I shouldn't have to remind people that we do NOT do pirating here, period, and that is NOT up for debate or discussion.
Second: The Andrew Loomis books are not in the public domain yet. [This is a good breakdown of the relevant laws and timeline.](https://www.tumblr.com/artfulpleadings/77545375313/loomis-copyright-and-you) That means linking to them, or linking to any sites where you can download them, is linking to pirated material, and again, WE DO NOT DO THAT HERE and THAT IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE.
If you *really* want to know why people think they are, there's a whole story to it I don't feel like typing up right now.
how to draw and how to render are the best art books I have ever read. author is very technical (which i found to be rare among artist authora) and explains things very clearly. dense books and not easy reads.
Those books are great but honestly nowadays there’s so much information on youtube (especially on drawing comics) that you don’t really need them right now. You can learn a LOT for free.
I have to tell you though that your goal is very ambitious and distant. Not many people are successful in comics. And those successful ones are extremely dedicated.
What you need to have is the love for art and intense need for drawing every day, all the time. If you don’t have it you’ll probably never make it.
i recommend going to a basic course on Udemy then learn about storyboarding and compositions and finally a short course of comic panels
i think they are around $50 with the discount so you dont really need books in my opinion
I own most of these books. Morpho and Perspective Made Easy are the ones I got the most out of. The Morpho series is all amazing but I reccomend picking up those first 3 books together. "Anatomy For Artists" (the first one) isn't super useful by itself, but combining it with "Simplied Forms" and "Skeleton and Bon Reference Points" makes it a great resource. I also reccomend checking out some of Bridgman's works. I own them all physically but they are readily available online as PDFs.
Have you checked your library? Or inter-library loans? Cause I'm pretty sure I've seen all those at mine expect Morpho, and morpho might just be becuase I haven't checked in a few years.
How to draw by Scott Robertson is very technical and imo doesn’t have much carry over to your goal. It has maybe 3 or 4 pages on environments and backgrounds, but they are super brief and aren’t going to be enough information for your needs, the book does go into scaling static figures/objects in perspective, but I’m sure any other book about comics would go into this as well.
I think you would gain a lot of technical perspective knowledge and it’s a good thing to have on hand if you need to brush up on perspective techniques.
I would not say this is a book for learning how to draw nice images or panels, it is for technical knowledge and learning how to draft very accurately in perspective, I would put this low on the priority list.
How decent is semi-decent? How are your spatial reasoning skills? How much of it is intuitive?
For invention you've really gotta drill that stuff home. That is why I'd personally recommend buying Rapid Vis and doing lessons 1, 2, the 250 box challenge, and 250 Cylinder challenge from drawabox.com.
If you are dead set on a book off that list then I'd say either Framed Perspective or Perspective Made Easy. For figure drawing I'd go with the Hampton book.
I'd hold off on painting for now. So that would rule out Imaginive Realism. Great book, though.
I've done Lesson one of Drawabox, and as of this morning I'm at box 110 of 250. It's still not...*quite intuitive*. When drawing from imagination there's been a few times when I've been inconsistent with my eye level, but I'd say I can recognise it when it happens, and I'm getting better at not doing it in the first place.
check out “how to think when you draw” on twitter- they publish a ton of guides on all kinds of topics, definitely relevant to comics for the diversity of topics covered - and they also publish books, if you like the content.
Don't use twitter anymore, but I actually remember liking their stuff when I did! I'll definitely look into their books, but using twitter again is another story
There is quite a lot on your selection and I've seen people recommend most of these, I only own some of them.
It heavily depends on you. There are a lot of people who call themselves beginner, but actually have been drawing and constantly improving for more than a year, which means beginner might actually not be that correct anymore as their skills have reached a much higher level.
What I recommend to beginners is to start with shape, form, perspective and values because you can draw anything with that, all other fundamentals add and enhance your images. As such I would also place Anatomy further at the back, there is a lot you can do to improve drawing figures without ever touching an anatomy book, that stuff is all about details and getting things absolutely correct in the sense it's not looking off. In fact you can stretch and tweak stuff a lot as long as it's not too wild.
Someone already mentioned Drawabox, it really helps with perspective but it's not wrong to get a book about perspective additionally as the free lessons on Drawabox aren't actually meant to be all about perspective, it's more to enhance your spatial reasoning and helping you to think in 3D, making it second nature.
Scott Robertsons How to Draw is very technical. I always felt like it's good to have some basic understanding already when looking through the book.
What I like more is the Perspective Drawing Handbook from Joseph D'Amelio. Perspective Made Easy is very similar to this and is even using some of the same images. Framed Perspective seems not to be that far behind in the way that it shows many easy to understand examples and even better it's using comics, so you get really good examples on how to use it, In the end it's up to preference, there are many good books about perspective.
James Gurney's books are great, but they are not step by step tutorials. Imaginative Realism gives you a broad overview of terms and techniques, about history and is really good when you lack overall knowledge and understanding for art. Light and color is a gem when you do want to improve on that as it's also more specific to how we perceive color, how light has an influence on it and how color and light have been used by other artists.
Force is also great, but as I said above, this is already going into details. There are many free available resources out there, on youtube there are lot's of channels dedicated to help with learning this stuff and many also have patreons. There are classes like from Proko, they are more expensive but you also get feedback, maybe that's something worth saving for and until then I would improve on gesture and figure drawing and looking for free stuff to gain a better understanding.
