Tutorial: Clothing Folds

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.😊💕

oh I super did not think about the lines while making these

SO here’s one of those drag things (there’s a lot though so I would recommend taking a screenshot)  Many of the features can overlap (ex: A nose can be broken and flat; eyes can be small and piercing; so forth) but I didn’t want it to be very constricting.

Abigail dance inspired - also check out our dance tag

art tips post

for all the artist following me

Have two sketchbooks: One for finished and high-quality art (stuff made with Prismacolor or Copic if you use that or art for your portfolio) and the other sketchbook for more messy doodles. This way you have a place to try new things and mess up as much as you need. When I only had one sketchbook I was scared to draw in it because I didn't want to mess it up

Do studies. I cant tell you how much I've improved just by doing studies of shoes, hands, noses, and all that. This works for when you have art block too since you’re not really making stuff up and just learning how real things work.

Learn from others. I’ve never taken a real art class because 1. I can’t afford it and 2. there’s no good art classes/programs at my school. I’ve been following several artists and learning from them over the years and they’ve helped me tremendously. Just please do not steal art because that is never okay.

Break down concepts. If you notice there’s something wrong with your piece then figure out why. You can’t get better if you leave mistakes and don't try to understand whats going on. If the color is weird figure out if the values look right or maybe its the saturation of the color.

Watch youtube tutorials. Here are some youtubers I think are pretty good art teaching all things art: Draw with Jazza |  DrawingWiffWaffles |  Proko |  Baylee Jae

Have an inspiration folder/blog. Sometimes you just need a collection of starry nights or a misty forest or even a French bakery. All of those things can help you get inspired to draw. It could even be completely unrelated to what you plan to draw.

There are no dumb ideas in the creative process. If you want to draw a lizard in a dress go for it! If you want to draw various pastries with faces do it! Don’t let the thought of it being too dumb stop you because if I’ve learned anything in my several years of drawing it’s that an idea can lead to another and another and another and you may get a really good idea just from doodling dumb things.

Here’s a few things that can get you started on drawing better:

Dynamic poses | Dynamic clothes | Dynamic figure drawing

COMPOSITION | PERSPECTIVE | CONSTRUCTION

Anatomy:

Legs

Arms

Hands

Heads

Body (Female) (Male

Color Theory

Improving your sketchbook

Most importantly, don’t give up! You may not immediately get notes or followers but it’s more important you get better than to have popularity. How do you think those popular artists got to where they are now? To be good you’ve got to work at it.

Requested - Grace Inspired Dance Essentials by stephlv featuring a white tank top

Dance outfits

Inspired Dance Outfits Dena (Abigail) ¾