Art tutorial

Foreword
I believe there is logic behind why a picture works or not. I also believe that humans are meat
machines, and that one day computers will be able to emulate humans and what we do. Since logic can
be formulated into rules, guidelines and theories, these can be shared. I will attempt to do so here.
Note that I have just empirically deduced the theories I present here, and that I'm a highly fallible meat
machine. At some point a painting is good enough and our personal preferences and limited human
cognitive and intellectual abilities will not notice or care about imperfections. As we learn more about
art, we might start noticing more and more discrepancies and become grumpy in the eyes of others!.
"any rules also play against each other and may cancel each other out, or become invalidated because
of a stylistic approach . #hat I will elaborate on here is just the very broad basic rules that most of us
seem to agree on. Aliens might find the part about the cold sky! shadows and warm sun! light
confusing... not to mention the part where I'm talking about human figure.
$he far most useful criti%ue I can give developing artist is&
'ractice. "ake studies of everything with every media. (es, that also means drawing stuff you hate. So
what is this tutorial for if you all you need is practice) #ell, I think there are a few things that it helps
to know early on, but you won't see any improvement from just having read the tutorial. It will no
doubt take you a while to digest everything I've written here, so you might need to come back to the
te*t with a few months separation.
Updates
2012 May
02: +larified stuff in the $erminology section. And minor changes to Seeing. 'erhaps I'll work
my way through the entire thing eventually.
2007 September
06: ,leshed out the licence a bit.
04: -ewrote parts of the te*t. Added some more old! illustrations. +SS layout . markup.
Anchors. -SS.
2005 January
27: New value/noise scibble. Spellchecked tons of typos!. ,i*ed erratic formulations.
26: ,our new illos.
2425: #rote/compiled the tutorial.
!able o" #ontents
,oreword
$op
0pdates
$able of contents
1icence
$erminology
Seeing
$he 2nion
1ight stuff
3*posure
"aterials
Shadows
Skin tones
4ues
+olor relativity
+olor identity
,latten and simplify
,ocus points
'erspective and construction
1ine art
Studies
Subjects to study
Self criti%ue
2rder of importance
+riti%ue and common mistakes
$i#en#e
$his tutorial is, in its current form, free to translate and 'mirror' in that form. It is also free to distribute
for educational purposes as a hand out to students or whatever!. It must remain free.
5ecause I may be updating it and new versions are generally better, I'd rather not have it mirrored too
much. I can not update mirrors I do not have control over. 'resenting it with ads or with intent to gain
website traffic is for poopieheads. $his is the internet and a link to this page should suffice if you want
to bring this page to someone's attention.
I guess this licence comes pretty close&

