they are the best for your needs - mine is Cannon CanoScan LiDE 110, flatbed scanner i got for 70€ back in the day (not a reduced price, as far as i can remember) that is fast AND usb powered. Only thing i would advise not to use at all are combined Scanner+Printer set ups, since the heat that printer creates will bust your scanner pretty soon. Every scanner comes with scanning software, but get yourself Photoshop or Gimp - its easier to adjust pictures that way.
Digital Art
Digital Art is the vile temptress - it offers tools that you need to get once every few years and also the magical undo command! But, dont be fooled. Digital art is hard to learn- If learning to draw is like learning to drive a bicycle, digital art is like trying to drive without hands - you will fall and steer away from your destination a lot in the beginning! Thats why i say - if you are new to art, DONT START WITH DIGITAL!!! Starting out with digital is expensive comparred to the starting out gear for traditional art and you will cheat yourself out of doodling all the time too, since you cant take a PC with ya all the time. True, you can take a laptop, but you will need a table or at least a way to balance both the laptop and fat-ass tablet! And the main reason is - you arent looking at your hand, you are looking at the screen! While starting out, you NEED to see what the heck you are doing down there, you NEED the eye-hand coordination! So, get that idea out of your head and get pencils and paper and doodle! In few years, you can do the jump, or even earlier if you are practicing like maniac ^^ But, lets see the starting costs -
- PC, preferably with Internet Connection (provided, or you couldnt read this=
- Art Programm (See below)
- Picture Editing programm (optional, see below)
- Tablet (or mouse - and i mean that one! There are people around that can do magic with your standard logitech mouse!)
- Printer (also optional, see below)
I work with Wacom Bamboo Tablet with drawing space of a size of an A6, that i got for 60€ back in the day. The model i am using is out of production, since i got it in 2008, but support is still going on for this lil rascal :3 My experience with wacom products is VERY good, so you should try to get one of these! I worked with an borrowed one for bout a year, also an wacom, and had also good reasults with that one. The support is good and they are quite sturdy too. You can get tablets in price range from 60€ (30 if you count the wacom touch, which is piece of crap and not suited for our art needs) up to 350€ and more! The main price factor is the Size of the tablet and also what product line - bamboo line is more cheaper than others, but can be quite hard to get (havent seen much of those lately, but maybe its just the big names/big prices clogging the search). Also, get sum reflective tape and glue it on the pen - that bugger loves to roll down the table and bed every now and then.
You will also need some art programms to get you started. You CAN draw in paint, but it is very limited. My advice would be to go with Sai, which is free and has variety of tools to choose from or with OpenCanvas, which costs bout 30 bucks, depending if they have a sale or not, but also has variety of tools and interesting fuctions like saving your art progress which can then be replayed by other users using OC. I was working with Open Canvas 1.1, 4.06E and not the 5th edition, which has settings of previous editions implemented into it - It`s a good art programm, but Sai is slowly gaining up to it lately, so you might as well start with the no cost variant :D Other kind of Programs you can use are the Tool Simulators like Art Rage and Corel Painter, the later having more options but both needing a lot of ram to actually work properly! So, its something for current generation PCs that can work with it, but you can make an Art with it that mimicks real Tools quite well! Also, there are Vector based programs, oposed to the pixel ones listed above (i will explain the difference below), You can go with either Flash, Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw - i sadly dont know any free vektor programs at the moment, so if anyone can tell me about a free one, i will implement it here later on :3
Picture Editing programs are ones like Adobe Photoshop and Gimp (the last one is for free). You CAN use them, but you dont have to! The problem of the most Art programs is their lack to adjust colors, size, switching between RGB and CMYK (will come to this later) and DPI (Will also come to this later). Open canvas can handle himself very well on it`s own in this regard, but still cant do some things or overly complicated compared to photoshop. You will need this Programs if you want to give your pictures the last polish before tossing them online, but can also be useful to quickly resize a part of body that you messed up - it aint no shame, i use it all the time :D But, i want to stress it - PHOTOSHOP AND GIMP ARENT ART PROGRAMS!!! You can be super good with them, but they arent meant for creating art, merily touching it up. You can use a plane to drive around highways, but why would you!!! There ARE bunch of effect avaliable in photoshop and such, but trust me - add them later instead of drawing there. Ive been using Photoshop for a while - i started with legally owned (!) Photoshop 7 and Im currently using Photoshop CS6, to which i have a year of use thanks to a lenghty print course i went to. I tried Gimp now and then, but will know more when the free license is out :3
You need a printer only if you plan to print out your work. Try getting yourself an InkJet, preferably Cannon. HP is also good, but cannon is a) faster and b) the color is easier and cheaper to refill. Im aware there are laserjet printer out there too, but i never bothered to try them out, since laser printer pictures tend to "break", thin white lines apearing there where the color layer has cracked. Also, Im not making an free advertisement for Cannon or HP - they are just one of those machines with a good price range and that i spent using the most in my life. I also tried Lexmark once, but the colors are expensive, at some point costing MORE than a new mashine!!! This is because the color packages you get with the mashine (as with every other printer) are only up to 1/2 - 1/4 full, so just dont bother with it... Also, when it comes to printing, there are some things ya need to know...
DPI: Dots Per Inch, tells you how much dots are found withing an inch of the picture - the higher, the better for the print. For a good Print, you need around 300 DPI. For screen, you need 72 DPI - the higher the DPI is, the blurrier the picture gets on screen! So, 72 DPI for FA, 300 for print :3 Also, if you rise the DPI AFTER you finished the pic, the picture will get smaller! It will have the same size in Pixels, but the size in Inches (Or cm) will decrease! Just keep this in mind before ya wonder why your magnum opus came out at a size of a post-it note after you increased the DPI from 10 to 600 ;3
RGB/CMYK: These two are the most knows color spaces, LAB being around them too, lurking in the shadows. RGB (Red Green Blue) is an additive color space, meaning that when you mix all the colors, you get white. This is the Color Space of Light - so, anything that hits your eye as ray of light is RGB, like your Screen! CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Kontrast/Black) is a subtractive color space, meaning that when you mix all the colors, you get black. Many people referr to this one as CMY Color Space, since you get black in the ending, but this is the color space used in print and black is also used there, so you get that K hanging in the back of all dem letters. This Color Space is used for the objects that dont shine, so you can say that the world is CMYK...sumwhat.
You need to know the difference, since if you want to print, you will have a bad time if you try to print your RGB picture on your CMYK printer - and EVERY printer is CMYK based! You can change the color space after you have finished the pic, but you will notice that the picture will a)look wahsed out and b)be a lot darker when printed. This is because some colors cant be found in CMYK color space and vice versa ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.....comparison.png ). CMYK also has diffculities showing transparency and such, so be on the lookout. You CAN work in CMYK, but do only so if you just plan to print it. If you work for screen only, stay in sRGB or the better, Adobe RGB. ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.....Colorspace.png )
And last but not least, the difference between Pixel and Vektor based Programs. Pixels are used most of the time when it comes to art, since you have the freedom to draw lines as you please and can actually work on every little piece of your work. It also offers a much better coloring options. Vektors are not easy to use, but have one major advantage - you can resize them at will at no loss of quality! You can make a 1 in x 1 in picture in vector programm of your choice and resize it to A0 format if you like to, with absolutelly no loss in quality! But vectors are pretty wonky to use, so people mostly make logos or little graphics with these programs, but ive seen few artists work with these (as i did to at one point or another) and can say that i find it limiting, but enjoyable :3
And that would be it! As said in the begining, what you just have red is purely my own opinion - some people will say that im wrong, others that im right. But, same as with art styles, there is as much opinion about these topics as there are artists around :3 So go ahead, see it for yourself and make your own opinion! Listen to others, but never limit yourself to their words only - try stuff out, see the world and learn!
As with the last journal, im open for any questions, so feel free to ask :3
Pav
Traditional or Digital?
This is the main question that people seem to be having - shall they start with traditional art or just plunge head first into the digital art? I could list the pro and contras of each, but it would be better if you dropped the whole notion to see them as the same side of the coin and just treat em like two different things! True, art comes out in the end, but the processes are quite different, so lets see both of them, starting with...
Traditional Art
IMHO, if you are new to Art, start with Traditional art! It`s easier, since you have the hand-eye coordination and can work faster and easier. This kind of art is easy to learn, but hard to master, since there are tons of different ways you can take! There are different kinds of tools to work with and on, so it also offers lots of ways to express oneself. The only downside that I can mention is the sheer cost if you decide to move into the "profesionall" corner of art and buy the more costly tools and art mediums like paper and canvas. But, what do you need to start off?
- Paper or a notebook (clear white)
- Standard Lead Pencils (With either soft or hard lead, soft is better for shading, hard is better for drawing)
- Eraser (Simple white one, preferable the small one, but you can have a big one too for cleaning out larger portions of drawing)
- Pencil Sharpner (Buy bout 10 of these, since you will lose them all the time ;3)
All this will cost under 10 bucks and will hold a while - For my sketching needs, i usualy get bout five A5 format clear white notebooks, two packages of soft pencils (10 per Pckg.), an good sharpner and two erasers and come under 10€ and have enough material for next 4-5 months, depending on my doodle needs - in case i need to doodle all the time, i might go back to get more sketchbooks ;3.
