Learning art without a 'teacher'

#1

Hello guys,
I am not sure where to begin but I will just mention straight away: I am 22 years old, from Bombay, India and have no formal education in art. I have been ‘meddling’ with various kind of software for the past 5 months and have created a couple artworks in Inkscape since I just love that vector software even more that ‘Illy.’ I want to be a much better artist than what I am right now. Whether it be digital or traditional.
I have done a lot of reading about colour theory, life drawing, online books, etc. However, I think theory without simultaneous practise doesn’t make sense and could even become a turn off.
Most good artists I have seen online seem to have been drawing almost all their lives. I always loved drawing, and like most normal humans, I suppose I know when I see beautiful art, no matter what kind of art it is. I have practised ‘drawing’ as such and have irregularly drawn on school notebook paper (the dark ones with horizontal lines) for the past two months but I don’t think that is enough even considering the low amount of hours I spent in a week.
My problem seems to be low finances. SO PLEASE don’t suggest I go to any formal art classes. Apart from that, I am willing to follow anything you guys suggest. I am not able to spend on high quality white paper and stuff. I try drawing on almost any blank piece of paper I get. I don’t have a scanner or a tablet and don’t see myself being in a position to buy them to digitize my art any time soon.
So, I will be uploading whatever I can through a digicam sometime soon.
So far, I have been designing in vectors making use of stock images and putting two or more together to show what i have in my head. This is my DA gallery : http://lenindcruz.deviantart.com/gallery/

I would like to hear from you what you think about it. Hopefully you won’t tell me to go find another forum fit for these kind of works :slight_smile:

#2

Well, firstly I;d say you don’t need a teacher. If you’re motivated and enjoy what you do, and know who to ask for advice when you get stuck (us, that is) then you should be fine. You also don’t need any fancy equipment in order to be creative.

The most important skills you need to hone are observation and drawing, since these are the best ways to key into the parts of your brain that deal with visual information, and conversely turn your imagined visuals into movement (usually your hands). If you can draw, you can paint, sculpt etc. etc. It may take a little time to learn a new media, but its sort of like learning a musical instrument; once you can play one well, it’s much easier to adapt to others because you have a basic understanding of how to process sound and express yourself through it.

So my advice to you would be to get a sketchpad of some kind - this can even be a writing pad - and take it with you and just draw stuff, every day. It doesn’t really matter what, because the practice will make you improve. Try to go mostly on what you see though, since this way you’re training up your observation skills at the same time. In a way it’s probably better if you practice drawing on crappy paper, because it will teach you not to be too precious about anything you do; if some part of your drawing’s not going right, don’t be afraid to scrub it out and start again. This not caring too much about the end result and focusing on the process will help you to gain confidence, and in the end it’s this confidence that will make you a good artist.

There are also a bunch of tricks that you can employ to speed up your learning process that go hand-in-hand with this approach of not being fussy. These are mostly techniques that teach you to break out of the traps most people fall into like trying to draw something based on what they know it looks like, rather than by actually looking at it and seeing the shapes. If you ask someone who is new to drawing to draw a ‘hand’, they will almost always do the same rough outline of five fat sausage fingers which you may recognise as a hand (in the same way you might recognise the stick figure on the public toilet door as being a man or a woman), but is not what they actually look like. Someone a bit more practiced or especially thoughtful will look at their own hand or someone else’s and attempt to draw the shapes they see, and this is the kind of thought you need to cultivate. Try drawing with your left hand (if you’re right-handed), or doing an entire figure without taking your pencil off the page, or describing a figure in just 3 lines, or in under 10 seconds. You can even do strange things like drawing with your feet , or covering the page with something so you can’t see what you’re doing. All of these are techniques which life drawing teachers get you to try in order to break you out of any bad habits you may have slipped into, and to remove a layer of muscle-memory from the process (chances are you’ve never drawn with your wrong hand, and sometimes the results of trying it can be more ‘true’ than if you tried with your right, simply because you expect to get it sort of right when you’re drawing in the way you’ve got used to). Ideally, this should keep it fun, and keep you developing new techniques, experiencing new ways of working etc.