$his work is licensed under a +reative +ommons Attribution6Noncommercial6Share Alike 7.8 1icense.
If you have translated it, or have seen a transated version, please let me know so I can link it here.
5y Arne Niklas 9ansson 6 :88; . :88<
4omepage& www.androidarts.com/
$his page& www.androidarts.com/art=tut.htm
+ontact& email rebus 4int& It's diglett at google's well known email service.!
!erminolo%y &Upd' 2012(
I'll try to stay away from complicated words. 4ere are a few basic ones.
)S* 6 $hree dimensions of light, 4ue, Saturation and >alue. +an be viewed as a cylinderwith
+ircumference, -adius and 4eight.
+,- 6 $hree dimensions of light, -ed, ?reen and 5lue. I prefer to paint using -?5 sliders
because it allows me to easily add or subtract colors. If I have a gray, @:8, @:8, @:8, and want to
add some orange I might adjust like @:8A78, @:8A@B, @:8A:.
./posure 6 9ust like the eye, a camera is a device which catches photons. #hen it saves an
image it saves photon count per 'pi*el'. #hen an image is converted to a flat canvas which isn't
luminescent enough to shine like the sun, light values has to be cropped on the dark and bright
ends. +ameras can actually save images in a format called -A# which does not crop away
values say, over :;;!. $hese images can be viewed on a '4igh Cynamic -ange' monitor which
is capable of emitting brighter light than a regular monitor. #hen we paint on regular surfaces,
the inability to portray bright things is forcing us to resort to various tricks which somewhat
emulate brightness. Anders Dorn was e*cellent at this.
)ue 6 >ariations in color. Skin has some hue variation, such as cheeks being rosy. 3ven if an
object is a single flat color, it can still vary in hue because it's subject to colored light and
shadow, reflections and other effects.
Saturation 6 4ow much color there is. ?rays aren't saturated. Neon colors are very saturated. In
the E bit -?5 color model 86:;; per slider! you can measure saturation by looking at the
difference between the sliders min6ma*!. Cark and bright colors look less saturated because it's
not possible to bring the sliders far apart. ,or e*ample, :;;, 8, 8 is very red. :;;, ::8, ::8,
while full red, looks less saturated because the delta is just :;;6::8 F 7; and not :;; like in the
former case.
*alue0 -ri%1tness0 2ar3ness 6 $here are several ways to calculate value. In the -?5 color
model, ?reen is the brightest, then -ed, then 5lue i.e. 8, :;;, 8 is brighter than 8, 8, :;;!. In a
program I wrote once, I used the following common formula to calculate value from -?5&
>alueF 8.:GG H -ed! A 8.;E< H ?reen! A 8.@@I H 5lue!. If an artist praises a painting for its
Jgreat valuesJ, he probably means that, color choices disregarded, the painting is effective in the
way it uses contrast to convey forms and make things read well.
+ead0 +eadable 6 (ou can tell what something is supposed to be, what is described. If a
painting is messy, it's difficult to read.
+adiosity0 Ambien#e and +e"le#ted li%1t 6 #hen light is reflected of a surface and then hits
something else. $his happens all the time. In a green room everything will get a green hue for
e*ample. -adiosity is a 7C rendering term, iirc. I use 'reflected light' for sources I can trace, and
'ambience' when the color is some sort of average of lots of things in the surrounding
environment.
Spe#ulars 6 Cots of light that appear on glossy or wet surfaces. It's really a mirror image of the
light source that you're seeing. 2n more dull materials, light is perhaps broken up by very small
bumps, so you won't see the specular dot moving as you shift your position. $he lighting on the
surface will look almost the same from different directions. A mirror is so smooth and reflective
that light comes back almost undistorted from the reflective surface.
Flatten 6 -emoving unnecessary te*ture and values.
!e/ture0 4oise 6 $iny details, sometimes repeating patterns, which sometimes used to show the
material of surfaces, or just to provide interesting contrast and flavor. 'hoto models can look
strange if they've been airbrushed so heavily that the skin te*ture has disappeared and looks
alien. (ou can do neat things with te*ture, such as alternating a warm and dark color. $his
makes the average color of the te*ture appear more... dimensional and rich than simple flat
surface would. $e*ture is a tricky beast to wrestle with, because sometimes te*ture will make a
surface look too noisy, such as a tree crown, grass, or a brick wall. In such cases it's common to
just partly suggest the te*ture.
Form0 Modelin%0 S#ulptin% 6 $he 7C shape of something. >alues are important when
5lane 6 I don't %uite know. I use it for ,oreground, "iddleground and 5ackground sometimes,
i.e. the '5? plane'. In some cases I might mean the same as flat surface.
Atmosp1eri# perspe#ti6e 6 Air is not fully transparent. As you may have noticed, things far
away tend to fade away and sometimes shift towards a sky blue color. Atmospheric perspective
can be used to visually separate intersecting parts at different distances. It can also be
e*aggerated. Some artists including me! use atmospheric perspective on pinups to help
separate limbs crossing each other and also to fade the figure into the white background!.
$o#al #olor 6 I think this refers to the color an object has when viewed under neutral lighting
conditions. In reality, things rarely show their local color because there's so much colored light
bouncing going on. Kids can be e*cessive in their use of local colors. ?reen and brown trees,
pink people, etc.
Seein% &Upd' 2012(
Apparently the conscious part of the human brain can't handle much information. It's more efficient to
develop simple refle*es for common and repetitive tasks. $here's a part of our brain which processes
the image from the eye. After having processed it, very little information is actually sent to our
awareness some autistic people have an error in this process and they see 'too much' instead!.
0nfortunately for us artists, our brain also tweaks our perception of the image so we don't really see
what we actually see. $o some e*tent, we must learn to reverse engineer our perception.
Unwrap 6 #e 'see' surfaces from the front, or several sides at the same time. $he side of a bo*
doesn't look skewed to us for e*ample.
./posure 6 2ften, an object in the shadow looks the same to the eye as one in the light, but
when we take a photo of something we're often surprised by the difference in light levels.
71ite balan#e 6 A white paper always looks white to the eye, regardless if we're indoors or
outdoors. +ameras on the other hand are bad at white balancing automatically. If the
photographer is careless, indoor photos may come out very orange because of lightbulb light!
whilst outdoor environments can appear too cold because of the blue sky!.
2istan#e s#alin% 6 A person far away will still look human siLed because the brain understands
distance intuitively. 4owever, I heard a story about a man who had grown up in a dense jungle,
and thus never had seen anything at a distance. A scientist took him out on the savannah where a
rhino was graLing on the horiLon. $he man thought it was an insect. As they came closer, the
man thought the 'insect' was growing.
#hen drawing from flat images it's easier for us to see proportions, alignments and perspective
distortions. In a way, a part of the job has already been done though perhaps not in an desirable artistic
way!. It's a lot harder to make studies from life, but currently pictures from cameras doesn't give us 'the
whole picture'. $hey change colors and crop out values and subtle hues, not to mention that they're not
in stereo.
!1e onion &!1in3in% in layers(
5efore laying down a stroke, there's a number of things you need to think about. #ell, actually you
shouldn't have to think about them, it should just go automatically.

