Let's grade the best books that actually benefit beginners greatly and not a /beg/ trap.
>>7957961Loomis has the right idea in that he is trying to provide beginners with a process they can actually use to draw things on their own. This is shockingly rare. Most other resources aimed at beginners tell them to draw things with no instruction, or just have them perform exercises that they can't reasonably take anything away from because they don't have a real drawing process yet to provide context to them.The problem, though, is that the book immediately goes from "it is okay if you can only draw a lumpy circle" to "you must be able to draw every form in every orientation and have them intersect in every possible way and also be able to modify them to fit your needs," which is a bit of a tall order for an absolute beginner, especially when there is no instruction on how to do any of those things. Someone who hasn't learned any basic sketching techniques or how to use 2D shapes yet isn't going to get anywhere with 3D form-based construction. It's just not a good starting point, and trying to rush beginners towards it is one of the most common failings of instructional drawing resources.
>>7957961For my money, it's Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation. It doesn't teach drawing realistically, and only teaches cartoon characters of varying complexity, but I think building characters out of simple shapes, and having those shapes connect in an appealing and believable way is the very core of what drawing is, and everything else comes from that.On top of that, it teaches breaking things down into those simple shapes yourself, being able to copy a reference well, and how to judge proportions.I think going from Blair, to a book on more realistic figure drawing is a good pathway, so Cartoon Animation is the best gateway into drawing.>>7957978>The problem, though, is that the book immediately goes from "it is okay if you can only draw a lumpy circle" to "you must be able to draw every form in every orientation and have them intersect in every possible way and also be able to modify them to fit your needs," which is a bit of a tall order for an absolute beginner, especially when there is no instruction on how to do any of those things.My interpretation of it is that loomis is showing that basic shapes can be used to make more complex drawings, because immediately after that, he starts having you drawing those wonky 'blook' heads, most of which have rather odd shapes to account for amateurs who can't draw circles well.So maybe the though process was - "look what drawing these shapes well can do! It's a skull!! But for now, draw these ugly little things to get some practice in".
It has good perspective exercises great for beginners and good knowledge. But the problem is that most of the text is convoluted word salad. The instructions for the simple ass exercises give you no idea of what the exercise looks like and instead gives you garbage word salad that you have to put ten times more effort in than the actual exercise itself. The fact that this book somehow even gets popular perplexes me, youre better off with torrenting a video course or getting the perspective drawing handbook than perspective made hard.
>>7958059Even drawabox or drawacocks teaches begs perspective better than that incomphrehensible book.
>>7957961>>7957978>>7958051>>7958059>>7958062pyw, larpers
>>7958081One of my better ones. I've gotten pretty good at hands.
>>7958081Here, a line. Ya happy now?
>>7958062>>7958059I actually like it, so I bought one. I love the simple artwork he uses to illustrate. And yes, it has a bunch of words, but almost all books you retards recommend have even more words.
>>7957961Dynamic Bible by Peter Han is a nice one, if not for the weird wording in many lessons that confuses the shit out of me.
>>7957961I grinded that book 5 years agoIt was helpful, idk why it gets so much hate
>>7958137The main reason I see is that the haters (or one very active sperg) hate the book mostly because it teaches perspective towards the end, rather than immediately, and they feel very strongly that it should be taught first.He still teaches perspective, so I don't really get why they're so amendment about it being the very FIRST thing you learn, before even learning how to draw simple cartoon heads.Speaking of, if there is a point to criticize the book, it's that Loomis is a fairly atrocious cartoonist, and a lot of those heads are damn hideous, so they're not exactly fun to draw.
>>7958143>Loomis is a fairly atrocious cartoonistNTA but I agree completely. The blooks are painful to look at due to how ugly they are. I personally rather like Loomis particularly his Creative Illustration book which imo is his best work but goddamn could he have picked some other "simple" thing to ease beginners into drawing. Animals or plants or anything relatively simple in shape really
>>7958143learning form before perspective is fine imo, lots of artists get by with a limited understanding of perspective so long as their forms are good. people say perspective is in everything but so is form, so i dont think it really matters too much.
>>7957978agreed. Loomis' books are frustrating. Parts of them are really important to beginners (e.g. the head drawing method) but most of the other content is hard to understand or inapplicable to someone who doesn't understand the drawing process yet. It's a surefire way to discourage yourself as a beginner.Figure drawing for all it's worth suffers a lot from this (which I own). Sure, it's full of beautiful illustrations but as a learning resource, I find it hard to use.I haven't worked through Fun with a pencil but I expect it's his most approachable.>>7958059>>7958062>Zoomers beaten by words again. Embarrassing. It's a damn fine book. It teaches perspective better than the Robertsonnomecron despite being almost 100 years old.
>>7958121>>7958161No, both of you are fucking dumbasses. I didnt say that there are a lot of words. I said that the way of how the words were used in a way that is fucking bizarre despite the book using english. Its kind of ironic, how you both skipped all of my words and went straight to giving me a criticism for the things that both of you just did. Besides, as I mentioned before the book lacks visual instructions for the simple fucking exercises that couldve been explained in a much more better way and instead just uses that bastardized dialect of the english language to explain it.