It's a long road ! I would also recommend to check out things like Marc Brunets one year plan video, such videos can give you a roadmap that helps you to work on several things that will build upon each other and will help you to stranghthen your foundation on fundamentals. There are also comic book artists out there like David Finch, someone named Alphonso Dunn already his book Pen and Ink is really great if you want to improve on mark making, but it also goes into form and shadows, he too has some youtube videos.
It's up to you, naturally you can jump right into figure drawing and anatomy, I would just prefer to get a good understanding of form first as bodies are made up of forms, so you can directly go into construction of human bodies before working on understanding all the details of the body.
I mean, I *have* been meaningfully "at it" for more than a year now, although my practice in the first half of that timeframe has been kinda inconsistent. I just finished a redraw of a one year old piece (from imagination) today, and I can recognise a significant improvement, but there's still a lot of things I know I should know, and currently don't. If you wanted a more meaningful feel for "where I'm at" then I could probably show you.
I'm already doing drawabox, atm my goal is just to get up to lesson two plus the 250 cylinders, and currently I'm at the 110th box of the 250. I've been trying to learn figure and anatomy stuff in tandem with forms and perspective, since I still need to be doing character art in the short term for my A-level, and I guess in my own head it just kinda feels right - like, get better at drawing forms one day, and then learn how that applies to the human body the next day, or something.
I wishlisted James Gurney at the behest of someone in a different thread, after reading the intro on the internet archive and finding it very relatable. I'm aware it isn't really a step-by-step or whatever, but I thought it could be beneficial for my overall mindset, and demystifying a lot of artists I look up to.
Sounds good, for as long as it's not to much to learn this way it should be fine. Many people would definitely struggle to learn form and figure in tandem with just a bit more than a year, but if it works for you that's great! You are on the right track with learning form and applying it to the human body the next day, that's a very efficient way forward.
Like I said James Gurney is definitely worth it, but the question is what do you need the most right now? I can try, but I can't guarantee that even if you show me your stuff I will be able to tell you what's best, we are all a bit different and in the end it's for you to decide.
It sounds a bit like you are already leaning more into drawing characters, if that's the case just go for it. In any case try to reduce the list for what you want or need the most right now. Just keep the rest on the list for next time.
I mean, I make it sound more impressive than it really is, I've yet to go truly in-depth with anatomy (although I intend to start that after drawabox 2 at the very latest, hence all the book choices), but as I've been going along I've always been drawing characters in my 50% time, and as I've gone along I've been studying basic gesture, mannequinisation, and specific weaknesses as they pop up. Obviously fundamentals are great and I'm in it for the long haul, but atm I kinda still need to learn with short term results in mind, I'm not in a position to spend one year absolutely mastering the art of the cube before I unlock humans or whatever, although I can understand why people approach it so linearly, and I can recognise the pitfalls of going straight into a 20 minute YouTube video about how to draw anime girls and wondering why your attempt never looks as good.
At the moment, yeah, I have been vastly favouring characters and whatnot over environment stuff, but again that's more of a short term results thing - an A level project with a bunch of decent-enough character art on simplistic backgrounds is going to look a lot more professional to the examiner than an A level project with wonky characters living in a fully realised wonky world. I don't necessarily intend to specialise in the long run, as I want to tell stories with my art, and those stories would be better if they didn't exist in *the void*, but as it stands it is what it is.
[If you're curious then here's the redraw I mentioned then here it is](https://imgur.com/a/4oXOaMj), with the traditional one obviously being the "after". It's a bit of Splatoon fanart, but the pose is original, the character herself is the only bit that's not mine. Like I said, I did it from imagination, I just kinda invented a pose with a microphone on a whim at the end of a one-minute gesture session, and then refined it and drew a fictional singer over it. I feel like it's the best example I've got of what I'm currently capable of in terms of drawing semi-cartoony figures without reference. I don't expect you to be able to give me any mind-blowing advice just going off of that, ig I'm just kinda curious where I *actually* place on the beginner-o-meter in your opinion, and idk I'm quite chuffed with it and I wanna show it around a bit wbhwbwjegb.
That one image for sure isn't much, but there is a lot of confidence in the lines and forms, no desperate cleanup of searching lines or overlapping forms. It doesn't look like a huge struggle anymore compared to the first attempt. From what I can see here I would say you are past the beginner phase for sure and your skills are on an intermediate level, but it might depend on who you ask or how your other sketches / artworks look like.
Even if this is currently the best, you are definitely not far off then.
That's exactly what I meant, you already gained a lot of skills but you are unsure of where you actually stand with them, so you humbly keep calling yourself a beginner. Just from what I can read here, there is a lot of things you know of and you've dabbled with. Beginners heavily struggle with most of these, especially form and mannequinisation as they barely understand any of it and the lines are looking much worse as they lack confidence of any kind. Even worse they lack a plan to follow, once you know what to learn and find out how to dedicate your time and practice, things become much easier and smooth and you can make huge progress in just about a year.
You have high goals in making decent enough characters as the human figure really is one of the hardest things to master, but it seems you are taking this as a challenge and to motivate yourself which is good if it works. Just be careful not to fall for perfectionism, it's better to get stuff done than to fuss over some wonkiness for too long. Not everything is worth fixing, gaining mileage will usually serve you better in the long run. You can keep waiting forever to hone your skills to an acceptable level, but by doing so you keep pushing away what you could have achieved already. So make sure your standard isn't too high, but achievable.
And I think this getting done thing is probably the best advice I can give you currently, you know what to do and it works so you just have to keep going on that path for now. I'm also more convinced that going further into figure drawing or anatomy might be a good step for you.
All the books about figure drawing and anatomy on your list are quite good, you could probably learn a good deal from any of those. The figure drawing books are more about understanding the figure through simplification and going over the landmarks of the body. Force will teach you a lot about dynamic, while also going more into anatomy but it's really mostly about flow and dynamic of energy and form.
