Reddit reviews Creative Illustration

Last time I tried to give advice on drawings the person got upset and quit reddit, soooo, please don't do that. My suggestion if you're absolutely serious about drawing is to absolutely learn the fundamentals.

Fun With A Pencil: How Everybody Can Easily Learn to Draw https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857687603/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ijZZDbCWDFEAQ

Drawing the Head and Hands https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680978/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AjZZDb0B3RBPF

Figure Drawing for All It's Worth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680986/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OjZZDbW37G79H

Successful Drawing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857687611/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4jZZDb95Z0W96

Creative Illustration https://www.amazon.com/dp/1845769287/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ikZZDbFRJYAJD

And after the basics


Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (Volume 1) (James Gurney Art) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0740785508/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_alZZDbZW0Y1P4


Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Volume 2) (James Gurney Art) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0740797719/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_DlZZDb676AWT6



It doesn't matter what medium you use, learning how to draw and understanding what you're doing will help out the most.

This book would help you.

I always recommend “Creative Illustration” by Andrew Loomis. It’s an older book, but Loomis was a great teacher and the fundamentals are so solid. Loomis book

So many things. I was never a competent pixel artist because once I got to semi-proficient I looked at the skill curve and realized that I wasn't making it through all of that.

I really recommend frequenting these two sites:

http://pixelation.org
http://pixeljoint.com

Someone mentioned the classic Disney animator bible:

https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Life-Disney-Animation/dp/0786860707

It can't be understated how essential this book is to learning the essentials of animation. Further than that there were the Loomis books that were called out time and again as a great art education (palette selection becomes incredibly important in low resolution art). Those books are hard to come by-- scratch that, they used to be now they're just on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1845769287

There's a lot to dive in to. If all of this seems like too much, cribbing from OpenGameArt's better assets is a cheap and easy way to start.

ok. I don't what style you want to go for, and I'm going to assume that you want to get into the comic book style. That doesn't matter though, where you need to begin is with Andrew Loomis' Creative illustration, Figure Drawing for all its worth(the free pdf, but I would recommend getting the book, because why not), Drawing on the right side of the brain, and Drawing the hands and face. All of these resources are what you need to start out. It doesn't look like you are out of the gate "I draw stick figures" level. But you have to keep in mind, that the ultimate tutor, is time. If you really want to get better quickly, then you have to devote a lot of time to studies and just drawing in general. Good luck, I hope I helped you at least a little bit.

I can definitely help you with this.


How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

This is the best book on perspective you can buy. Perspective is the number one thing you need to have a grasp on if you want to draw, especially from imagination. Practice this until it clicks for you.

For setting up scenes I recommend Andrew Loomis books, Creative Illustration in particular. Loomis has several books out and they're all amazing. Many artists have learned to draw from Loomis.

Burne Hogarth is another master of the craft and you can learn a lot about musculature and anatomy from his books. These are generally a step up from Loomis so you could move on to these once you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals to take your work to the next level. Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing, Drawing the Human Head.

For people and anatomy, Proko (http://www.proko.com/library/) has good free youtube videos. He uses a lot of Loomis and Hogarth methods (which are pretty much the standard) and presents them in a way that is easy to digest. He's constantly updating his channel and adding new videos.

If you can only get a few books, I would get the How to Draw perspective book first, then go through the Proko material, then move onto the Loomis and Hogarth stuff. These learning materials will take you pretty much as far as you want to go.

Also I highly recommend sticking to traditional materials (pencil and paper) while you're learning. Once you have the fundamentals down then you can move on to digital. You're going to make things much easier on yourself if you stick with traditional while you nail these fundamentals down.

So the ways that really helped me understand perspective where from Andrew Loomis' books on Illustration, specifically his book "Creative Illustration"
https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Illustration-Andrew-Loomis/dp/1845769287

Here are the only 2 pictures I could find online of the pages I was thinking about, but he has several chapters on perspective in just about all of his books.
Perspective Page 1 | Perspective Page 2

The guy is like an old master of Illustration, and he wrote several books on the subject all of which I think are some of the best out there. Basically though, checking your perspective comes down to a few simple rules revolving around the horizon line. No matter where your objects sit in space, they will share the same relative height to the horizon line. Another thing is that the horizon line is an indicator of the height of your camera. This gets tricky to visualize if your camera is tilted up or down, but all of your objects will still share the same relative distance from the horizon line no matter how much you tilt the camera. The Page 2 link shows examples of wrong and right ways to place your objects in a scene based on the horizon line. People that draw backgrounds for cartoons blow my mind with this stuff