Just In Case You Forget This Exists.

Just in case you forget this exists.

It exists.

Old Master’s Academy - FREE Video Lessons.

Great news!  Our friends over at Drawing Academy have launched a brand new, free online video art instruction course: Old Masters’ Academy.

This educational website is different from the many online courses for artists as it is based on the rich heritage of the Old Masters’ oil painting techniques that are no longer taught in contemporary art colleges.  This course reveals all you need to know about art materials for oil painting, color theory and rules of mixing paints, the know-how of the indirect method of painting, and the step-by-step sequence of creating a painting in the Old Masters’ style.

And the best part is, as a Supersonic Art viewer, you are offered a unique opportunity to try this course for Free!  Sign up now.

Hello friends, this is the long awaited tutorial on Line-Quality, Art-Style, and Same-Face-Syndrome.

Line-Quality is improved by building Muscle-Memory.

You build muscle memory through Drawing-Exercises.

Art-Style is developed over time through Observation and Routine.

Routines such as… Drawing-Exercises. 

And now for… the Ultimate Drawing-Exercise-Routine!

It’s called Snake-In-A-Basket!!

Draw any kind of snake inside of any kind of basket. You have 5 to 20 minutes to complete it before each/every Big-Serious-Illustration to tackle. No more, no less time!

Draw it… NOW!

(my example that I drew in GIMP)

Art-Style is not necessarily what you think it is. A fairly common style issue discussed in artist circles is the inability to draw the same character twice while retaining their likeness or the lack of uniqueness which makes our art (recognizable) distinguishable from another’s “oh! YOU drew this!”.

Here are the fastest pathways to attaining the elusive Art-Style:

Repetition!!!!!

Recurrence-of-Thematic-Elements (everyone is sad, robots, someone is always shirtless, etc)

Same Color-Palette used for everything you draw

Same-Tools (line width, brush set, same paper, canvas size)

or Same-Program

(examples of palettes!! you can’t go wrong with having a rainbow)

Some Amount of Explanation:

If you draw on the same size or same scale (A6, A5, A4, A3 | B6, B5 | Letter) or in the same orientation (Landscape or Portrait), it helps you learn Composition intuitively by training you to make use of the space you have. Also it’s easier to print out and frame if you draw on common photo print sizes 4x6, 8x10, etc.

Even if you make a lot of use of Blend/Blur and you’re more of a Painter than a Cel-Shader– deciding to use a Set Personal-Default-Color-Palette instead of randomly choosing them on the Wheel/Triangle-Thing will still give you enough stable consistency.

Onto the next thing!

Same-Face-Syndrome is normally caused by one of two things. If it’s not one then it’s the other: Same Shapes or Same Details.

To make noticebly different characters you have to Exaggerate.

Circle, Square, Triangle, Rectangle? Short, Wide, Tall, Thin?

Before you try your hand at drawing any Face or Body Type, draw another Snake-In-A-Basket first. 

You think I’m joking?

No. I’m not.

So to wrap up, you need to Warm Up to draw, you need to make a color palette and stick to it –or just use the same Crayola pencils, or the same kind of Bic pen, same kind of sharpie, .7 or .5, and have themes like “plaid flannels for everybody” or “hoodies and jeans”. Find those things you can execute consistently, like hatching or stippling, and if you like it, stick with it! 

Hope this helps!

Now draw a SNAKE-IN-A-BASKET!

WOW! Your art is otherworldly!!! The vibrancy of your colors, the spunky characters, the elaborate and imaginative storytelling: your work is stunning! Do you by any chance have advice for uploading high quality images? Tumblr adjusts the quality of my art when I upload it and I have no idea how to fix it. Do you know why this is?

Ah, thank you so much! I had a low quality image problem too, until I started using “Save for Web” in Photoshop’s settings (under File > Export) . I use Save For Web and then save it as a PNG. For some reason, this method keeps the image crisp. If I try using normal Save As and select PNG, the quality degrades too, weirdly (it is supposed to be lossless, right?).

-Please click on these images to see them in better quality!-

This is a tutorial I did for @retro-sci-fi-songbird​ on how to draw faces in ¾ view.

Something that I didn’t get much into in the image is the importance of form (i.e. three-dimensionality) when drawing a face, especially at this angle. After all, a person’s face exists in three dimensions, so think about the forms of the face, not just its shapes and lines. For example, you can think of the bridge of the nose as a rectangular prism, and the tip of the nose and nostrils as spheres. If you’re confident with drawing rectangular prisms and spheres, then suddenly drawing a nose becomes easy! This is useful even if you’re drawing in a very flat/stylized manner (e.g. manga, art nouveau, pop art), because having that knowledge of realistic form will give you the ability to render things convincingly, even if you choose not to draw in the style of realism.

i was following a photo-realism painting course but my internet died midway and i winged the rest :(

the original!