And that is your standard equipment - cheap and easy to aquire. But as said, going deeper into Traditional art will soon get costly! Since, you can draw with bunch of stuff - coal, mechanical pencils, pen, ink, water and oil colors, markers, colored pencils just to name the few. The paper cost will also rise, since not every tool works the best on every paper - Hammer, the thick white paper is quite good for ink and watercolor, but is waste of money to spend on if ya work with other, non aqua based tools (as far as ive tried it out). Working on other kinds of paper can also yield interesting results - water color and coated paper can be hard to combine, but the outcome can be REALLY good. I wont dwell on this for too long since i made the jump to the digital art in the time i had money problems and couldnt afford dishing out much for the tools of the trade and regrett it ever since - but seeing that i still have the lackage in money department, that wont change soon ^^;
Still, if you are new to Art, start with this! You can take your tools everywhere and doodle anytime you want. Also a big plus is the fact you can actually SEE where your hand is and can also easily turn the paper around, quicker and faster than on PC.
Also one thing that can put a dent into your budget is a flatbed Scanner. Dont bother with digital cams and such, since the bad quality of them will let your work look blurry and unpresentable. You can get good scanners for about 50 bucks and on. Skip the cheap crap and get yourself a HP or Cannon scanner, since they are the best for your needs - mine is Cannon CanoScan LiDE 110, flatbed scanner i got for 70€ back in the day (not a reduced price, as far as i can remember) that is fast AND usb powered. Only thing i would advise not to use at all are combined Scanner+Printer set ups, since the heat that printer creates will bust your scanner pretty soon. Every scanner comes with scanning software, but get yourself Photoshop or Gimp - its easier to adjust pictures that way.
Digital Art
Digital Art is the vile temptress - it offers tools that you need to get once every few years and also the magical undo command! But, dont be fooled. Digital art is hard to learn- If learning to draw is like learning to drive a bicycle, digital art is like trying to drive without hands - you will fall and steer away from your destination a lot in the beginning! Thats why i say - if you are new to art, DONT START WITH DIGITAL!!! Starting out with digital is expensive comparred to the starting out gear for traditional art and you will cheat yourself out of doodling all the time too, since you cant take a PC with ya all the time. True, you can take a laptop, but you will need a table or at least a way to balance both the laptop and fat-ass tablet! And the main reason is - you arent looking at your hand, you are looking at the screen! While starting out, you NEED to see what the heck you are doing down there, you NEED the eye-hand coordination! So, get that idea out of your head and get pencils and paper and doodle! In few years, you can do the jump, or even earlier if you are practicing like maniac ^^ But, lets see the starting costs -
- PC, preferably with Internet Connection (provided, or you couldnt read this=
- Art Programm (See below)
- Picture Editing programm (optional, see below)
- Tablet (or mouse - and i mean that one! There are people around that can do magic with your standard logitech mouse!)
- Printer (also optional, see below)
I work with Wacom Bamboo Tablet with drawing space of a size of an A6, that i got for 60€ back in the day. The model i am using is out of production, since i got it in 2008, but support is still going on for this lil rascal :3 My experience with wacom products is VERY good, so you should try to get one of these! I worked with an borrowed one for bout a year, also an wacom, and had also good reasults with that one. The support is good and they are quite sturdy too. You can get tablets in price range from 60€ (30 if you count the wacom touch, which is piece of crap and not suited for our art needs) up to 350€ and more! The main price factor is the Size of the tablet and also what product line - bamboo line is more cheaper than others, but can be quite hard to get (havent seen much of those lately, but maybe its just the big names/big prices clogging the search). Also, get sum reflective tape and glue it on the pen - that bugger loves to roll down the table and bed every now and then.