Returning to the point about not being too precious with your work: you also shouldn’t worry too much about ‘finishing’ everything. Quite often a 30-second sketch can look better in a way than a painting you just spent the last week on. This is something to do with the way your brain recognises visual information. It doesn’t try to process everything it sees, but remembers key features and how they relate to each other. This is why caricatures work - no one really looks like that, but they emphasise those features that your brain stores about what makes that person’s face distinctive. I often find also that the more information you put into an image, the more information it requires to look right. E.g if you put loads of detail into one or two areas, those areas which are not so highly worked can look odd by comparison.

I could really gibber all day about all of these things, and there’s heaps more advice that others could give you, but I’m sure you weren’t looking for an essay, so hopefully these points ahve been of some use to you. Good luck with your work and most importantly have fun!

P.S.: like the snow leopard :wink:

#3

The purpose of art school is to have an open environment to experiment, with a teacher to lead you through when blocked, and to push you to go further (or, at least, they should). Art school is also for learning about technique and materials, theory, and concept, along with skills like perspective, color theory, etc.

One need not have all of that to be an artist, many artists are self-taught, and some would even say that art school, at least these days, can be stifling and kill creativity - one bad teacher can do more harm than 10 good teachers.

The most important aspect to the school experience to me was the community - being around other artists can inspire you, and talking with fellow artists can teach you a lot, as you can share what you discover along the way, critique each other, and open yourself up to different attitudes and viewpoints. To that end, try and find an online community, like this one, to discuss art and all of it’s aspects - or even better, find some real life communities to be a part of, even if it’s visiting galleries and museums.

As for materials, don’t worry about it. We all have stacks and stacks of failures and experiments and whatnot, that will never see the light of day, and what you used doesn’t matter at all - it’s the journey, after all.

You can try and be creative about paper - you should not draw on lined paper, but in all honesty, just for drawing and sketching, cheap paper like photocopier paper would be fine. If you have any copy shops around, or businesses that throw old copies and printed pages away, ask if you can grab some from time to time, and draw on the blank side.

The one thing I would say to save up some money for is a mechanical pencil - the lead can be a lot cheaper than buying art pencils, and you can take it anywhere. Paper is a lot easier to get than a good, reliable pencil.

The most important thing is, don’t give up. You have the passion, let it lead you. If you have the urge to create, then let that lead you in life, you will never regret it, and later on, you’ll appreciate the tools you can afford more than a lot of the kids I’ve dealt with in real art schools, who were bored, untalented, and uninspired, and did’nt appreciate the environment or tools they are given for free, and usually drop out and never become an artist in any way.

(Another thing you can do is hang around an art school, and beg and borrow good materials off of the spoiled kids!)

I went to art school, and loved it and took full advantage of it, but a lot of art I learned on my own, simply trying. Most people are afraid to even try, so you’re already ahead of the game!

#4

“the-small-print” and “Bwhitejr” Thanks a lot for your tips :slight_smile: I suppose I will go hunting for some office-use white paper. I have been using a mechanical pencil all the while, but a proper range of leads hardness and darkness shouldn’t hurt.
I MIGHT be ‘gifted’ a wacom tablet in a couple weeks and the might get to upload art too in this very thread. Thanks again.

#5

Hello,
As it happens, my sweetie sent me a Wacom Bamboo One all the way from UK four days back. It’s a a craze coming to terms with it. Getting the co-ordination is very difficult as everyone knows. I spent the days reading online about better ways of improving drawing with the tablet. I also thought about putting a sheet of paper over it but I worry of wearing out the pen tip.
I read about various little exercises to do like drawing concentric circles, shapes repeatedly, etc. Yesterday though, I realised I need to do something different. I suppose tracing is the easiest of the kind when it comes to drawing. So, I put images on a layer and started tracing over them. Then I turned the image layer off and saved the following. This is ONLY so that my muscular co-ordination improves. If a person can’t trace with the tablet then they can’t do anything else!
So, here are two traces I did of the same image. In spite of the image being there, you can see how shaky my hand is. Each image took almost an hour.