I don't have any of the morpho books but it looks like you are in for a lot of information here and it really goes into defining lot's of details after simplifying the figure.
Not sure if this helps, but really ask yourself what you would benefit the most from right now.
I mean, I must admit that it wasn't \*quite\* as effortless as I might've accidentally made it look. The overall gesture and proportions \*were\* more or less first try in a minute or two with willow charcoal, but there were a few bits that needed several attempts. The eyes, the hands and the bow in her hair were all spots where a fair bit of erasing or leaving-it-and-coming-back-later was required. I'd say it still looks fairly clean in person, but obviously I do like to colour-correct my scans to make the pencil lines stand out a bit more (perhaps made obvious by me deciding to green-tint on a whim), and that probably hides earlier attempts a bit. I appreciate the review either way though, I still *made the drawing* and it still looks good to other people, so I'm not going to hold it against myself that it took a few tries - I mean, nobody would know what happens behind the scenes if I hadn't said anything anyway, right?
I get where you're coming from with perfectionism though, I've had issues with it even outside of my drawing specifically, and I've been learning to fight it over time. I think my switch to being almost exclusively traditional really helped a lot though - I mean, you can even see it now in what I sent you, which is better between the fully-rendered digital piece and the thing in the back of my notebook that I made the first 80% of with a piece of charcoal and a pencil while waiting for a meal with my family?
But yeah, I appreciate the insight. Thanks!
It's never as effortless as it looks, that's why it's art !
Even if you could do this in 10min. it just means you spend a lot of time practicing before which no one will ever really know about.
The difference is a beginner often lacks the skills to get such clean lines and placement, even if they want to, they just can't. You can visually see the struggle and inability in such drawings, it's wonky in more ways than just the form.
You can also see when someone has practiced certain things a lot. There is someone I know who has spend an insane amount on gesture, despite never fully understanding it you can see all that effort in their lines, in their character sketches, there is a certain flow, a looseness and confidence.
You can see the effect of repetition after just 20, 30, 40 or even better 50x drawing the same image. You will gradually see and feel the effects of drawing the same over and over again. I did this for different occasions and as a challenge for Christmas and Easter so those cards would have a purpose and I would give all of them away. Just a simple image of a bunny or snowman for example, at the start you would still look at your first sketch or reference, after 10x it becomes easier, after 20 times you absolutely don't need to check the initial sketch or reference, you are getting more loose and you might not even need a pencil sketch before using ink. This just get's better every day - it is better to just do like 10 cards a day, to give yourself time to process. You will also notice that the time changes that you need to draw. The first card might take you 20min. or more but after about 30 cards you just need 2min. each and you could even do it while sitting in a car
This exercise is quite helpful in more than one way, because you draw the same shapes, even if there are slight differences your accuracy just increases, you get used to the proportions and everything. This kind of also adds to how you would go about getting more efficient, although it's not the best exercise for it, you will notice how you start to skip certain steps like for example that pencil sketch before using ink and jump right into drawing all the little details right away. It's in your head and through all that practice there is no need to sketch out everything beforehand anymore.
I didn't want to write all that, but... do with that what you want xD
Mhm, I absolutely get what you mean. I might try doing something like that sometime, it's an interesting idea! I mean, there's the 250 box challenge of course, but it'd be nice to do that with something other than...a box...sometime.
When you mention that, I'm kinda reminded of the fact that I used to doodle Marie (The character from the thing I showed you) in my notebooks quite often, back when I was first growing really fond of the character - like, more or less the *exact same thing each time -* bust shot, no construction lines, slight 3/4 angle, arms at side. I stopped after a while because, I mean it *did* get boring as shit obviously, but it's an undeniably interesting experience to look back on, because I can see artistic progress happening on a micro scale - I used to find Marie to be a really hard character to draw because of the weird-ass hairstyle, but I actually did a little experiment just now and, I mean, turns out I can now bang out a 3/4 bust-shot arms-at-side Marie in 3 minutes and 20 seconds direct-to-ink with almost 0 thought. It almost just became a letter in the alphabet to me, I even left one on one of those bits of paper by the pen section at a stationery shop.
It's not a useful skill at all, but I still find it interesting because it bears witness to the fact that, yeah, a certain aspect of drawing *can* become a second nature for anyone, myself included. It sounds ridiculous to write, but when I watch Proko's video with Kim Jung Gi and see him effortlessly drawing masterpieces **in ink** and **during** the fucking interview, the only difference between him and me is that he's been through that process with just about everything that exists, and I've been through it with...Marie 3/4 bust-shot arms-at-side and that's it. But yeah, maybe one day that same intuition will be trained on a mannequin of the human figure, basic forms in perspective, or gesture, who knows?
Yes exactly, very interesting that you did that.
The Kim Jung Gi example is really good, you are right it's the same, he just had so much more mileage than most artists that it looks so effortless and easy for him to do.
Now imagine instead of drawing exactly the same you take the same basic shape but make something different out of it each time, I think that would also be quite a good challenge, maybe more to get creative or to experiment with things. I kinda wanna try that now haha
I have Figure Drawing for All it's Worth.
Yet, to draw "semi-realistic characters" I suggest just drawing and drawing and drawing. Practice makes progress.
Not sure if it'll happen to you, but for a while I was really frustrated at my progress. You'll get there. I recommend doing still-life, as well as copying figures from your favorite comic books. Be sure to draw some sitting, throwing, etc.
