Any advice to improve? Right now I’m trying to get better with line confidence and drawing without any guidelines. My goal is to be able to draw from imagination and then make my own animations. Working on a solo game right now and realized I can program but it doesn’t matter if I can’t make art and animations up to my own standards. So any critique and advice is welcome. Thanks 😊

Edit: So it was brought to my attention that my method of drawing the black cat image is considered tracing so please disregard that one. I put my reference on one layer hid it then tried to draw what I seen from memory. If I got stuck turned it back in and compared likeness if it looked good enough hid layer again and continued. If it didn’t hid layer erased what I drew and tried to do it from what I just saw again. Sorry for not disclosing that earlier but I didn’t know it was just considered “tracing with extra steps”. Appreciate the feedback still. ☺️

Started drawing everyday about a month ago and I am really surprised with the quality. The last time I drew frequently I was a teen and my drawings lacked a lot, but I had a lot of fun drawing lines and circles and stuff like that and got pretty good at those basics. 10+ years later and I get the itch to draw after painting with my family on 4/20 Easter this year.

I realize now that the reason my art has improved so much since I was younger is because I’ve been a massage therapist for almost a decade now. My understanding of anatomy and physiology is far beyond what most professional artists will ever need to know. I feel like I cheated or found a massive shortcut that many artist struggle with.

I’m confused if it’s really easy to just redraw a photo? I think it’s not about drawing more about coping shadows and shapes. But I learned some facial proportions anyways..

After my third attempt at this, I was finally able to create something. I like I hope you guys like it too.

My friend told me to trace over only the anatomy and draw everything else myself. However I feel this is cheating because my drawings never look this good when I don't do the technique.

I drew over the base anatomy, then drew everything else by myself (minus the eyes which I've aligned to the reference image)

Is it cheating?

I'm an absolute begginer

I am simply raising a question based on my observation. I, since I draw here and there, frequent several art subreddits. For some reason I can’t grasp, these communities, including this one, all seem to just gang up against anything with even a little bit of unrealistic anatomy. I get that these types of art can reinforce body stereotypes, etc, but honestly I don’t think those are significant enough reasons for this level of resentment against stylization.

Recently I discussed this with a professional artist friend of mine, who is not on Reddit. To summarize (and translate) what he said: if they want realistic proportions so much why not just trace a photograph, or better yet, just use the photographs instead of drawing. I’m sure he’s exaggerating a bit but I do agree with his point. Since you’re drawing something that doesn’t exist anyways, why limit yourself to what is realistically possible? Why shouldn’t you make the proportions more appealing?

I confess, because I grew up on anime with its hyper-idealized proportions my view on this matter might be biased or skewed. However, I would love to hear what others think about this. Also, I apologize if this is hard to understand, English is not my native language.

i’m trying to get my rendering better, i’m still very new to adding lighting/shading and drawing clothes folds isnt my strong suit. i feel like it’s missing details and stuff but idk what. any feedback is appreciated 🫶🏾

Got extremely humbled yesterday while drawing so I decided to draw genderbent malfoy to regain my confidence. I was quite shocked by how fast it took (40 minutes), i think i have the confidence again to tackle and study what i was struggling with again ^^

Like sure you can do draw a box and it helps with forms and motor skills, there are some YouTube tutorials for a broad overview of what to learn or just content farming beginners, but compared to the other things I’ve tried learning it’s absurd.

Go to the learn Japanese subreddit and it’s pretty much solved. You will always know what stage you are at and what you should do to get better. There are 100s of apps for everything to help you learn.

Programming is even better, there are 3 websites that are competing with a full step by step course on all the theory you need to know to become a good programmer. There are tutorials and docs for everything. The learning loop is also very easy, you pick what you want to do and you just do it.

With learning to draw I only find nothingburger videos or these people larping as the guy from whiplash giving contradictory advice. No tutorials on how to use krita, every tutorial on CSP is trying to sell brushes or some course. Like why can’t it just be do x until y, then do z …
And then you finish and can draw well. The entire learning space is just so cluttered and full of noise it makes learning stressful, I can’t tell if I’m wasting my time or improving.

Idk I feel like no one really knows how to take someone from 0 to professional-level, and there really is no data or method for teaching art. The only people I’ve seen get good just draw a lo but also talk about how they made a lot of mistakes along the way and wasted a lot of time.

I’ve been trying to learn how to draw different parts of the body for cartooning such like the heart for chest and butt. It looks off. The bottoms are supposed to be a bikini too but in my previous sketches I’m having troubles getting it right. The way I have it laid out right now is more like boxer briefs. So I’m guessing if I sketched in like a bikini part of her lower leg should be showing and the bikini would curve around her ass? Thanks in advance.

This isn’t intended to be NSFW, so hopefully it doesn’t seem that way.

Very basically, drawing ability hinges on three factors:

1.) How a person perceives reality

2.) How well he or she remembers visual information

3.) Which elements of an object he or she selects to draw

Non-Drawers don’t see the world as it really is. They automatically misjudge size, shape and color. Drawers aren’t born with natural drawing talent, but they are more naturally predisposed to:

• Override visual misperceptions and perceive what their eyeballs are really seeing

• Remember simple relationships in an object from the moment it’s perceived to the moment it is drawn

• Select which elements of an object need to be included to convey the object's form, focusing attention on it and ignore unnecessary details of other elements

According to the article Drawing Ability Has Psychological Basis in Perception and Memory, Researchers Say, non-drawers can learn to draw by improving these skills.

Edit: Don't read too much into the "vs", it's does not mean versus (as in King Kong versus Godzilla), it only means "in comparison to". What I'm trying to say, and the article clearly relates, is that people who draw observe differently. This is not controversial. It's standard knowledge that "learning to see" is as important as simply learning technical skill sets. The more you draw, the better you see the world.

Hi. I’ve been drawing female anime characters for a long time, but honestly, I haven't seen any improvement in my work—let alone learned the basics of coloring. I still can't spot mistakes while I'm drawing; I just overlook them until later, when I get the feeling something isn't right. To be honest, I'm thinking about giving it up. I actually went three months without drawing, and when I picked it up again today, I decided to draw Malfoy, but I wasn't happy with the result.