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Do you have any advice for young artists who want to improve their art? I draw doodles now and then but I really want to improve my art style. Should I start practicing anatomy? I tend to have trouble drawing faces... any advice would be wonderful.

Hello anon!

Yes, I’drecommend you to study anatomy. The best thing you can do is practice fromreference. If you have trouble with a pose or with something in particular, thebest thing you can do is look for a reference picture, since it’ll make thingseasier for you and it also will help you improve your skills.

Something I do a lot when I can’t find referencesfor something specific I need, is to ask someone else to pose for me and takepictures, or look at myself in a mirror. 

Somethingthat’s also important is to start learning the human body’s basic shapes andproportions.

There’sa lot of ways you can do this, you just need to experiment and find what worksbest for you. There are many examples on the internet on how you can do this,but I’ll leave some here for you:

Basic Figure DrawingCharacter DrawingBasic Body ProportionsSketching Tips

The nextthing you want to get yourself working on is your sketches. This is useful because it’ll help you have less trouble in the general process of making a drawing. Once you start getting the hang of things, youdon’t need to measure proportions and stuff too much, it’s just like the generalfeel of knowing when things are off or not (speaking of proportions andperspective). That’s why working on your sketches is really helpful.

Well,ok, but how do you do that? Thereare a few ways to tackle this task:

One isgoing into sites like posemaniacs, specifically into this little feature theyhave. This feature lets you see 3D models posed, but only for a certain amountof time. The idea is to try to draw the figure as fast and as precisely aspossible. Once the figure changes, it’s over, onto the next one. 

It doesn’t matter what you didn’t do, what matters is that you keep drawing. Atfirst it’s is kinda difficult, so you can time your poses to 90 sec. Theidea is to loosen your hand and to start doing things more instinctively andthat, as you keep on practicing, you’ll soon be able to draw more and moredetailed figures in less and less time.

The nexttip would be choosing some pictures… Then,the idea is to take those as references and to draw the negative spaces insteadof the figure:

This is most helpful to start learninganatomy perspective, as you learn the general figure instead of frying yourbrain cells over ‘how is this limb supposed to look like in this position?’

That’ssome basic stuff you can start trying out to get better at figure drawing.

Now,onto the face.

Just asthe whole figure of the human body, the face also has some basic shapes thatcan help you in the construction of a face, and some simple measurements tohelp with proportions.

Then, dividing the face in shapes can also help understand better how things work:

This is also helpful when trying to learn how the light affects the planes of the face. You can try doing this to pictures or you could use it to build your own faces. As you start practicing, it’ll become easier to place the features when drawing. The idea is that you ditch the guides on the long run and start drawing with simpler shapes.

And as Isaid before, reference is your best friend!

As alast note, I’ll leave you with some links that could be useful:

Several dynamic poses for referenceSeveral fighting poses for referenceRandom skeleton generator for practice (x)Palette GeneratorAnother Palette GeneratorSome 3D referencesPosemaniacsDesignDoll and how to use itPicture references for hair and hairdos

This has been very brief, but I really hope it helps!And thebest piece of advice anyone could ever tell you: be patient, don’t give up and keepon practicing!

❀

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