heya bro! the best thing to motivate your self to draw is to enjoy it, don't beat yourself when you are not satisfied, just make drawing as fun as it is ! references and books can't help you out if you are putting so much pressure in yourself to draw better. relax and enjoy your moments of development. take it easy. don't heavily rely too much on other things, believe on yourself that you can do it later on.

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"Thinking limitless creates no boundaries but greatness!"
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Come down to NC dude. We can draw some stuff.

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Jesse Justice
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Hey BAS, hang in there bro. practice does take longer for some than others. What I might suggest is if just for practice needs, get some tracing paper and trace things you want to get right. This might just give you a morale boost to see the end result, it might also help with dimensions. If you look at tattoo artist, they might race an outline and then fill in the detail as they go along, so this might help you with muscle detail, facial features etc.

CB

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So much good art................so little time

Hey BAS, don't stress too much. Your drawings are actually improving. Look over some of your first submissions and work your way to the newest ones.

I find myself trying to make the rough sketch perfect, which throws everything off. Start off making your rough sketch what it is supposed to be, "rough". Then take a break, come back afterwards and add a little detail. Take another break. Keep doing this until you have a finished product. When you try to complete something all in one go, it becomes frustrating.

You'll get there. Heck, I'm 36 and still have a long way to go to drawing a perfect figure.

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"To Die is easy, it is living that is the challenge". I don't know if this is a quote or something I made up. It just popped into my head one day.

BAS:

Can you list what books you have on anatomy, maybe I can suggest a better one. Also try and do some studies, on different parts of the body. Draw hands, forearms, torsos, neck muscles, feet, legs... then put those together for a full body. I think you are over simplifying what you see, or you're not quite understanding what you see.

It's hard to tell from a comic book, what the artist has "left out" because they have drawn the shape so many times. They know what to simplify and what to over emphasize to make it "stylish". But one type of thinking will get you a very detailed drawing, and the other type will get you just the basic silhouette to understand the shape of the figure.

I hope that wasn't too confusing to read. What I'm getting at is, while many parts of the body may seem to have exact shapes on both sides to make it up, often it is the differences that create the shape. Not the symmetry. Comic art simplifies the symmetry, which makes everyone look exactly the same, the same height, in worse cases the same face.

Here's an example, look at the forearm, it is NOT 2 curves, one curve bends and then straightens on the inside towards the thumb, the other curves almost right after the elbow and goes to the wrist without straightening. I could explain the muscle and bone groups, but that might be a lot for you to take in.

My point is, don't keep using the same line, look really close to see the different shapes, and how those shapes are made up. When you trace from a photo, or use one as reference, your eye naturally pays attention to what line you are copying, is it straight, curved, zig zaggy, or all of the above. However if you were to redraw without that photo, how could you remember all the different lines without a guide.

The trick is to break down each area, remember which line creates it, and then put it back together. It DOES take a lot of work, it won't always, practice is the only way to get better.

Don't give up, we're all rooting for you to improve, and I'm sure you have it in you, the HOUSE piece shows you have a very good eye. Now to apply that to something you'd rather draw... Good luck.

If I had a car I'd drive there myself. We'll have to find sometime in 2010 to get the families together.

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"Once the game is over, the king and pawn return to the same box."
~Italian proverb


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Thanks LJ

The book I'm using is Cutting Edge Anatomy by Chris Hart. It's good I guess, but it'll just show an eye, and three steps to get to that eye, which is sometimes not enough. I dunno.

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"Once the game is over, the king and pawn return to the same box."
~Italian proverb


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Hey BAS, check out the 30 second sketches in my scraps. Look how some of them are better than others. You'll get there if you keep at it, I have faith in you

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~SunStock
~NightGryphon
*CityOfArtists

We got trains, planes and automobiles. Spend a week down here and we'll get lots of drawing time. I'll even show you some Adobe stuff. Think of it as a summer art program.

Anytime you can break away, let me know we'll plan it out.

I'm trying to get up to Pittsburgh to see one of my Air Force buddies. Maybe I can do it, while Rose-Marie is here. I'll talk to Melissa.

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Jesse Justice
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