>>7958167dunno, man. I had no problems with the wording despite English not even being my first language.But who knows. Maybe I need to look into it again. I was a teenager way back when I read it. Perhaps my perception is off.
>>7958081Sorry it took me while to complete this masterpiece.
>>7957978Apologies beforehand for my bluntness.Loomis wrote FWAP for beginners. He did not write it for idiots. There is a difference.It is exceptionally difficult to make general instructional material suitable to remedial students. This is in some ways compounded by the generational decrease in the mean of certain aptitudes - students nowadays are taught fewer subjects, write less, have a shrinking vocabulary, and rarely use tools of art that have been subverted by technology. So perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that something written for beginners in the 1930s may appear as advanced material now.
>>7958059>>7958062This confuses and enrages the zoomer
>>7958059You don't even need perspective lessons, that shit is so simple
>>7958051Stupid question: How good is Preston Blair book compared to FwaP?
the actual rules for one to three point perspective are fairly simple, I think what gets beginners is that knowing the rules is not enoughthere's a whole aspect of scale and proportion of human spaces that never gets enough attention, so that when they try to apply the rules it always comes out wrong
>>7958212Both are easy enough to find, take a look at them and see which you favor.Obviously since I said as much, I think Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation is the better choice, especially so if you want to draw cartoons, but Fwap has its benefits as well.Fwap not only teaches an introduction to more realistic drawing, which Blair's book does not, but is also probably a better intro point for some who has absolutely zero experience drawing, whereas Blair's book is probably better for those with a little bit of drawing experience.Blair's first drawing exercise is drawing the same face on an egg from different angles - which I can imagine would be quite difficult from total beginners. Fwap starts you off with ugly blob, but those are a lot less intimidating or difficult as an introduction lesson.Blair's book is full of fantastically designed characters which are a pleasure to draw (with earlier versions outright teaching you using classic characters like bugs bunny, but later printings use Blair's own knock off versions), while Loomis' blobby 'blooks' are a good part hideous and not particularly pleasant to draw because of it.Blairs book, because of it's focus on animation style drawing, teaches you how to draw characters in such a way as to be able to redraw them over and over from various angles with various expression, while Loomis does not, and seems to have trouble doing so himself - when he draws a character multiple times over, their face changes somewhat. Blair's book has no info on perspective, whilst Loomis' book has an entire section for it.Blair's book teaches how to animate, as well as concepts from cartooning that just improve your drawings immensely (line of action), that Loomis' fwap doesn't touch upon (though his later books do).So there's pros and cons to both.But if we're talking appealing drawings within to study from, Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation is the head & shoulders winner.
Brent Eviston solved the beginner question
>>7958137>idk why it gets so much hatepersonally, I'm just annoyed by faggots who spam the cover image on random boards like /v/
>>7958270it's funny when you recognize it
Id recommend "Drawing lessons from the great masters". Its a bit more advanced than loomis for example but as a beg I learned a lot from it and it is actually describing concepts in understandable language. Especially the first 3 chapters are amazing for learning on how to portrait form. The book explains concepts and then demonstrates them on drawings from masters. So you get good material to copy and know what to focus on while you study. There are also some excercises given bit they are kind of hidden in the text and not presented as excercises.
>>7957961How do you people study someone like Hampton or Bargue? Do you simply try to copy illustrations? Because they don't have baby-holding guide like 'Fun with a pencil'.
>>7958191Most people who show an interest in art would be happier just doing the wine aunt thing where you do a shitty Bob Ross painting with the girls while drinking some cheap rosé. Or just post a shitty ms-paint comic once a week to five people. I started by posting scribbles to offshoot Newgrounds communities. I can't imagine how fucked up I'd be if I had thought I needed to be good enough to be professional at that point and was digging into anatomy references I wasn't ready to comprehend.
>>7958212Blaire is more pleasant to look at, and it moves at a brisker pace because the goal is to get you animating cartoon characters. Ignore the first chapter of Cartoon Animation and skip to chapter two. Loomis is more thorough and leads into more realistic styles, but you have to tolerate his style and writing which I find avuncular, but maybe kids today really are illiterate
>>7958974I'm sold. What would you recommend after Preston Blair book?
Here's what I don't understand about the Loomis book. He doesn't even explain the step by step process of drawing the actual stick figure. Nothing about the length of the rib cage, how to place, etc. He just shows it, that's it.
>>7959478Yeah part of this journey is training yourself to be able to eyeball stuff and figure it out through trial and error. For really really basic stuff like that he could try to explain it to you in a step by step way, but you would end up just copying those steps in an autistic way without understanding the deeper cohesive Whole behind them. You can't really teach someone how to think. That is a matter of personal Style that you need to develop for yourself. Style is more than just how you draw, it's how you think and how you approach life.