,eel volume and angle of the form.
#here is the light coming from)
$ry to figure out if there are any shadows that might be falling on the surface.
Is there any reflected light radiosity! that hits the surface)
#hat is the ambient color of the scene) sorta like global reflected light.!
Any speculars. Is the surface gloss/wet and also angled so it reflects a light source, such as the
sky)
$he e*posure level. 'erhaps it's so heavily lit that it becomes more than white) 'erhaps it's so
dark that even the brightest spot is hidden in darkness.
Is there any fog in the way)
$he te*ture of the surface.
Note that this mainly goes for realistic styles. A brushstroke should also look efficient and consistent
with the rest of the painting and your color scheme choice. (ou might also have an idea or style which
disallows certain colors or te*tures and puts priority on other things. 4owever, even in a powerpuff
girls illustration there's simplified elements of realistic rendering. Con't hide behind Jit's not apart of
my style so I'm not gonna learn itJ.
$i%1t stu""
$here's really just one kind of light. It bounces. (ou can only see the light photon! if it enters your eye.
1ight does two important things when it hits a surface. ,irst, a part of it is absorbed. $his is how colors
are made. A red apple reflects mostly red wavelengths, the rest are absorbed and turned into heat or
something. $hat's why black stuff get so hot in the sun. Anyways, the reflected light bounce away
differently depending on the surface. If the surface is bumpy it will bounce away sort of randomly, like
a tennis ball that hits rocky terrain. If the surface is smooth it will bounce away in a predictable path. A
mirror is very smooth so the light comes back undistorted, so we can see our reflection.
Note that all surfaces have speculars, because speculars is just reflected light. It's just more broken
up/diluted on dull surfaces.

Cepending on where the eye/beholder is, it'll see
different light and different specular spots on a curved
surface such as this. A puddle isn't curved other than the
edges because of surface tension! so you'll only get a
shiny reflection from a certain point of view. 'oint
speculars can only appear in an environment where
there's a point light source, like a sun, lightbulb or small
window.
'hoto 6 Speculars do e*ist on cloth, diluted and subtle. I
stretched out my shirt sleeve with two fingers to get a
flat surface between the two marked dots I moved the
camera and not the sleeve!.
4ere on earth we have lots of stuff around us that the
light can bounce off, so things here are more or less lit
from all angles. ,or e*ample we have the sky which is
like a dome shaped blue light source. $hen theres the
ground, walls and other surfaces. In space there's basically just one light source, the sun. $his is why
the moon just has a lit and shadowed side, and looks kind of flat. If you looks carefully however, you
can see earthlight on the shadow side of the moon, but it's very weak. $hen there's starlight, which I
guess is even weaker.
#hen light hits a surface and bounces, it also change color. If it hits another surface of the same color it
bounced off, it will make that surface look even more saturated.