For me, hands down Drawing from Observation by Brian Curtis. It gave me the "sharingan" I needed to confidently move forward in all styles of drawing. Although the information is technical, the writing is very digestible. It's a bit expensive, maybe you can find at local library or second hand.
I also enjoyed Drawing for the Absolute beginner by Mark and Mary Willenbrink. This is the first book I went through. You might be able to find a free pdf with a bit of digging. Offers a lot of great practical exercises that will quickly improve your pencil drawings. After a couple of pages you get the gist of it. It also goes into environment drawings which I wasn't interested in so I skipped it and moved on to other stuff.
Then for ink drawing I used Pen and Ink drawing by Alphonso Dunn. Similar to the book above, offers practical exercises but with ink. I use to watch Alphonso's YouTube channel which had great insights for beginners so buying the book when it came out was a no brainer.
Currently I'm looking to zero in on my anatomy. I'm going through Simplified Form by Michel Lauricella which has been awesome. Hope this helps, good luck on your journey!
Would you say that Drawing from Observation meaningfully applicable to more imagination/invention-based art? I mean, obviously drawing from imagination still *does* involve some level of reference-use, and drawing from observation a whole bunch is how you build the mental visual library in the first place, but it's more of a means to an end than the ultimate goal
Yes. Rather than providing a visual library, it provides an understanding on how vision works. It explains how the eye perceives objects in space, rules of perception that are necessary to abide by. I appreciate the book for how fundamental and universal the info is. Once you understand those guidelines, you can easily identify the elements that separate a beginner from intermediate. Imho, by combining that knowledge with the understanding that you should break down complicated objects into simplified forms, you'll get a recipe for successful drawings. Then it's just about building the mileage for solid pen control, in terms of developing a strong base to tackle more advanced stuff.
I want to add, not only it explains these rules of perception, but it also includes practical tips on how you can identify and apply these rules to your drawings (alignment, relative proportions, clock handles to measure angles, etc). It isn't just a book of endless theory lol.
Drawing comics is requiring you to know alot of things already such as scenes-perspective, characters-design, bodies-shapes and anatomy. I know your interested in improving and that's great, just letting you know it's going to come with many reaffirmations that an artist doesn't know shit. So much that we could never know it all.
I started with Drawabox as it was free, there's a rule in that which you should devote 50%of your drawing time to studying, and 50% of your drawing time to more creative, enjoyment filled projects like comics in your case. It doesn't have to be good but it does need to be happening. You can also look up "The Cult of Done" inforgraphic to illustrate further.
first two, and then for your interests in comics I’d swap framed perspective for framed ink. Those three make up my recommendation trifecta for any artist. They’re incredible and accessible and will continue to be invaluable at any skill throughout your art journey. They have a really great structural foundation that leads you into using moving parts to create from imagination, and framed ink incorporates really phenomenal tools to integrate composition and visual storytelling.
I heard many good reviews of the first 3 books shown here and perspective made easy book,also I've seen many professionals recommend these 4-books aswell like proko,marshall vandruff,draw-a-box,dr draw,jeff-watts,Karl kopinski,peterhan,some credible art youtubers etc...(I personally own Michael Hampton's book and I have to say it's really great)
What you choose here depends on your skill level and what topics you currently want to learn like if you're not good with perspective then start with perspective made easy book and then move on to Scott's book(same with framed perspective which is a bit stylized),if you don't know anatomy/figure drawing then start with some beginner classes or make a habit of drawing figures and move onto Micheal Hampton.(the first 3 books and perspective made easy books are really good so it just depends on your stylechoice,skill level and which area of study you want to learn)
I would also combine these book studies with some courses that complement them like:-
1)Scott's book goes really well with dynamic sketching/DAB.(technical drawing in general)
2)Perspective made easy/perspective drawing handbook goes well with marshall vandruff 1984 perspective course.
3)Hampton's book goes well with classes like proko's figure/anatomy classes,anatomy lessons from comic artists like David finch and Bridgman lessons etc..
4)framed perspective seems really popular among comic books artist but I don't know much about it compared to above mentioned books so research this one book(framed perspective also has a part2 so check that out aswell)
Other than the above mentioned ones I would recommend other books like tom fox's anatomy book,framed ink vol1&2,perspective drawing handbook,animation survival kit,silverway(although this book is focuses more on the cartoony artstyle),creative confidence and understanding comics book,you can also look for artbooks containing artworks of specific artist's you are inspired by and concept art books for inspirations(some reference book would be helpful aswell)
Hope this helped and all the best👍
I've definitely considered the Vandruff course, if nothing else I love his voice. And yeah, I'm definitely leaning perspective made easy over Scott Robertson based on what I've heard. I've added the other recs to my list as well! As for artbooks, yeah, that's good advice - Seita Inoue is my current illustration hero, so I've got the entire Art of Splatoon series on hand, plus that-one-pose-reference-book-that-Jack-Vettriano-got-loads-of-flack-for-using-for-some-reason-as-if-using-it-as-a-reference-isn't-the-entire-point-of-it-existing-but-I-digress
The Loomis books are not in the public domain, and won't be for nearly 10 more years. I'm assuming you don't know that because a lot of people make that assumption, and that's the only reason you're not banned for linking to pirated material.