>>7958200I lol'd so hard at this. Boomers apparently always had a bunch of bricks lying around to play with
>>7958062DaB teaches you how to draw boxes floating in space with no surrounding cpntext. PME gives you immediate examples of how perspective works in the in real world. Please tell me you can be understand the difference
>>7959478he tells you the proportions, retard
>>7958051the book is good for copying and learning construction but there's no gesture or emotion which you have to learn from figure drawing.Arguably the latter is much much harder to teach but if I were to start over I'd just read Walt Stanchfield's books and draw from life for the first 6 months.I think Mike Matesi's figure drawing course or subscribing to Richard's streams would be a good start as well. https://www.youtube.com/@RichardSmithemanArt
>>7959478>>7959779I don't think he tells you where the ribcage falls, or where the pelvis' top is, but that doesn't mean his proportions are bad.If you feel that loomis' proportions don't give enough information, look for other artist's proportions. One I found interesting, though is WM Rimmer's proportions, which rather than being heads, is made up from head to clavicle, of which the average person is made up of four measurements (head to clavicle, clavicle to top of pelvis, top of pelvis to bottom of knees, and knees to feet).So I'm sure there's some anal artist out there who has a system to plot every single part of the body out.Personally, I like measuring a length of the figure, Half-way is the crotch, a quarter of the top half is the head, a little below that I'll place the clavicle (half a head's length if you're having a hard time), and half way between the clavicle and crotch is where I'll place the bottom of the ribcage, and halfway again between the ribs' bottom and crotch bottom is the top of the pelvis.I find that halfway along the ribcage is where you can place the pectoral lines (and a little above for the nipples, though you can drop both a little), and that the bellybutton is usually just easy to find naturally, though you can just place it along the top of the crotch if that's hard for you. Picrel is a quick illustration of what I mean, in case words don't suffice.I haven't seen any guides break it down like that (though I'm sure someone has), it's just what I observed, even among other proportion guides, and it works for me so far.Anyway, all this rambling is just may way of saying that you don't have to be a strict adherent of one proportional (or any) drawing system, because usually they don't really conflict with one another, just do what works for you. Really, that's how drawing guides are in general, you don't need to stick to them, they're just a starting point - in my opinion anyway.
>>7959836even in the book for literal children where you're supposed to play with dolls as part of the process he tells you where the rigcage is, you sad submonkey
>>7959847>>7959836then in the figure drawing books he commits several pages to proportions by gender, age, type, etc
>>7959847>you sad submonkeyYou're quite the angry one aren't you?Firstly, in that image, he is telling you where the bellybutton is, not the ribcage, which you can even see is sitting above the bellybutton, not where any mark or indication is.>>7959849And again, it's the same on this page.Did you think that when we were saying Loomis didn't show where the ribcage falls, that meant he just wasn't drawing a ribcage at all? Like there was just one giant blank void on the figure?Also, why are you so mad at me, despite me defending Loomis' proportions?
>>7959857you can literally see the ribcage, you actual imbecilestopped reading, your iq is abysmal, loomis should've been more obtuse just to filter niggers even harder
>>7959865>>7959866You're so mad, and over what? haha.>you can literally see the ribcageWow, you don't say? If only I said as much. I must look like quite the fool.
>>7959869>he doesn't show where X is>literal scale next to X marking where it is>hurr durr I must be retardedyes, you are, retard
>>7959874>Firstly, in that image, he is telling you where the bellybutton is, not the ribcage, which you can even see is sitting above the bellybutton, not where any mark or indication is.As you can see, I literally said the ribcage is above the bellybutton. Secondly, I myself never had an issue with with loomis proportions, which I said as much in my initial comment, I was only responding to someone who did. I agreed that Loomis doesn't tell you EXACTLY where the ribcage falls, which you have proven to be true. Again, this doesn't mean Loomis' proportions are wrong, or bad, or anything of the sort, it just means it doesn't have as much information as that particular anon wanted, which is why I suggested they perhaps look at other proportional guides.So what exactly are you sperging out about? And why to me? What do you disagree with?
>>7959857>>7959869>bUt WHerE iS thE fISh'S eYe!?Come on, buddy
>>7959877he does show exactly where it falls, imbecileI can tell you're brown btw
>>7959878>>7959882Are you both (nah, probably a raging samefag) actually retarded? How many times do I have to say I'm not the one having issues with Loomis' proportions?
>>7959886post hand, brownoid
>>7959888Oh, I was being trolled! Damn it, I should have know when you refused to actually answer anything reasonably, and kept acting like a retard. My bad.
>>7959892post hand, brownoid
>>7959886>Loomis doesn't tell you EXACTLY where the ribcage falls, which you have proven to be trueYou're wrong and acting retarded, refer to >>7959878
how's hampton gesture book?
>>7959964Eh, I think his drawings leave a lot to be desired, and feel that's an important part of learning from someone (appreciating the drawing ability).That said, I've heard quite a few anons swear up and down that his book was the most significant one they've read. Give it a flip through yourself and make up your own mind.
>>7959545You don't???
