Was wondering if there were any artists here, professional or otherwise. I am interested in sketching; nothing crazy, just for fun. It's something I've always been interested in; I've always loved concept art sketches and drawings for video games, movies, and everything else.
How did you get started? Do you recommend taking classes? Or is just practice all it takes? Any Youtubers or websites you recommend?
I looked up some videos the other day and found one about sketching (funny, I always thought sketching was just a casual term, but it's actually a proper technique!) and found it pretty interesting. The guy suggested starting with a circle, and compared to not sketching (i.e. doing a single line and drawing a circle) versus sketching a circle (i.e. multiple broken lines in the shape of a circle), and sure enough the sketch looked far more circular than the single line!
Andrew Loomis. The PDF versions are free and legal, but now get (paid for) physical books. The PDF scans are abit grainy (1940's ) so if you have the money it's worth buying the physical books off Amazon. Fun With Pencil is probably the best book to start with.
I am a professional photographer and graphics artist - I make a living off of this. It's really a tough thing for me to say where you can "start" because art has been a lifelong passion of mine and I didn't just one day wake up on the whim and decide to start sketching, it's just what I've been doing all my life. I have always had an interest in the arts and cinema, and I've always been captivated by the history of these mediums - I found much of my influence simply by being absorbed in my appreciation for these forms.
If you're just looking to draw as a hobby, I don't think going to college is necessary at all (I mean, why? If you're not pursuing it professionally). While I went to college myself to obtain my own degree, I'm inclined to say even then college is not necessary for the pursuit of professional arts of any kind. You can become very successful simply by the talent you possess and most importantly the people you know. Your rate of success in the art world will largely depend on your ability to network and meet people in different industries that can actually get you places.
If you're just looking to draw on the side, hit up "Youtube University" and look up videos about the form of the human body and perspectives, just to get you started. As you get better at learning some of the basics, start looking into foreshortening and color theories so things can really begin to pop out.
This is a very good beginners' course, if you're just starting out.
There's a fair bit of pop-psych and mumbo jumbo in there, but the general approach and suggested exercises work. I mean, they really work.
The basic theory is that a lot of us are essentially artistically "retarded" (LOL, bear with me, I'm including myself here). That is to say, most of us stop developing artistically at some point in our childhood because we're overly self-critical when we're confronted with our own immediate failure, so we never practise. Instead, we end up substituting actual forms in our drawings with comfortable, pre-conceived (rehearsed) symbols, which don't look anything like what we're actually seeing in front of us (think sausage blobs for hands). The book is about coaxing us out of that state with practical exercises.
The first step (I think) was blind contour-drawing. Here you're taking a detailed 3-D object (the author recommends starting with your hand, really up-close to your face, so you can catch all the details), and without looking at your paper at any point, tracing onto it, very slowly, the exact contours of what you're seeing as you trace over them with your eyes. Try to do this in a single unbroken line, as far as possible. You'll most likely end up occasionally lifting your pencil, but don't look at the paper to determine where you should continue; just drop your pencil back onto the paper where it feels right. Don't worry about getting every little additional detail in, but try to spend at least 5-10 minutes on the exercise (she recommends 20). If your eyes start following a crease or a fold, just go with it - keep following the contours with a slow, steady pace. It should be a calm, trance-like activity, rather than the self-critical process you go through when you're minutely judging your own progress at every instant.
When you've finished and you do finally look back at your paper, you'll find that although elements might be mis-proportioned or dislocated, the overall representation is, in a lot of ways, much more correct, pleasing and 'artistic' than if you'd gone in, all guns blazing, and spent the same amount of time trying to capture forms, micro-adjust and then add detail. The next stage was basically the same procedure but with occasional modification along the way, i.e. glancing to establish appropriate positions or angles, when necessary.
Well damn, I've written an essay, and only on one exercise, lol. I'll stop there, but I'm still really not doing the book any justice. There's a good deal of discussion of form and negative space, proportion, light and shadow, colour theory... all that kind of stuff, but it was the section on contour that got me "over the hump" and made me go, "Huh, well maybe I'm not necessarily that bad at art after all", and kept me practising - hence the enthusiasm. I strongly recommend picking it up if the above doesn't sound too hokey to you. It's really been helping me.
*edit* look for the earliest edition - apparently there are sections missing from later editions.
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