My only two mental tools right now are practice, and Lunatique’s (I mention him since he talks about it so much) suggestion of Working Smart.

Hope to hear from you guys about what you think.

Regards,
Lenin

#6

Hello,
I posted above my ‘practice’ of tracing. Here on, I am going to post proper drawings I do from scratch.

So, the follow image is one taken from a stock image. This is NOT tracing. I have drawing it from reference. I refrained as much as I could from shading or highlighting. I have tried doing only line (or contour?) work here. Apart from my shaky hand, I would like to know about your thoughts on how I could improve.
Just to tell you again, I have spent around 7 days on a Wacom tablet now, so please be patient.

ps: My left shoulder hurts with the tablet drawing!!!

#7

Keep going! It took me a long time to get used to a Wacom. My background is fine art, I’ve been drawing and painting my entire life, but it took me at least 6 months to be completely at ease with a Wacom. See, drawing, you look at the tip of your pencil, and the drawing - with a Wacom, it’s disconnected. That’s hard to get used to! I learned how in figure drawing, where you learn to be comfortable making long, curving strokes on the paper, looking at the figure, not the paper - it’s surprising, once your hand, head and eyes are used to it, how much you can go into automatic mode.

If you want to learn to draw, start simple, and yes, draw a LOT. Start with shapes. Start with shading simple cubes. See how different values impart different feels. Keep learning to draw contour lines, and then later, shade it in. Then learn to draw with just shading, and no contour lines, using only light and dark to sculpt the figure.

This is all the exact same thing an artist learns in art school.

I’ll give you a couple starter lessons - these were actual lessons I got in school:

  1. Get an egg. Draw it : contour line, contour line + shading, shading only, cross-hatch, pointilism (using dots to shade).

  2. Draw 10 boxes all the same size. Shade them from lightest to darkest, using one pencil. (This may not be applicable to a Wacom, as you can just say “10%” on your brush.Then shade 10 more boxes using crosshatching, dots.

  3. Draw 10 cubes. Use the above techniques to shade it 10 different ways.

  4. Draw another 10. Shade like above, but this time include a background/plane.

Get an object, that you can leave in one place where it can’t be moved or disturbed, and has consistent lighting you can recreate at any time. (Like a desklamp). Get a simple object, like a glass with some flowers, or a toy, and set it up as a still life. Keep it moderately simple. Draw the still life with contour lines only, contour + shading, shading only, crosshatching, and dots.

  1. Get a piece of white board, and glue several small objects to it, like matchboxes, a key, etc. Have at least 3 objects, no more than 5.
    Draw as contour, contour + shading, shading only, crosshatch, and dots.

Do another set, with a different light source.

Do another set, in color.

Do another set, with a different light source.

All of the above is the kind of thing you’d have to do in a typical beginning/intermediate drawing course. Doing it with a Wacom will be just as effective - in fact, I’m thinking of doing some myself, it sounds fun!

(Note, to anyone reading this, if the above does not sound even a little fun, art may not be for you)

#8

Hello,
I drew this yesterday in 20 mins from a reference pic. Didn’t use UNDO or the eraser. Drew with a light coloured brush on GIMP and then black brush. I must say, this one came a little better than I expected and today I couldn’t draw this good. I wonder if I am able to draw better in the night times!
I am focusing on drawing hands and such in closeups instead of tackling complete figures.
Shading was a pain since I don’t really know to go about doing it properly. Please tell me what settings a ‘good’ digital artist should use in GIMP (Photoshop tips would be applicable here) instead of using the easier way of giving a single colour first and then adding white and black in ‘multiply’ mode.
Thanks William for the encouragement and the exercise tips.

#9

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