OddballGreg - Drawing 101

Getting your black that dark with an HB pencil is more difficult than trying to catch a flea in a carpet... I would suggest buying a 4B if you're going to do that.

If you have ever been on the internet, or simply spent one a bored hour or two sitting in a classroom at school, you've likely seen many great drawings of things ranging from various anime characters to more photorealistic or artistic creations. Considering there was a time when I couldn't draw anything, I thought I'd share some tips for the less experienced.

About 5 years ago, if you had asked me to draw anything, I'd probably have told you to find somebody else to do it. Having grown up in a slightly computer focused home, (partially by choice.), skills such as drawing and riding a bike took a significant back seat in my development as I learned various computer skills and just played games all the time. (I still can't really ride a bike to be perfectly honest. I look like a drunken monkey the way I swing from side to side. Heehee)

In any case, in my high school years, I began to take a slightly greater interest in the arts besides that of video games, and began attempting to learn how to draw. Suffice to say, the images in this blog post are some of the most recent and well done of my works with a pencil for a few reasons, which were taught to me by a couple good people that I have met over the years. As such, I figured there are likely many other people in the world who struggle to leave their mark in an appealing matter, and decided I would pass on a few of these handy tips for other people that might also wish to take up art in some way.

Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon, although for some reason his tongue looks like teeth.

Shading

Possibly the most important piece of advice I can give you about art in general, is shading. Now, most of you are likely rolling your eyes thinking "seriously? This is obvious." when I say that. The ironic fact is that it was not immediately obvious to me, despite this blog being evidence of my tendency to observe a lot more than meets the eye in the world. If you examine my unicorn drawings from this post, You will notice that while I did do some basic shading in them, most of the time it's a single tone shading for an entire area, with cartoony black borders. While appealing, this was due to lack of knowledge, rather than intentional.

Shading is what makes the image. You can put as many little details as you like into your art, but without shading and lighting, it will never look complete. The most important thing anybody ever told me to do, was to draw a rectangle, and make one side black, and the other white, while making the distance between a single smooth grey gradient from the black to white side. This was oddly far more difficult than it sounds the first few times, but it helped me to understand that items do not have solid colour areas, but actually largely consist of gradients of colour and texture.

A good example of this is the skull below that I drew today. The darker patches are not actually just separate black pieces, but gradually lighten out into the rest of the skull where light can more easily reach. It's worth noting that the length of your gradient causes the depth of the object to be perceived in different ways. Note the eye sockets are sharply black against the forward pieces of the skull, but give the impression of moving out and forward through the lightening of the gradient.

The skull I drew today in 5 hours, specifically for this blog post. It would be a macabre subject to draw if he wasn't grinning like an idiot. (Teehee)

 Tools

The second most important advice I can give you is fairly straightforward. Get the right tools for the job. If you take a look at the image I used for the Header of this post, you will note that it looks strange. Apart from the fact that it was made before I learnt how to shade properly, It was also drawn in HB and was a relatively good cause of pain in my right hand for 3 days. 

I don't know too much about how the pencil grading system works, but I will suggest you buy yourself some 2B pencils if you're just starting out drawing. They're cheap and fairly useful for all purposes while their softer "lead" (it's actually Graphite and is not poisonous), is helpful for making the very light shading effects seen in the skull above. If you find yourself making a lot of darker drawings, or are very heavy handed, you might consider getting 1B (or simply B) and 4B pencils for their harder and softer respective leads. (If you're unsure on how pencil grading works, peruse this website for a bit of history.)

Style

While perhaps something that you only start to pick up once you get a bit better at drawing, it's a good idea what style you're looking for in your drawings. As I've already mentioned, black borders and solid tones tend to lend themselves better to cartoon like pictures rather than photorealistic art which is what I was aiming for to varying degrees of success with the 2 drawings shown earlier. These often require a very soft touch to draw, and usually completely forgo outlines in favour of natural shaded forms. (Don't even try that yet. It's horrifically difficult. Below is a video of my favorite Irish Youtuber JackSepticEye being drawn like that.) I tend to find that a good balance between the two is lightly sketched outlines that can be hidden with shading or simply erased later, though style is largely dependent on what you want to do and how you want to do it.

Patience

Another good friend from my past gave me a very important piece of advice while we sat in History imaging various creatures we wanted to include in a game we were thinking of making. (Ah... the dreams of the young.) He looked at me when I told him I had no idea how to make the scales look realistic on one such creature, and told me the story of how as a small child he would beg his grandfather to draw him a dragon quickly, nagging him as he went. One day his grandfather looked at him and said quite simply. "You can't rush art."

Boy, wisdom comes from interesting places. The point remains though. If you want something to look good, you're going to have to invest the time to get it there. All three of the images in this post took over 4 hours each, and even the unicorns I linked to earlier had a fair 1 to 2 hours to each of them. It's a good idea I find, to find somewhere nice with something to drink, just start drawing while listening to your favorite music to help block out how long you've been sitting there. (A useful tactic for many things.)

Consult The Experts

Lastly, but also rather important, is to understand that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Drawing and art in general is a very old thing, as old as humanity itself in some ways. And people do know how to do it.My knowledge of drawing has almost all been the result of researching other peoples works and advice, and then putting it into practice. Some of the greatest ways of learning come from taking images you like and trying to copy them by hand, (which is what I did with all the images in this post by the way.), consulting YouTube artist videos and tutorials such as the skillful Mark Crilley whose video is below, and using DeviantArt for inspiration and a great selection of resources to choose from.

Seriously though, Mark Crilley is one of the best drawing artists I've seen, and is definitely worth the shoutout. Perhaps even just watch his timelapse videos, which are a wonder to see in of themselves.

In any case, I hope that I given you something interesting to make use of or consider from this post, or simply enjoyed the beginners perspective I have offered. If you did, or have something you would like to add or have be added to the post or discussed in more detail, then please be sure to let TCSA know via the comments below, or over Facebook/Twitter. We love to hear from you guys. Of course, if you have any friends who are struggling with art, consider sharing this post with them. I'm sure they will appreciate the assistance. And if you would like to read more posts like this one, then consider also liking our official TCSA Facebook page or following us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left so that you can get all the latest posts, as they're published. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had and absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy Drawing my Friends.