@dimiclaudeblaigan Asked For A Tutorial On How To Begin Drawing. Good News! If You Can Draw A Funky Looking

@dimiclaudeblaigan asked for a tutorial on how to begin drawing. Good news! If you can draw a funky looking stick man, you have already started!

I think that stick people are a great starting point for artists because of the things you can learn from them that will be important later on.

If you are able to draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can easily put together a stick person.

Congratulations! You have started to draw. :)

A stick person is a very minimal artistic representation of a real life person. It is simple yet recognizable, and is widely used in art, media, and signage.

But what can a stick person teach us about drawing people that look more like… well, people? Lets have a look!

By simply adding a few more lines, we can add a pair of eyes and a mouth. Maybe even a little triangle nose! Or half circles for ears. We can now draw a face, which provides a basis for all sorts of expressions.

These simple additions can allow us to explore the wide range of human emotion and individuality.

This may seem like the basics of the basics. But that is what we want! In order to get to the point where we are able to draw complex, elaborate representations of humans and objects, we will need to start with simple shapes like lines and circles and build our understanding from there.

For instance, lets give our stick person some cool new features, such as hands and feet. I chose little squiggly circles to represent hands, and triangles to represent feet.

We can go a step further and modify the body of the stick person to include shoulders, hips, elbows and knees. These parts of the human body are quite complex in real life But here, all we need to do is add a few simple lines and dots to our stick person.

The lines provide some additional structural elements to our stick person's body, which are the shoulders and the hips. The dots indicate the points of articulation - elbows and knees, the places where the arms and legs bend!

Now we can use our stick person to show us an even wider range of human movement, action, and expression.

Our little drawing of a human being is evolving! All it took was adding a few more lines and shapes here and there.

By elongating some of the existing lines and making the head an oval instead of a circle, we can give our stick person proportions that resemble that of a real life human.

By this point, we have managed to add more complexity to our stick person simply by using our ability to draw lines, circles, and other basic shapes!

These basic ideas are the building blocks that will enable us to create more complex shapes.

The next part may be a considerable step up if you are absolutely new to drawing, but I have decided to include it in order to show you how complex objects like the human body can be built from shapes that are a bit more complex than circles and lines.

For example. Two ovals and a rectangle can be combined to create a cylinder.

Six squares can be combined to create a cube, or a box. Here, each square is distorted slightly depending on which way the cube is facing.

Note that the back faces of the cube and the bottom of the cylinder are hidden. These shapes allow us to visualize that which should not normally visible.

A sphere from all perspectives can be represented by a circle. But we can make it more like a sphere by adding lighting and shadow if we so desire.

Cubes, cylinders, and spheres are examples of 'solid shapes' because they consist of 3 dimensions.

Lets see how these solid shapes can be used to compose the human body.

By stacking three cylindrical objects, we can create a torso. Two spheres have been added to form shoulders, while a smaller cylinder forms the neck.

An arm is an alternating sequence of spheres and cylinders connected together. Note that the hand has been simplified for this example.

We can apply these solid shapes to the rest of the body to give us a more recognizable representation of the human form. It doesn't even have to be perfect. And just like that, our stick figure now has a silhouette that is unmistakably a person!

In the above examples, notice that we kept the stick person at the beginning while building up the shapes and solids around it. This is because the stick person serves as a guide for positioning the body and its various parts -> also known as posing.

You can do the same thing to everyday objects! Here, I drew a wine glass by stacking these three dimensional solid shapes.

The cup and its contents are two ovoid shapes that were cut in half. The stem is a very thin cylinder shape. The base is a cylinder with a slightly wider bottom.

Solid shapes help inform us how objects and parts of the human body may appear from different perspectives.

For example, a sphere can be used to demonstrate how the human head appears when looking up or down, turned to the side, or tilted at an angle.

With these examples, I hope I have managed to convinced you that if you can draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can draw a person! You just have to train your eye to recognize the simple shapes within complex objects. Try it with everyday objects as well! Or even your favourite media! A drawing subject can be as simple or as complex as you envision it to be.

Once you have mastered that, there are many aspects of drawing you can explore from here that may require you to seek additional resources or a fellow artist's advice.

Last of all, remember that drawing is an iterative process. Even if you draw something correct the first time, you will need to draw it again and again to get it right all times! And by making small changes like the ones we explored in this tutorial, your drawings will gradually transform!

I hope what I've demonstrated here are enough to provide the basics of how to get started with drawing objects and people, and also to help refresh more experienced artists. :) Hopefully I didn't go too off topic with what was requested, and let me know if there are any more questions I can answer.

