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[venatorinc]

Tried different poses, I know the first one sux , she's way too short
I think the best is 3..

hope u can give helpfull advice :D

[aeiowu]

Right on Caliber9.

A little bit more about why it's important to start with non-humanoid stuff...

Right now, you're drawing the outlines of these figures (your latest post) and that's the surface, not the structure. It's backwards. The reason art classes make you start with perspective cubes and still-lifes is due to the fact that you must OBSERVE! This is a skill in itself. When I look at an object the right way I understand the relationships of shapes within that. That takes time to learn and we're just talking about a simple cylinder! It's complicated, this 3D space we live in. But since we've been looking at human beings all our lives, it's easy to draw what we think a human looks like, but therein lies the tragedy. Everyone knows what humans actually look like (and this is especially true of portraits) so when we see a poorly drawn one, it's obvious.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you I can't draw figures. I've taken a few classes done a few hundred drawings but it's not near enough and I know that. It's on my list. It's sort of the CW that to understand the figure it takes about 10,000 observational drawings.

So if you start with mechanical objects in a still-life and then work your way up to some more organic things like fruit, vegetables and so on you'll gain the skill of critical observation in space. You'll notice that you'll start to look at the world differently and when you get this "eye" then it's time to think about figure drawing. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, definitely do what interests you, but I'm just trying to advise you to start with more basic stuff because it _will_ help you get better faster if you take it seriously.

Today in art a lot of people tend to copy more than learn. Anime is a great example, but you're always doing yourself a disservice by going that route. If you don't understand the system then you'll always be copying rather than reinventing. That always shows through.

The human body is one of the most complicated structures on Earth. Michelangelo, DaVinci and many others dissected cadavers _regularly_ just to understand it. Why? Not scientifically, but simply because they needed to understand the structure so that they could draw them better... with skin... fully clothed. I think it's still possible to develop as an artist without any of this knowledge, but you'll grow into a style that, while being unique, will leave you in a corner with little room to move around.

I'm sorry for the unsolicited lecture, I hope it's not annoying.

[venatorinc]

Haha it's not annoying, it's quite helpfull.
About the anime, I already quit that it was fun for a while, but realistic people are more fun to draw.

So you advice me to start drawing mechanics now and after that moving on to fruit ?

[venatorinc]

Made 3 mechs. They don't have much detail, but I like the designs:



EDIT:
Made a ninja mech, came out way better than the first 3 mechs above:

[Nate Kling]

hmm.. you seem to have missed the point aeiowu and I have been trying to make.  Its perfectly okay to be drawing mechs and fantasy characters and whatnot but if you are serious about improving your drawing ability youve got to start drawing boring stuff.  And I mean BORING (haha).  We are talking bowls, blocks, cups, chairs,etc.  And dont just scribble some lines down, make it perfectly accurate.  Take your time drawing just a single chair.  Try and make it look real and in proportion.  After that or during you can also work on drawing fruit which have a more organic and round shape.  Work on shading and light sources.  and YOU MUST draw from life.  No looking at a picture or drawing from your head.  Youve gotta draw from life.  And when you are drawing from life make sure you are looking up (at what youre drawing) more than you are down at your paper.  Drawing is mostly about looking and learning to observe correctly.  As practice you can also try doing some blind contours where you dont look down at your paper at all and try and draw an object like a chair.  This will really teach you not to be looking down at your paper all the time (even though I hate this exercise it is really helpful)  Now this may sound boring but its not quite as boring as it sounds.  And you can also be drawing mechs and characters all you want at the same time. BUT if you are serious about getting better then you have to also take seriously drawing the boring stuff from life.  You will begin to see your other drawings of mechs,etc. improve as well.  So next post I hope to see a carefully and beautifully drawn chair!  Good luck, you already have some good natural ability but with some practice and training you can be really great.

[venatorinc]

I only did shading practice on a cube yet, I'm not starting on the chair yet, cuz I first wanna work on my shading

I think this looks quite realistic, right?
Comments please

(gave them both a different light source, they're not supposed to be in the same space or something)

[John Nesky]

Cube 1: The shadow on the floor indicates that the light source is behind the cube. The shadow on the cube indicates that the light source is in front of the cube, since the front of the cube is lit.

Cube 2: the shadow on the floor is cast by the face facing the camera, but the rest of the cube should be casting more of a shadow.


Also, shadows don't fade out like that, although the borders get fuzzy further from the source of the shadow.

[venatorinc]

Ah yes, forgot about that. the shading on the bottom-left piece of the cube has to be as dark as the darkest piece, right?

[venatorinc]

Didn't really get to practice that boring stuff, it's just too boring XD

I'll try to practice when I'm at school, it's not like I have anything else to do there 

However, I DID get to drawing a Big Daddy since I just think the Big Daddies from Bioshock look awesome.

Here's my go: