Boot Camp Thursday

[oddlittleturtle]

Atteen-huut!

Welcome to Boot Camp, Maggots! Prepare to hurt!

Time to whip you grunts into ship shape!

The Reapers are HERE.

FAQ:

Comments

[thirteenthchime]

So I got a tablet for my birthday, just the cheapest Wacom available, since I'm not using it for anything serious. I had one a long time ago, and I loved painting with it. (Especially with some paint program that mimicked real brushes...I think it might have been a very limited version of Corel?) One of the things I like about it is that I'm not wasting materials when I putz around with it - and also, one of the big problems that I've always had is that I'm just afraid of making mistakes and putting anything more substantial than pencil to paper. So the ability to draw and paint in layers and go back and have things not be nearly as permanent is incredibly appealing.

That said, I sat down last weekend and using an image of my Shepard from the CC (admittedly, not the best source for lighting or posing, or...well, anything), I tried drawing what I saw. Huge caveat: I am not particularly skilled, and it has probably been at least a year or two since I drew any sort of human figure. Motion and perspective (when it comes to anything that isn't a still life) have never been strong points. I was pretty happy with what I'd managed at first, particularly some of the shading, but looking at it now, it just looks stale and lifeless, and off. Granted, it's a portrait, and the pose is incredibly uninteresting, but still, it's frustrating because I know how long I spent with it. One thing that I did notice was how incredibly important the rough sketch was, and how I could actually see it's impact because of the layering - usually when I sketch, I try to get rid of the 'guide lines' as early as possible, and my paper is just a mess of poorly erased lines, hindering any attempts at subtle shading. But now I can see how, because one of my guide lines was lazy, one eye ended up being smaller and slightly lower than the other and how even later attempts to transform the image couldn't quite save it. It's an interesting process.

Since I know that one of the major requirements of getting good at anything is just practice, practice, practice, I'm curious - does anyone out there know of any tutorials, especially for human figures? I'm not even looking for something that will get me from rough sketch to something fully colored and shaded - right now I'm just happy to focus on getting my rough sketches down and figuring out motion and maybe a bit of shading. Ideally things I could just break into chunks and work on whenever I have free time.

TL;DR: I want to learn to art, but am at a loss for where to start.

[a_talking_dino]

Here you go =).

http://www.posemaniacs.com/
-Has unique figures. All (or most of them, at least) are skinless so you can see the musculature. Also has a flash drawing feature (gives you a limited amount of time to draw a figure before moving to the next one).

http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php
-Photos of real people in unique poses. Uses nude models but you can select only "decent" models if it bothers you.

http://artsyposes.com/
-Lots of models. Also uses nudes but you can choose only dressed models (not without entering the archive first, however. May see nude models before filtering). Has other learning tools as well (videos, blogs, etc.).

[thirteenthchime]

Holy crap, these are awesome. Thanks so much! I like the idea of the flash time limit feature, I will definitely need to try it out. And the anatomical models are great (albeit, a bit creepy)!

[a_talking_dino]

Sure thing =). I just bought a wacom splash tablet to learn to draw so you asked at just the right time.

[tersa]

And what you drew was still 100x better than anything I can do. :)

[oddlittleturtle]

this