Welcome to Gaia! ::

I've been drawing since i could remember.
all i know is that i could use chopsticks by the time i was 2.
that must mean i could hold a pencil enough to draw.

I grew up watching Sailormoon, various other anime, and Disney movies like The Little Mermaid. aside from my skewed attempt at drawing Scully from the X files when i was 10, and horses around the same time i NEVER drew realistically.
i never learned either.
and it's too late for me to learn, or so i feel.
when i attempt it, i can draw animals/things realistically, but i can't draw humans. or their faces at least.

does this make me a underachiever though?
what about people who try to draw 'anime' but more or less suck at it, but because they can draw realism very well, (or good enough at least) they're considered good artists??

what do you fags think???





Sailormoon circa kindergarten. : P ('93)

/nod

My problem when I was trying to learn to draw realism was that I was half using references, half going by what I thought was right. You just need to really study what you're drawin, measure how different parts look compared to each other, etc.

Figure drawing class has helped my non-realistic style more than I could have imagined.

It's just tough to get by drawing cartoon forms without knowing why which bits go where. A cartoon face, right down to whee is only a simplified version of a real expression anyway. My eyez might not make little >< symbols when I screw them up but that little flick of the pencil is enough to give the impression.

The more you know about real movements and expressions, the more effective your simplification is.

I don't think I've ever known anyone who actually watch sailor moon as a child..how old are you?

what always helps me when drawing still lifes or portraits and things

is try to thow out all perceptions of what you think people loook like or how you think you draw humans.

get someone to sit in a chair and draw them
but pretend that you have never seen a human before in your whole life

so the person is just contours and shadows and shapes and whatever else.

when you're drawing eyes, it's not "these are eyes I'm drawing eyes" it's more like "how can I translate exactly what I see onto paper to give the illusion that this 2d drawing mimics the eyes I see in front of me."

or something.

Basically, giving up on learning to draw realistically because you "cant" do it

because you can, and it's not really even about being able to draw

it's about perception, and later it becomes knowlege. And that knowege is reflected in your art.