Anon Asked For Some Tips On How I Draw Expressions??? I Did My Best But I Struggle To Really Explain

Pro-tips for baby artists

At the beginning of your artistic journey, everything feels confusing. You just have a colossal amount of ideas but you don’t know how to put them down. It doesn’t matter if you’re a painter or a digital artist, the question is still the same: “why does it have to be so damn difficult?!” On one hand, this question proves that you are maturing, as most baby artists tend to - and it’s perfectly normal! - feel like they are doing everything correctly, to ralise at the end that their ideas might be too many and too unorganised. 

On the other, this problem can be resolved in various ways, that most artists learn with experience, but that I want to share with you in this post. 

1. References, not copies: What I used to do, and I see a lot of baby artists making the same mistake as me, is basically coping others’ art. With this, I’m not saying that you can’t use references or you mustn’t do “draw in your artstyle” challenges, as it’s VERY important that artists know that references are important, photos and art pieces both. What I want to say, is that taking an artwork and completely coping every single detail in it blocks your creativity and your ability to follow anatomic structures in a real references. Using others’ artwork helps you when you “steal” from the other artist some techniques, like how they colour, how they draw bodies, or what kind of references they use.

2. Instagram account: if you are a beginner artist who was born in the internet era, one of the first things that come to your mind when you start improving with your artistic skills, is that you have to open an Instagram account where you post your art pieces. Sometimes, this helps artists to stay committed to their passion, but most of the time the result is the opposite. When you are in the first stages to become an artist, you have the possibility to be creative and do what you want with your art. If your sketchbook isn’t “aesthetically pleasing” it doesn’t matter, as only you and your friends are going to see it! You can experiment with new artforms and artstyles without judgement or deadlines. Now, I don’t want to say that opening an online art account ruins this, but having an art account certantly requires very thick skin  - as we all know that on the internet people feel like they always know best - and costant care and precision, which sometimes dulls the positivity that making art normally brings. 

3. Art supplies: One of the most popular phrases used by creators is “the art supply doesn’t make the artist”, which is completely true, but not quite accurate. Expensive art supplies won’t make your art any better, and they won’t make your work any easier, but using correct art supplies is very important. Spending 200$ for an art supply that you won’t be using is not worth it (a.k.a. me with brandy oil pastels that I refuse to use because it’s too difficult), but buying some, for example, inking pens at a fair price will help you improve. You have to experiment to know what works out for you or not, so using only a normal pencil won’t help you with your sperimentation and, automatically, your artistic growth. So spend money, but spend it with conscience.

4. OCs: If you don’t know, OC stands for Original Character, and it’s a common thing between a lot of artist to create an OC with their own personalities. Here’s my tip on them: USE THEM. They are extremely helpful for your creativity and for your anatomic studies. An OC provides the perfect opportunity to draw and learn through something you enjoy. By drawing the OC, your art skills will improve with ease, as you will be drawing them in different situations, expressions and poses. Apart from this, even only the part of the conception of the character will help you to organize and choose your ideas!

5. Experiment: As a beginner artist, I always thought that when you begin your artistic journey, you have to be sure of what “type” of artist you are going to be. Guess what? I was wrong, so very wrong. Let your curiosity get the best out of you: you want to give sculpting a try? Go for it! You want to pass to digital art instead of traditional? Awsome! Art is expressed in millions of forms, you just have to descover what you like best, but to find them, you have to try as many as possible. It doesn’t matter if you fail: it’s normal. Errors make the journey more interesting, and they make you want to be better the next time!

How to train your hand

Sooo… I’m not dead, yay!!(●'◡'●)

I’m sorry for not being “present” these weeks but school sucks and I had tons of assignments to do… 

Anyways! What I noticed as soon as I rose from the dead, was a reblog of one of my previous posts of someone saying how difficult and overwhelming it is to draw digitally when you are so accostumed to drawing in traditional. This got me thinking that a lot of baby artists tend to have the same problems, even when they start to draw normally. So, I wanted to give some tips on how to train your hand to draw in different situations and materials! 

1. Sketchbooks (ONLY OF TRADITIONAL ARTISTS): okay, let me get this straight: your sketchbook is your training ground. This means, it has to be comfortable to draw into, but it must also be suitable for your artistic enhancement! So, choose a sketchbook that has papers made with materials that you are comfortable drawing on. It can be in spiral-form or bound (like, book-form), it doesn’t matter, it has to be comfortable for you. Here’s a tip: do not draw on ruled paper when you are starting to draw! Lined paper does not help your spatial reference or your anatomic study. Instead, you can use blank (even the printer ones!), dotted or squared (even if I don’t really like them either, because they make your drawing process a LOT more difficult) papers.

2. Ballpoint pen or pencil? (ONLY FOR TRADIOTIONAL ARTISTS) so, the eternal dilemma: is it better to use ballpoint pen or the normal pencil? for me, both are really good drawing materials. From my point of view, the ballpoint pen allows you to train your hand AND your brain without even realizing. In fact the ballpoint pen doesn’t allow you to erase, so you train yourself to fix errors without erasing and be more precise when you are drawing. On the other hand, the pencil enables you to work on your skills without the fear of making mistakes. So, what I suggest, is an healthy use of both so that you can use pencils to make precise works and ballpoint pens to doodle on your sketchbook.

3. Be constant (DIGITAL/TRADITIONAL ARTISTS): repeat after me: training is gaining! This means that through constant exercising you will be able to impove in your art very fast! Think of your artistic skills as if they were a muscle such as the ones you use to bike. If you learn how to bike but don’t exercise yourself for a long period of time, you will always know the theory and the base concepts, but your muscles won’t support the activity as long as they would if you did it every day! The same concept can be seen in the artistic world, but in this case the muscle is your brain! If you train your bain to do some gesture or draw in some specific way every day at leat for 10 or 15 minutes, you will be able to improve in your art in a very short period of time!

4. This also means: Do not rush! (DIGITAL/TRADITIONAL ARTISTS): Improvement will be seen, but you have to be patient and give you and your hand some time. Great artists are not the ones that improve faster, but the ones that have strong bases. There is no simple way, no tutorial that will help you become Leonardo Da Vinci in two days. My art journey is still on process, as the one of everybody, and to arrive to the point I am here now, I had to train myself for eight years.😊💕

Kat Inspired All-Black Dance Outfits by stephlv featuring Reebok

Inspired Leotards

Disclaimer:  I never went to art school and am NOT an expert in these things, but here are some basic guidelines that I follow when I draw heads.  

Here are some extremely helpful videos by Kienan Lafferty that are pretty close to how I draw heads, so I hope it’s useful for you guys too!

Just sketchbook dumping stuff from the last day or so. Running into my folds slowing down my finished stuff, so just obsessively going to crush that lack of knowledge.

Including all the raw sketch stuff and notes to show younger artist how to quickly and efficiently study new topics🤷‍♂️

Abigail Inspired with Requested Leotard by stephlv featuring summer tops

Some Figure Drawing practice and Using Shapes tips By me. 

While practicing.. i thought i should share some tips to you. hope it helps!