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  Drawing tips for whatever they're worthOct 09, 2013 3:55 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I'm not particularly qualified to give anyone drawing tips, but someone asked me for some today, and as I began to cudgel my brains for something useful to say, all this stuff started falling out. It sort of degenerates into an awful load of aphorisms at the end, but just because they're trite doesn't mean they aren't true, darn it! So here it is:
 
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My favorite human anatomy drawing guide currently is George Bridgeman's classic "Constructive Anatomy," which you can find online pretty easily by Googling. Other guides I've found useful in the past have been another oldie, Andrew Loomis' "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth," and (in my younger days) the Stan Lee / John Buscema "How to Draw Comics the MARVEL Way" although I would now take Bridgeman over both of those.
 
If you're thinking of inking more or less traditionally, both Klaus Janson's "The DC Comics Guide to Inking" and Gary Martin's "The Art of Comic Book Inking" have useful information.
 
Other than reading those kinds of things, I would say just look at (and look for) a lot of photos, films, artwork, and comics you like, and study them but don't copy them. Illustrators I've been into lately include Alex Raymond, Bill Seinkiewicz, Frank Frazetta, David Downton, René Gruau, Alfons Mucha, Frank Miller, Fiona Staples, Takehiko Inoue, and Yoshihisa Tagami. I grew up on more traditional Marvel comics illustrators like John Byrne and Alan Davis. I've also found it useful to study fashion photography both for the models and the clothing. Tumblr is a good place to find these sorts of things; my tumblr is smbhax.tumblr.com if you want to see the kinds of things I'm looking at there. I should note that I look at art for inspiration, and photos / film and real life (I go to a gym most days of the week, and I'm sure that subconsciously (or otherwise >_>) observing others there has been absolutely invaluable for drawing) for actual reference material--and that for the most part I don't advise drawing directly from a photo or whatever, but rather just consulting them to get an idea of how things look in the real world, then setting that photo, etc aside and drawing your own image. I try not to look up photos while I'm in the middle of a drawing unless I'm really really stuck on something.
 
Oh! Also, mirrors are very useful. I have a hand mirror next to my drawing table for making faces in if I need help drawing a particular expression (although sometimes my own face won't cut it and I have to go looking through my trove of reference photos or Google images for clarification), and of course the larger closet or bathroom mirrors are available if I need to try a pose or check a calf muscle or something; in that regard, getting in better physical shape has helped, too. The mirrors are also very helpful for checking drawing accuracy by looking at the drawing reflected in the mirror: this makes it easy to pick out errors or distortions that your eye has been skipping over; if you're working digitally, just use your drawing program's function to flip the canvas horizontally.
 
I would probably still be working all digitally (I did up through the initial part of episode 13 of A*) if it hadn't started being ergonomically uncomfortable for me. I do miss the ease of use of certain digital tools, but I'm actually glad I switched to working traditionally, even though it takes longer and isn't quite as flexible, because once I did I realized that the very easiness of using those digital tools had been allowing me to get by without really having to know how to draw certain things, like oh say nostrils for instance--because I could just sort of muddle around and undo/redo until something came out looking sort of right, even if I didn't quite know how I'd done it. So I would definitely recommend trying to work on paper as well as digitally, if just to expand your knowledge of tools and techniques. You can find a list of the materials and tools I work with on the about page of my main site; lately most of my daily blog entries there have been about drawing and stuff, usually with more detail than I put in my comments here.
 
Specific pencils and paper and brushes and ink aside, though, I would say that I've found the most important drawing tools are time, an eraser, and sheer stubbornness; it isn't that you eventually start to make drawings without mistakes, but rather that you get better at recognizing a mistake, or just a weak drawing, and refuse to let it be seen by anyone; you have to be willing to obliterate a drawing that just isn't working well, and start over from scratch. Usually you will be able to come up with something better if you just keep at it. Constantly question your results, look back over your past work and note what went well and what didn't. If you're entirely satisfied with your work, something has probably gone wrong. Don't strive for perfection, but for what successfully conveys the idea; when I'm stuck on a drawing I generally find that it's because I was trying to force my way through by drawing highly polished details of some high-falutin' idea, whereas what I really need to do is to keep searching until my hand and eye have hit upon a valid basic inspiration; once the beginning is good, it can always be refined. Don't overthink it. Modern pop culture would have it that drawing skill is the result of some sort of magical talent you have to be born with, but it actually comes from observation and practice, and those who are the best at it are those who have worked the hardest and most effectively at it. There will always be someone better than you, but you can always get better than you currently are.
 
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Since then I thought of a couple more things:
 
- After working on something for a while you can become blind to problems in it--or to opportunities!--so I find it useful to take a break for a while once I think I'm done laying it out (generally this is when I go eat dinner), and then come back to it with fresh eyes.
 
- No matter how late I stayed up working the night before, I don't take caffeine when drawing anymore, because I found my drawings were coming out impatient and jittery.
 
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As if to illustrate the earlier point about being stubborn, I ended up drawing two pages for today's one; the first came out like this, which is a nice creepy staredown face, and would have been fine, only after a lot of reworking in white and black ink, the proportions got away from me a little bit, and it also just wasn't a very feminine face; in fact, now that it's been staring at me a while longer, I've realized it illustrates the down side of using a mirror too much for facial reference, because it's actually at least as much a portrait of me as it is of Selenis. Super creepy! Gah!
 
And if that isn't far out enough for you for one A* day, here are the colors I almost went with for today's page (the final version is actually this combined with an earlier pink gradient scheme I had scrapped but tripped over later):
 
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