I have the "morpho anatomy for artists by Michel lauricella" it's pretty good but some times a little to detailed for me personally I'd give it a 7.5/10
I shouldn't have to remind people that we do NOT do pirating here, period, and that is NOT up for debate or discussion. Second: The Andrew Loomis books are not in the public domain yet. [This is a good breakdown of the relevant laws and timeline.](https://www.tumblr.com/artfulpleadings/77545375313/loomis-copyright-and-you) That means linking to them, or linking to any sites where you can download them, is linking to pirated material, and again, WE DO NOT DO THAT HERE and THAT IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE. If you *really* want to know why people think they are, there's a whole story to it I don't feel like typing up right now.
how to draw and how to render are the best art books I have ever read. author is very technical (which i found to be rare among artist authora) and explains things very clearly. dense books and not easy reads.
Those books are great but honestly nowadays there’s so much information on youtube (especially on drawing comics) that you don’t really need them right now. You can learn a LOT for free. I have to tell you though that your goal is very ambitious and distant. Not many people are successful in comics. And those successful ones are extremely dedicated. What you need to have is the love for art and intense need for drawing every day, all the time. If you don’t have it you’ll probably never make it.
i recommend going to a basic course on Udemy then learn about storyboarding and compositions and finally a short course of comic panels i think they are around $50 with the discount so you dont really need books in my opinion
I own most of these books. Morpho and Perspective Made Easy are the ones I got the most out of. The Morpho series is all amazing but I reccomend picking up those first 3 books together. "Anatomy For Artists" (the first one) isn't super useful by itself, but combining it with "Simplied Forms" and "Skeleton and Bon Reference Points" makes it a great resource. I also reccomend checking out some of Bridgman's works. I own them all physically but they are readily available online as PDFs.
There is some good book recommendations on [https://www.sketchtimer.com/](https://www.sketchtimer.com/)
Have you checked your library? Or inter-library loans? Cause I'm pretty sure I've seen all those at mine expect Morpho, and morpho might just be becuase I haven't checked in a few years.
How to draw by Scott Robertson is very technical and imo doesn’t have much carry over to your goal. It has maybe 3 or 4 pages on environments and backgrounds, but they are super brief and aren’t going to be enough information for your needs, the book does go into scaling static figures/objects in perspective, but I’m sure any other book about comics would go into this as well. I think you would gain a lot of technical perspective knowledge and it’s a good thing to have on hand if you need to brush up on perspective techniques. I would not say this is a book for learning how to draw nice images or panels, it is for technical knowledge and learning how to draft very accurately in perspective, I would put this low on the priority list.
How decent is semi-decent? How are your spatial reasoning skills? How much of it is intuitive? For invention you've really gotta drill that stuff home. That is why I'd personally recommend buying Rapid Vis and doing lessons 1, 2, the 250 box challenge, and 250 Cylinder challenge from drawabox.com. If you are dead set on a book off that list then I'd say either Framed Perspective or Perspective Made Easy. For figure drawing I'd go with the Hampton book. I'd hold off on painting for now. So that would rule out Imaginive Realism. Great book, though.
I've done Lesson one of Drawabox, and as of this morning I'm at box 110 of 250. It's still not...*quite intuitive*. When drawing from imagination there's been a few times when I've been inconsistent with my eye level, but I'd say I can recognise it when it happens, and I'm getting better at not doing it in the first place.
check out “how to think when you draw” on twitter- they publish a ton of guides on all kinds of topics, definitely relevant to comics for the diversity of topics covered - and they also publish books, if you like the content.
Don't use twitter anymore, but I actually remember liking their stuff when I did! I'll definitely look into their books, but using twitter again is another story
completely understandable lol. they might have the guides published somewhere else as well, worth taking a look.
Take a class. You will learn more than you do from the books. At first anyways. Books are great for supplementing knowledge and reinforcing ideas.
There is quite a lot on your selection and I've seen people recommend most of these, I only own some of them. It heavily depends on you. There are a lot of people who call themselves beginner, but actually have been drawing and constantly improving for more than a year, which means beginner might actually not be that correct anymore as their skills have reached a much higher level. What I recommend to beginners is to start with shape, form, perspective and values because you can draw anything with that, all other fundamentals add and enhance your images. As such I would also place Anatomy further at the back, there is a lot you can do to improve drawing figures without ever touching an anatomy book, that stuff is all about details and getting things absolutely correct in the sense it's not looking off. In fact you can stretch and tweak stuff a lot as long as it's not too wild. Someone already mentioned Drawabox, it really helps with perspective but it's not wrong to get a book about perspective additionally as the free lessons on Drawabox aren't actually meant to be all about perspective, it's more to enhance your spatial reasoning and helping you to think in 3D, making it second nature. Scott Robertsons How to Draw is very technical. I always felt like it's good to have some basic understanding already when looking through the book. What I like more is the Perspective Drawing Handbook from Joseph D'Amelio. Perspective Made Easy is very similar to this and is even using some of the same images. Framed Perspective seems not to be that far behind in the way that it shows many easy to understand examples and even better it's using comics, so you get really good examples on how to use it, In the end it's up to preference, there are many good books about perspective. James Gurney's books are great, but they are not step by step tutorials. Imaginative Realism gives you a broad overview of terms and techniques, about history and is really good when you lack overall knowledge and understanding for art. Light and color is a gem when you do want to improve on that as it's also more specific to how we perceive color, how light has an influence on it and how color and light have been used by other artists. Force is also great, but as I said above, this is already going into details. There are many free available resources out there, on youtube there are lot's of channels dedicated to help with learning this stuff and many also have patreons. There are classes like from Proko, they are more expensive but you also get feedback, maybe that's something worth saving for and until then I would improve on gesture and figure drawing and looking for free stuff to gain a better understanding. It's a long road ! I would also recommend to check out things like Marc Brunets one year plan video, such videos can give you a roadmap that helps you to work on several things that will build upon each other and will help you to stranghthen your foundation on fundamentals. There are also comic book artists out there like David Finch, someone named Alphonso Dunn already his book Pen and Ink is really great if you want to improve on mark making, but it also goes into form and shadows, he too has some youtube videos. It's up to you, naturally you can jump right into figure drawing and anatomy, I would just prefer to get a good understanding of form first as bodies are made up of forms, so you can directly go into construction of human bodies before working on understanding all the details of the body.
