/art/ - Art & Creative

i just draw ever hour of the day, but of nothing in particular. i sometimes draw heads, arms, tongues, feet, then trees, tentacles, teeth, smirks, frowns, wide eyes, but i don't have a consistent style. it feels bad.

Dumb question, asked & answered many times before but I just want to hear personal opinions, for absolute newbie, traditional tools or graphical tablet? I suppose graphical tablet requires additional eye-hand coordination and generally more mechanical skills but it's more convenient and forgiving?

>>3599

>for absolute newbie

Pencil and paper, most definitely.

Tablet adds a whole bunch of other things to distract you:

- different hand-eye coordination that takes some days to get used to

- multiple software to choose from

- layer managing

- hundreds of brushes to choose from and settings to adjust

- 16 million colors

- other technical questions that do not exist in traditional

The freedom and eternal modifiability of digital is both a blessing and a curse. It allows you to do whatever the fuck you want because it's so easy to just erase anything and draw over it.

But on the flipside you'll end up getting into really bad habits like excessive Ctrl+Z usage and mindless sketching. You'll start blindly throwing lines everywhere and machine gunning ctrl+z until it looks right, instead of learning to control your strokes and thinking about what you're doing.

However, when you want to color things, it's pretty much hands down Digital. Traditional painting is useful as exercise, but it also requires a whole different world of skills and methods. Paints behave so differently that there's a large learning curve for just using them period, and most of traditional painting skills don't translate to digital very well.

Another beginner here, I just know basic perspective and shadowing and I'm still reading perspective made easy.

Is it okay to search how to draw things in the beginning or should I look at references and try to think how to draw them? I tried to draw part of a tree behind a window but it ended up looking like someone had thrown a fetus in the window.

Also, I usually do squares around my drawing to limit my drawing space, is it okay to do this or should I stop?

>>3614

>I tried to draw part of a tree behind a window

Forgot to mention I tried to draw it while looking at various tree pics on google images.

>>3614

>I usually do squares around my drawing to limit my drawing space

What do you mean by this? You're essentially making the paper smaller?

That's fine, it's the same as zooming out and drawing a rough version of the drawing digitally, it can be overwhelming to have too much space, and even professional artists do small thumbnails and zoom out a lot (though you can't do that on paper). At some point you should try to draw bigger though, because otherwise you'll never get to draw details and more accurate things.

>>3614

if you haven't read drawing on the right side of the brain or keys to drawing, do that. Other than that try and draw the thing first and if you find yourself unable to then it's ok to look up tutorials.

asked this on another board, but i'll ask here too

anyone think these books are good?

got them for christmas & from a second hand bookstore

http://amzn.to/1PeXnAX

http://amzn.to/1Uw9n4J

http://amzn.to/1PMUsUK

http://amzn.to/1TEgubp

Just take a pencil and paper, then draw very general shapes of things. You want to get the proportions and geometry of things done right.

The most important thing, besides practice, is do not copy other artists. It is to your benefit that you have your own style.