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@erynne @sparrowhawke

So, you guys asked for this XD I’ll try to give some more general tips that I wish I could tell myself a couple years ago.

For anyone else dropping in, the context of this is that I’m a digital artist, I’ve been doing art seriously for about… four years? I’ve been doing digital art for the last two years, I think.

For my program, I use Krita and a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet. (Wacom Intuous, one of the smaller sizes, I think 12,5″?) But I often sketch traditionally.

1. Use! References! I’m not kidding, this is the one thing I wish I had known when I started. You cannot draw everything from imagination, no matter how good you are, and you don’t have to. There is no shame in using references, even professional artists do it. You’ll progress much faster if you use references.

I’ll often use multiple references, one for lighting, one for the pose, several for clothing, one for backgrounds, some for textures or colors. Things generally don’t look like you think they do. I even use references for straight-on portraits sometimes.

2. Learn to break things down into shapes. You can find a lot of great videos on this, but basically, learn to break down references to simple shapes. Once you learned that, it makes it so much easier to draw new and more complicated things.

Honestly, my thought process while I’m drawing is something along the lines of “That blob there, next to a bigger, pointier blob, with that kind of angle–” You don’t think about “I’m drawing an eye! I know what an eye looks like!” It’s more like “Okay, angle like this, blob like that, lighter blob there.”

3. Learn the structure of things. This links with the last thing I said, but learn how to sketch the understructure of things. I used to just try to draw the final product straight from the reference, but that’s a sure way to get things to look wonky. Now, I usually work in steps, from really rough shapes to final refined product, erasing in between. (Or for digital, starting on a new layer and hiding the old one) It’s kinda hard to explain, but if anyone is interested, I have some process pictures that explain it better.

4. Don’t try to specialize (yet). If you’re just starting out, you may get stuck on drawing one thing from one tutorial over and over, and getting more and more frustrated because it doesn’t look like the tutorial’s final. (I know I did. I have an entire file filled with front-facing female portraits with the exact same medium and technique. They’re genuinely awful and they still haunt my nightmares XD)

Try learning a three-quarter view! Try cartoons! Try realistic! Try female characters, male characters, portraits, full bodies, poses, animals, landscapes. Try something a few times and decide you don’t like it. You’ll gradually start gravitating toward mediums and subjects that you find fun, but until then, you don’t need to specialize. Get some cheap materials and give it a shot!

Don’t decide that you can’t draw something after the first try, but don’t get stuck until you get it perfect either.

On that note, if you have an idea but it seems beyond your skill level, try it anyway! It might not be as you envisioned it, but you’ll learn along the way.

5. Don’t give up 😉 Like with writing the first draft, your first sketch won’t be great and every painting has an ugly stage where you think about abandoning it. There’s no shame with putting aside a drawing or even abandoning it when it’s not working out, but every drawing/painting, no matter how terrible, is progress. The next one will always be better 😉

Anyway, I hope this helped some XD