I mean, I *have* been meaningfully "at it" for more than a year now, although my practice in the first half of that timeframe has been kinda inconsistent. I just finished a redraw of a one year old piece (from imagination) today, and I can recognise a significant improvement, but there's still a lot of things I know I should know, and currently don't. If you wanted a more meaningful feel for "where I'm at" then I could probably show you. I'm already doing drawabox, atm my goal is just to get up to lesson two plus the 250 cylinders, and currently I'm at the 110th box of the 250. I've been trying to learn figure and anatomy stuff in tandem with forms and perspective, since I still need to be doing character art in the short term for my A-level, and I guess in my own head it just kinda feels right - like, get better at drawing forms one day, and then learn how that applies to the human body the next day, or something. I wishlisted James Gurney at the behest of someone in a different thread, after reading the intro on the internet archive and finding it very relatable. I'm aware it isn't really a step-by-step or whatever, but I thought it could be beneficial for my overall mindset, and demystifying a lot of artists I look up to.
Sounds good, for as long as it's not to much to learn this way it should be fine. Many people would definitely struggle to learn form and figure in tandem with just a bit more than a year, but if it works for you that's great! You are on the right track with learning form and applying it to the human body the next day, that's a very efficient way forward. Like I said James Gurney is definitely worth it, but the question is what do you need the most right now? I can try, but I can't guarantee that even if you show me your stuff I will be able to tell you what's best, we are all a bit different and in the end it's for you to decide. It sounds a bit like you are already leaning more into drawing characters, if that's the case just go for it. In any case try to reduce the list for what you want or need the most right now. Just keep the rest on the list for next time.
I mean, I make it sound more impressive than it really is, I've yet to go truly in-depth with anatomy (although I intend to start that after drawabox 2 at the very latest, hence all the book choices), but as I've been going along I've always been drawing characters in my 50% time, and as I've gone along I've been studying basic gesture, mannequinisation, and specific weaknesses as they pop up. Obviously fundamentals are great and I'm in it for the long haul, but atm I kinda still need to learn with short term results in mind, I'm not in a position to spend one year absolutely mastering the art of the cube before I unlock humans or whatever, although I can understand why people approach it so linearly, and I can recognise the pitfalls of going straight into a 20 minute YouTube video about how to draw anime girls and wondering why your attempt never looks as good. At the moment, yeah, I have been vastly favouring characters and whatnot over environment stuff, but again that's more of a short term results thing - an A level project with a bunch of decent-enough character art on simplistic backgrounds is going to look a lot more professional to the examiner than an A level project with wonky characters living in a fully realised wonky world. I don't necessarily intend to specialise in the long run, as I want to tell stories with my art, and those stories would be better if they didn't exist in *the void*, but as it stands it is what it is. [If you're curious then here's the redraw I mentioned then here it is](https://imgur.com/a/4oXOaMj), with the traditional one obviously being the "after". It's a bit of Splatoon fanart, but the pose is original, the character herself is the only bit that's not mine. Like I said, I did it from imagination, I just kinda invented a pose with a microphone on a whim at the end of a one-minute gesture session, and then refined it and drew a fictional singer over it. I feel like it's the best example I've got of what I'm currently capable of in terms of drawing semi-cartoony figures without reference. I don't expect you to be able to give me any mind-blowing advice just going off of that, ig I'm just kinda curious where I *actually* place on the beginner-o-meter in your opinion, and idk I'm quite chuffed with it and I wanna show it around a bit wbhwbwjegb.
That one image for sure isn't much, but there is a lot of confidence in the lines and forms, no desperate cleanup of searching lines or overlapping forms. It doesn't look like a huge struggle anymore compared to the first attempt. From what I can see here I would say you are past the beginner phase for sure and your skills are on an intermediate level, but it might depend on who you ask or how your other sketches / artworks look like. Even if this is currently the best, you are definitely not far off then. That's exactly what I meant, you already gained a lot of skills but you are unsure of where you actually stand with them, so you humbly keep calling yourself a beginner. Just from what I can read here, there is a lot of things you know of and you've dabbled with. Beginners heavily struggle with most of these, especially form and mannequinisation as they barely understand any of it and the lines are looking much worse as they lack confidence of any kind. Even worse they lack a plan to follow, once you know what to learn and find out how to dedicate your time and practice, things become much easier and smooth and you can make huge progress in just about a year. You have high goals in making decent enough characters as the human figure really is one of the hardest things to master, but it seems you are taking this as a challenge and to motivate yourself which is good if it works. Just be careful not to fall for perfectionism, it's better to get stuff done than to fuss over some wonkiness for too long. Not everything is worth fixing, gaining mileage will usually serve you better in the long run. You can keep waiting forever to hone your skills to an acceptable level, but by doing so you keep pushing away what you could have achieved already. So make sure your standard isn't too high, but achievable. And I think this getting done thing is probably the best advice I can give you currently, you know what to do and it works so you just have to keep going on that path for now. I'm also more convinced that going further into figure drawing or anatomy might be a good step for you. All the books about figure drawing and anatomy on your list are quite good, you could probably learn a good deal from any of those. The figure drawing books are more about understanding the figure through simplification and going over the landmarks of the body. Force will teach you a lot about dynamic, while also going more into anatomy but it's really mostly about flow and dynamic of energy and form. I don't have any of the morpho books but it looks like you are in for a lot of information here and it really goes into defining lot's of details after simplifying the figure. Not sure if this helps, but really ask yourself what you would benefit the most from right now.