Cheers :3

Undertow’s origin story

Prologue The gunfire was deafening. Bullets ricocheted off the outer and inner walls and the explosions of grenades shook the apartment complex as the Canadian soldiers and American marines stood their ground against the oncoming onslaught. The walls have long began to crumble under the constant hailstorm of bullets. Four casualties in the squad of ten. One dead, two barely conscious and one still fighting. The medic was trying to two of the injured soldiers while avoiding derbies and bullets ricocheting in the room. Staff Sergeant John Nash of the U.S marines sat against one of the walls below a hole an RPG impact made. He was frantically changing the magazine in his rifle. He hit the bolt release with the heel of his hand while watching the bolt carrier snap the ejection port closed. Quick as a flash, he sprung to his feet and rested the handguard on the lower edge of the hole, he lined up the iron sights on a target and pulled the trigger. The small red sprays from the body uneased him, but it meant that the shots hit their mark. Firing two rounds at a time on semi auto, he cut down one enemy down after another. “They're coming up the the stairs!” shouted a voice over over the radio system. John ducked back behind his cover to give the order. Someone link up with Foley and hold the stairwell!” John ordered over the radio. “Drenth!” John shouted, catching the attention of one of the Canadian soldiers as he was helping the medic put a splint on the leg of one of wounded soldiers. “Finish up helping Clarke and take position here to cover the courtyard!” Drenth replied “You got it!” to John as he primed a grenade and threw it out the hole. The sergeant rose up and fired into the street, taking a bit of pressure off the courtyard of another building across the road. The Canadian soldier slipped up behind John and patted his shoulder to signal he’ll take watch. As John made his way to the balcony, Drenth rested his rifle on the ledge of the hole and fired into the street. John rose up and aimed the underbarrel grenade launcher on his rifle towards the entrance of an alley where two or three men ran into and fired. The 40mm grenade detonated as it hit the wall just inside the alley enterance. “Bobcat 2-1, Bobcat 3-1! Do you copy!” The call was from the sergeant of another squad in the lobby of the building across the street they were covering. John ducked down behind the concrete barrier and pressed the talk button on the mic for the radio. “Go ahead 3-1!” “We planted the fireworks, but we can't leave, break! The AO’s too hot and we have multiple casualties, break! We need CASEVAC and reinforcements, now! Over!” John switched his radio frequency to contact their command base. “FOB Matrix, this is Bobcat 2-1! Do you copy, over!” John shouted into the mic. “Bobcat 2-1, FOB Matrix. Send traffic, over,” the radio operator replied. “Bobcat 3 planted the noisemakers, but we've got multiple wounded and at least two KIA, break! We’re heavily outnumbered and outgunned with about four snipers taking pot shots at us, break! Over a dozen and a half foot soldiers with automatic weapons are still kicking and have already breached the crows nest, break! Requesting air support at our AO! How copy, over!” John waited for about fifteen seconds for a reply, in till he heard what he didn't want to hear. “Uh… negative Bobcat 2-1. I say again, negative. RPGs have already shot down two transport choppers on the other side of the city and convoys have been mobilized to evacuate any survivors, break. All chopper support has been grounded until further notice, break. Will send info if situation changes, over.” John angrily hit the heel of his boot against the floor at the news. “Where the fuck is that air support?!” shouted a marine as he reloaded his rifle. John switched his radio frequency back to the closed comms for the squad. “Bobcat, be advised! The RPGs are too big of a risk for the choppers! Two transports were already shot down! We need to hold out on our own!” John said over the radio. “Sonofabitch!” a marine swore to himself as he pulled a pin from a grenade and lobbed it into the street. He then leveled his rifle on the ledge and started firing again. The exchange of bullets and explosives escalated as more hostiles flooded the streets below and fired their automatic rifles at the squad's position. As one of US marines continued firing his light machine gun at the oncoming targets in short bursts, he saw a single greater danger than the dozen plus human targets. A pickup truck had rounded the corner with four more gunmen and one man on a heavy machine gun. “We’ve got a technical rolling in!” he shouted as the gunner opened fire. The men and women of the squad hit the deck as the half inch diameter bullets hit the thick reinforced concrete walls inside the room. Most of them made it, except one. As Ben landed on the ground, he swore he felt something wet splash on the right side of his face. He brought his right hand to his face. He removed the gloved hand from his face to see that the liquid didn't just dampen the fabric. The substance coloured it… in crimson. “NASH!” The marines and Canadians on the floor turned their heads to see their XO’s body. John had taken a direct hit from a 50 calibre bullet just below the collarbone, blowing apart his upper torso. He died almost instantly. Ben still laid on his stomach at the gory mess that was Sgt John Nash as the world went quiet. All he could hear over the silence of his mind was blurred voices and muffled sounds of rock hitting rock as his eyes tried to take in what was happening around him. A young American marine was on a knee against an inner wall looking like he was hyperventilating with panic. One of the other marines near the balcony wall lobbed a grenade over the wall, trying to lighten up the heat so the squad could fire again. Clarke and one of the other troops jumped on top of the wounded men to protect them from the flying debris, still staring at the dismemberment. Then, Ben’s eyes fell back on John's corpse as the pool of blood still stretched from his body and began to dampen Ben's uniform under the armour. In his eyes, it felt like he was lying there for hours. His mind was completely blank. He felt frozen, as if every joint in his body locked. He had forgotten how to breathe, his lungs started to panic for oxygen. Within his mind, there was only one question running through... What now?

@dimiclaudeblaigan Asked For A Tutorial On How To Begin Drawing. Good News! If You Can Draw A Funky Looking

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Undertow’s origin story