After years of goofing around and not getting anywhere, I've decided to actually study art.Where should I begin? One thing I'm going to do is the classic 'copy Bridgman twice'. Anything else? And if I, say, no-life Bridgman over a short period of time, is that more or less effective than sprinkling it over a longer period of time? And if I get good at anatomy thanks to doing this, how much of it translates to other areas of drawing, or do I similarly have to autistically study every single subject I draw?I never studied in school, if you couldn't tell.
first you need a clear goal to work towards
Put whatever slopa you want to be able to draw and start drawing it, start with more simple books like that gitgud book where the author encourages you to start drawingFrom that you can have at least something to work with, and go to something more serious. If you don't draw now, have no inspirations (in front of you), then you'll just read your books, do some exercises from them but you'll only draw what they say, it'll be too forced and it'll fall apart, unless you have a strong discipline (even then you still can end up in a situation like when you're doing everything right on paper, but objectively suck at drawing and barely improve)
>>8080050How clear ought it be? I want to be at a level I personally find satisfactory, on par with the artists I admire and most importantly! To be able to draw competently on the fly without being lost with no references. Or with goals do you mean that specifically I want to learn subjects X, Y and Z?
>>8080053the more clear and specific the better. like subject matter, genre, medium, style etc. gets rid of a lot of noise when you know what resources will or won't help you reach you goal.drawing without references makes it 100x harder. most give up on that because it's not worth the effort. if you goofed off for years it's pretty unlikely you have the work ethic for it.
>>8080048>Active recall is the main mechanism behind drawing. Look at your reference, then hide it away and draw it from memory. Take out the reference and make a copy (spend more time looking at your reference than your paper). Compare the results and repeat the process.>If you want to improve across the board, you need to draw comics.>Constantly draw your immediate surroundings from various sitting/standing positions to get better at perspective.>Do blind contours to build your observational skills and line confidence.>Draw lots of simple shapes and forms (if you don't do this, it makes drawing a lot harder when starting out).>Use overlapping continuous lines, not chickenscratch.>Put out more sketches than finished drawings.>Don't get comfortable with drawing the same thing over and over again. Pick something new to draw and study when you're not being challenged.>Break down references with meaningful tracing (break them down into shapes and forms), then draw from memory.>Create an ambitious drawing from memory but without using references. Take note of your weak areas, work on them, then do the drawing again but this time using references.>Work on gesture and line quality/confidence first, especially if you want to do comics/animation.>For every 15 minutes of studying, give yourself a 1-2 minute break. For every 90+ mins of studying, give yourself a 15-30 minute break.>Copy an artist's entire body of work across 1-3 months.>Start with a pencil, then move on to using ink.
>>8080056I score well in active recall tests (there was an iq test thread here a while ago), probably because of drawing, but i always sucked at things like remembering faces or memorizing text
>>8080058If you want to get better at drawing faces, there's a lot you can do to improve:>get a plastic skull and study it constantly from various angles>draw a LOT of faces and portraits>use the Loomis method, the Reily method, the Asaro method, etc
>>8080052>>8080054>>8080056Thanks so much, guys. I truly, really appreciate it. I'll get started immediately.
>>8080066I mean, you unironically just need to start drawing and draw what you genuinely enjoy, maybe even draw what you enjoy in some simpler formAn easy check for this - if you constantly check your clock, measure how much time you've been drawing something, and you're not in a situation like you have to go somewhere with a strict time limit, then you don't really enjoy the time you've spending drawing this and you need to think of what you enjoy want to draw and how, so you can easily spend even 1/2 a day, skip meals potentially, just because of how much you're focused and interested in the process
>>8080066Taking care of your health is also crucial. Eat well and make sure you're getting enough vitamins and nutrients. Quality restful sleep is important for learning.Here's some help for drawing bodies:>study the skeleton>study dynamic poses (athletes and dancers)>study clothed bodies>study nudes
Frequently when I am drawing from a reference, I do a lot of "blind drawing" where I am looking at the reference, choose a line/angle/whatever and then draw that without away from the reference and back to the paper. Is this a bad habit I should try to fix, or is it what I should be doing?