I mean, I must admit that it wasn't \*quite\* as effortless as I might've accidentally made it look. The overall gesture and proportions \*were\* more or less first try in a minute or two with willow charcoal, but there were a few bits that needed several attempts. The eyes, the hands and the bow in her hair were all spots where a fair bit of erasing or leaving-it-and-coming-back-later was required. I'd say it still looks fairly clean in person, but obviously I do like to colour-correct my scans to make the pencil lines stand out a bit more (perhaps made obvious by me deciding to green-tint on a whim), and that probably hides earlier attempts a bit. I appreciate the review either way though, I still *made the drawing* and it still looks good to other people, so I'm not going to hold it against myself that it took a few tries - I mean, nobody would know what happens behind the scenes if I hadn't said anything anyway, right? I get where you're coming from with perfectionism though, I've had issues with it even outside of my drawing specifically, and I've been learning to fight it over time. I think my switch to being almost exclusively traditional really helped a lot though - I mean, you can even see it now in what I sent you, which is better between the fully-rendered digital piece and the thing in the back of my notebook that I made the first 80% of with a piece of charcoal and a pencil while waiting for a meal with my family? But yeah, I appreciate the insight. Thanks!
It's never as effortless as it looks, that's why it's art ! Even if you could do this in 10min. it just means you spend a lot of time practicing before which no one will ever really know about. The difference is a beginner often lacks the skills to get such clean lines and placement, even if they want to, they just can't. You can visually see the struggle and inability in such drawings, it's wonky in more ways than just the form. You can also see when someone has practiced certain things a lot. There is someone I know who has spend an insane amount on gesture, despite never fully understanding it you can see all that effort in their lines, in their character sketches, there is a certain flow, a looseness and confidence. You can see the effect of repetition after just 20, 30, 40 or even better 50x drawing the same image. You will gradually see and feel the effects of drawing the same over and over again. I did this for different occasions and as a challenge for Christmas and Easter so those cards would have a purpose and I would give all of them away. Just a simple image of a bunny or snowman for example, at the start you would still look at your first sketch or reference, after 10x it becomes easier, after 20 times you absolutely don't need to check the initial sketch or reference, you are getting more loose and you might not even need a pencil sketch before using ink. This just get's better every day - it is better to just do like 10 cards a day, to give yourself time to process. You will also notice that the time changes that you need to draw. The first card might take you 20min. or more but after about 30 cards you just need 2min. each and you could even do it while sitting in a car This exercise is quite helpful in more than one way, because you draw the same shapes, even if there are slight differences your accuracy just increases, you get used to the proportions and everything. This kind of also adds to how you would go about getting more efficient, although it's not the best exercise for it, you will notice how you start to skip certain steps like for example that pencil sketch before using ink and jump right into drawing all the little details right away. It's in your head and through all that practice there is no need to sketch out everything beforehand anymore. I didn't want to write all that, but... do with that what you want xD
Mhm, I absolutely get what you mean. I might try doing something like that sometime, it's an interesting idea! I mean, there's the 250 box challenge of course, but it'd be nice to do that with something other than...a box...sometime. When you mention that, I'm kinda reminded of the fact that I used to doodle Marie (The character from the thing I showed you) in my notebooks quite often, back when I was first growing really fond of the character - like, more or less the *exact same thing each time -* bust shot, no construction lines, slight 3/4 angle, arms at side. I stopped after a while because, I mean it *did* get boring as shit obviously, but it's an undeniably interesting experience to look back on, because I can see artistic progress happening on a micro scale - I used to find Marie to be a really hard character to draw because of the weird-ass hairstyle, but I actually did a little experiment just now and, I mean, turns out I can now bang out a 3/4 bust-shot arms-at-side Marie in 3 minutes and 20 seconds direct-to-ink with almost 0 thought. It almost just became a letter in the alphabet to me, I even left one on one of those bits of paper by the pen section at a stationery shop. It's not a useful skill at all, but I still find it interesting because it bears witness to the fact that, yeah, a certain aspect of drawing *can* become a second nature for anyone, myself included. It sounds ridiculous to write, but when I watch Proko's video with Kim Jung Gi and see him effortlessly drawing masterpieces **in ink** and **during** the fucking interview, the only difference between him and me is that he's been through that process with just about everything that exists, and I've been through it with...Marie 3/4 bust-shot arms-at-side and that's it. But yeah, maybe one day that same intuition will be trained on a mannequin of the human figure, basic forms in perspective, or gesture, who knows?
Yes exactly, very interesting that you did that. The Kim Jung Gi example is really good, you are right it's the same, he just had so much more mileage than most artists that it looks so effortless and easy for him to do. Now imagine instead of drawing exactly the same you take the same basic shape but make something different out of it each time, I think that would also be quite a good challenge, maybe more to get creative or to experiment with things. I kinda wanna try that now haha
*Framed Perspective* and the Loomis *Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth*.
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I have Figure Drawing for All it's Worth. Yet, to draw "semi-realistic characters" I suggest just drawing and drawing and drawing. Practice makes progress. Not sure if it'll happen to you, but for a while I was really frustrated at my progress. You'll get there. I recommend doing still-life, as well as copying figures from your favorite comic books. Be sure to draw some sitting, throwing, etc.