You will also need some art programms to get you started. You CAN draw in paint, but it is very limited. My advice would be to go with Sai, which is free and has variety of tools to choose from or with OpenCanvas, which costs bout 30 bucks, depending if they have a sale or not, but also has variety of tools and interesting fuctions like saving your art progress which can then be replayed by other users using OC. I was working with Open Canvas 1.1, 4.06E and not the 5th edition, which has settings of previous editions implemented into it - It`s a good art programm, but Sai is slowly gaining up to it lately, so you might as well start with the no cost variant :D Other kind of Programs you can use are the Tool Simulators like Art Rage and Corel Painter, the later having more options but both needing a lot of ram to actually work properly! So, its something for current generation PCs that can work with it, but you can make an Art with it that mimicks real Tools quite well! Also, there are Vector based programs, oposed to the pixel ones listed above (i will explain the difference below), You can go with either Flash, Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw - i sadly dont know any free vektor programs at the moment, so if anyone can tell me about a free one, i will implement it here later on :3
Picture Editing programs are ones like Adobe Photoshop and Gimp (the last one is for free). You CAN use them, but you dont have to! The problem of the most Art programs is their lack to adjust colors, size, switching between RGB and CMYK (will come to this later) and DPI (Will also come to this later). Open canvas can handle himself very well on it`s own in this regard, but still cant do some things or overly complicated compared to photoshop. You will need this Programs if you want to give your pictures the last polish before tossing them online, but can also be useful to quickly resize a part of body that you messed up - it aint no shame, i use it all the time :D But, i want to stress it - PHOTOSHOP AND GIMP ARENT ART PROGRAMS!!! You can be super good with them, but they arent meant for creating art, merily touching it up. You can use a plane to drive around highways, but why would you!!! There ARE bunch of effect avaliable in photoshop and such, but trust me - add them later instead of drawing there. Ive been using Photoshop for a while - i started with legally owned (!) Photoshop 7 and Im currently using Photoshop CS6, to which i have a year of use thanks to a lenghty print course i went to. I tried Gimp now and then, but will know more when the free license is out :3
You need a printer only if you plan to print out your work. Try getting yourself an InkJet, preferably Cannon. HP is also good, but cannon is a) faster and b) the color is easier and cheaper to refill. Im aware there are laserjet printer out there too, but i never bothered to try them out, since laser printer pictures tend to "break", thin white lines apearing there where the color layer has cracked. Also, Im not making an free advertisement for Cannon or HP - they are just one of those machines with a good price range and that i spent using the most in my life. I also tried Lexmark once, but the colors are expensive, at some point costing MORE than a new mashine!!! This is because the color packages you get with the mashine (as with every other printer) are only up to 1/2 - 1/4 full, so just dont bother with it... Also, when it comes to printing, there are some things ya need to know...
DPI: Dots Per Inch, tells you how much dots are found withing an inch of the picture - the higher, the better for the print. For a good Print, you need around 300 DPI. For screen, you need 72 DPI - the higher the DPI is, the blurrier the picture gets on screen! So, 72 DPI for FA, 300 for print :3 Also, if you rise the DPI AFTER you finished the pic, the picture will get smaller! It will have the same size in Pixels, but the size in Inches (Or cm) will decrease! Just keep this in mind before ya wonder why your magnum opus came out at a size of a post-it note after you increased the DPI from 10 to 600 ;3
RGB/CMYK: These two are the most knows color spaces, LAB being around them too, lurking in the shadows. RGB (Red Green Blue) is an additive color space, meaning that when you mix all the colors, you get white. This is the Color Space of Light - so, anything that hits your eye as ray of light is RGB, like your Screen! CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Kontrast/Black) is a subtractive color space, meaning that when you mix all the colors, you get black. Many people referr to this one as CMY Color Space, since you get black in the ending, but this is the color space used in print and black is also used there, so you get that K hanging in the back of all dem letters. This Color Space is used for the objects that dont shine, so you can say that the world is CMYK...sumwhat.
You need to know the difference, since if you want to print, you will have a bad time if you try to print your RGB picture on your CMYK printer - and EVERY printer is CMYK based! You can change the color space after you have finished the pic, but you will notice that the picture will a)look wahsed out and b)be a lot darker when printed. This is because some colors cant be found in CMYK color space and vice versa ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.....comparison.png ). CMYK also has diffculities showing transparency and such, so be on the lookout. You CAN work in CMYK, but do only so if you just plan to print it. If you work for screen only, stay in sRGB or the better, Adobe RGB. ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.....Colorspace.png )
And last but not least, the difference between Pixel and Vektor based Programs. Pixels are used most of the time when it comes to art, since you have the freedom to draw lines as you please and can actually work on every little piece of your work. It also offers a much better coloring options. Vektors are not easy to use, but have one major advantage - you can resize them at will at no loss of quality! You can make a 1 in x 1 in picture in vector programm of your choice and resize it to A0 format if you like to, with absolutelly no loss in quality! But vectors are pretty wonky to use, so people mostly make logos or little graphics with these programs, but ive seen few artists work with these (as i did to at one point or another) and can say that i find it limiting, but enjoyable :3
And that would be it! As said in the begining, what you just have red is purely my own opinion - some people will say that im wrong, others that im right. But, same as with art styles, there is as much opinion about these topics as there are artists around :3 So go ahead, see it for yourself and make your own opinion! Listen to others, but never limit yourself to their words only - try stuff out, see the world and learn!
As with the last journal, im open for any questions, so feel free to ask :3
Pav