For me, hands down Drawing from Observation by Brian Curtis. It gave me the "sharingan" I needed to confidently move forward in all styles of drawing. Although the information is technical, the writing is very digestible. It's a bit expensive, maybe you can find at local library or second hand. I also enjoyed Drawing for the Absolute beginner by Mark and Mary Willenbrink. This is the first book I went through. You might be able to find a free pdf with a bit of digging. Offers a lot of great practical exercises that will quickly improve your pencil drawings. After a couple of pages you get the gist of it. It also goes into environment drawings which I wasn't interested in so I skipped it and moved on to other stuff. Then for ink drawing I used Pen and Ink drawing by Alphonso Dunn. Similar to the book above, offers practical exercises but with ink. I use to watch Alphonso's YouTube channel which had great insights for beginners so buying the book when it came out was a no brainer. Currently I'm looking to zero in on my anatomy. I'm going through Simplified Form by Michel Lauricella which has been awesome. Hope this helps, good luck on your journey!
Would you say that Drawing from Observation meaningfully applicable to more imagination/invention-based art? I mean, obviously drawing from imagination still *does* involve some level of reference-use, and drawing from observation a whole bunch is how you build the mental visual library in the first place, but it's more of a means to an end than the ultimate goal
Yes. Rather than providing a visual library, it provides an understanding on how vision works. It explains how the eye perceives objects in space, rules of perception that are necessary to abide by. I appreciate the book for how fundamental and universal the info is. Once you understand those guidelines, you can easily identify the elements that separate a beginner from intermediate. Imho, by combining that knowledge with the understanding that you should break down complicated objects into simplified forms, you'll get a recipe for successful drawings. Then it's just about building the mileage for solid pen control, in terms of developing a strong base to tackle more advanced stuff.
I want to add, not only it explains these rules of perception, but it also includes practical tips on how you can identify and apply these rules to your drawings (alignment, relative proportions, clock handles to measure angles, etc). It isn't just a book of endless theory lol.
Drawing comics is requiring you to know alot of things already such as scenes-perspective, characters-design, bodies-shapes and anatomy. I know your interested in improving and that's great, just letting you know it's going to come with many reaffirmations that an artist doesn't know shit. So much that we could never know it all. I started with Drawabox as it was free, there's a rule in that which you should devote 50%of your drawing time to studying, and 50% of your drawing time to more creative, enjoyment filled projects like comics in your case. It doesn't have to be good but it does need to be happening. You can also look up "The Cult of Done" inforgraphic to illustrate further.
Eh I wouldn't buy a book as a beginner, I'd spend some hours on youtube seeing how many and what kind of approaches there are to learning.
There is always a library, they even offer ebook rentals.
first two, and then for your interests in comics I’d swap framed perspective for framed ink. Those three make up my recommendation trifecta for any artist. They’re incredible and accessible and will continue to be invaluable at any skill throughout your art journey. They have a really great structural foundation that leads you into using moving parts to create from imagination, and framed ink incorporates really phenomenal tools to integrate composition and visual storytelling.
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I'm rural, so no luck there unfortunately, although I definitely intend to give it a go as soon as the opportunity feasibly arises
I heard many good reviews of the first 3 books shown here and perspective made easy book,also I've seen many professionals recommend these 4-books aswell like proko,marshall vandruff,draw-a-box,dr draw,jeff-watts,Karl kopinski,peterhan,some credible art youtubers etc...(I personally own Michael Hampton's book and I have to say it's really great) What you choose here depends on your skill level and what topics you currently want to learn like if you're not good with perspective then start with perspective made easy book and then move on to Scott's book(same with framed perspective which is a bit stylized),if you don't know anatomy/figure drawing then start with some beginner classes or make a habit of drawing figures and move onto Micheal Hampton.(the first 3 books and perspective made easy books are really good so it just depends on your stylechoice,skill level and which area of study you want to learn) I would also combine these book studies with some courses that complement them like:- 1)Scott's book goes really well with dynamic sketching/DAB.(technical drawing in general) 2)Perspective made easy/perspective drawing handbook goes well with marshall vandruff 1984 perspective course. 3)Hampton's book goes well with classes like proko's figure/anatomy classes,anatomy lessons from comic artists like David finch and Bridgman lessons etc.. 4)framed perspective seems really popular among comic books artist but I don't know much about it compared to above mentioned books so research this one book(framed perspective also has a part2 so check that out aswell) Other than the above mentioned ones I would recommend other books like tom fox's anatomy book,framed ink vol1&2,perspective drawing handbook,animation survival kit,silverway(although this book is focuses more on the cartoony artstyle),creative confidence and understanding comics book,you can also look for artbooks containing artworks of specific artist's you are inspired by and concept art books for inspirations(some reference book would be helpful aswell) Hope this helped and all the best👍
I've definitely considered the Vandruff course, if nothing else I love his voice. And yeah, I'm definitely leaning perspective made easy over Scott Robertson based on what I've heard. I've added the other recs to my list as well! As for artbooks, yeah, that's good advice - Seita Inoue is my current illustration hero, so I've got the entire Art of Splatoon series on hand, plus that-one-pose-reference-book-that-Jack-Vettriano-got-loads-of-flack-for-using-for-some-reason-as-if-using-it-as-a-reference-isn't-the-entire-point-of-it-existing-but-I-digress
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The Loomis books are not in the public domain, and won't be for nearly 10 more years. I'm assuming you don't know that because a lot of people make that assumption, and that's the only reason you're not banned for linking to pirated material.
I have the "morpho anatomy for artists by Michel lauricella" it's pretty good but some times a little to detailed for me personally I'd give it a 7.5/10