$oo orange to be some sort of skintone anyways.!
./posure
$he sunlight is much stronger than the skylight, which is in turn much stronger than indoor light. 2ur
eyes adapt automatically after a while, and we can also adapt by s%uinting or just focusing on an object.
5ecause we do this without thinking about it, it's hard to understand that our eyes are actually kind of
limited. $his limitation becomes even more obvious with cameras. If you take a picture indoors, the
windows will become overe*posed bright!. (ou might try to adjust the e*posure levels to the window
light, but then the indoor environment will become undere*posed. $his can be used to your advantage.
5y for e*ample putting a character or object in the foreground where it's darker, you can make the
silhouette read well against a well lit room.
$he e*posure to light can also make parts of a body look very bright or dark, not skin tone color at all.
#hen the shadow is dark and the lit side is overe*posed, the only place for the color to go is on the
edge between them.
Materials
4ere's an e*ample of various materials and how i render them.
+loth 6 4ardly any speculars, just shadow and light. Sometimes strong light can penetrate thin
cloth and cause some sort of subsurface scattering.
1eather 6 +an be a little gloss and thus have a few speculars. Also, don't make it too saturated.
$rees and wood 6 Cull. Not very saturated either sort of grey6brown6sienna!.
Stone 6 A bit like cloth. $he surface is often to rugged both at micro and macro levels! to have
any serious speculars.
'lastic 6 It seems like the speculars and reflections are coloriLed in the color of the plastic.
'lastic can also be a bit transparent.
?old 6 ?old isn't orange. I use black 6 desaturated orange sometims with hints of green, then up
to yellow and white.
Silver 6 "ore or less like a mirror.
"etal 6 In the case of armours I often push the values a little more, not as much midtones.
5rushed metal 6 It's sort of like an inbetween of a grey surface and a silver surface.
?lass 6 2ften just transparent with distortion. $he speculars come suddenly and are often white.
In the case of car windows you might have noticed that it's easier ot see what's behind if there's
a shadow over the window. $he brighter reflections obscure.
#et stuff 6 more speculars, can become transparent in the case of cloth, and stones get more
saturated and pronounced details.

S1adows
Shadows are %uite flat and generally less saturated than the lit side. It's easier to notice ambient light in
the shadows. Shadows get blury over distance, this is called diffraction.

Shadows don't add multiply! with just 2N3 lightsource that is...!
S3in tones
+onsider the environment. $he light is stronger outside, and the skin color tend to be less saturated due
to the sky blue ambient light and sky blue speculars. Sometimes the skin color become shifted towards
purple because of the sky blue being mi*ed in. $his is especially true if the subject is standing in a
shadow.
Indoors no windows, only light bulbs! the light is warmer and allows skin saturation to be amped up to
oranges and reds.
$he shadow color of the skin can sometimes wander off to greens, especially if the room have green
components, like wallpaper, plants, furniture.
In a white room or a bathroom the skin tones would be %uite pale, closer to local colors and less
contrasted shadow/light! due to lots of ambience.
A room with a single strong light source will probably result in near black shadows.
...so, the type of environment your character is placed in very much affects how you should render it.
)ues
$he human body has a lot of different hues. 'arts covered by cloth gets less tan. "ons pubis, the hip
bone area and the chest is %uite pale. $he shoulders and lower arms gets a little e*tra tan. $he inside of
the lower arm is often pale however. $he kneecaps and elbows have a little darker skin. $he face also
has a lot of hues, such as rosy cheeks, males might have grey or almost green jaws because of stubble.
$he best way to learn the hues of the human body is to make studies of course. Con't forget that
animals, monsters and objects also have hues. If you paint everything with the same hue and saturation
it will look boring.
Some hues are due to ambient and reflected light. $he shoulders and surfaces pointing up can get a blue
hue because of the sky reflecting.
Saturated %radients 6 $he gradients between the shadow and
light is not just an in6between color of the shadow color and light
color. If the shadow and light is just blended, it will look very
lifeless. If you look at pictures you will see that the gradients is
saturated. It's especially easy to notice if you remove that
saturation.
Subsur"a#e s#atterin% 6 Strong light can
penetrate the surface of some materials and
bounce around, then e*it again. $his will
increase the saturation and make the surface
look illuminated from the inside. In the case
with human skin, we sometimes see it on
hard edges between light and shadow.
'hoto 6 1eafs are gloss on the top side
which means there can sometimes be a sky blue specular here. $he light shining
thru the leaf makes the bottom side more saturated, this is also true for ears and
fingers, which can turn super red when heavily backlit.
'hoto 6 Sub6surface scattering on the fingertips. $he light on the left side of the
thumb is probably light reflected off the inde* finger.
'hoto 6 Note that the edge only appear if the light is overe*posed. It does not appear as pronounced on
the thumb.
8olor relati6ity
+olors and values are relative. 5y using various tricks it's possible to trick the viewer into thinking a
color is really another color, or a value is darker than it is. 0nfortunately, the artist is also tricked into
using too much colors or values than is needed.
A hard edge between two values will be much more obvious than a soft one. (ou'll have to know when
to use which. Sometimes your choice of values is very limited, such as when you're working in the
shadow. 5y using hard edges you can describe a lot more detail with less values available. 4owever,
using gradients is very useful for changing value without the viewer noticing. $he 'fake flat' illustration
looks flat, but is actually a gradient. $he s%uare is the same color as the left side of the 'flat' rectangle.

+olors with the same value are relative in terms of hue instead. A common mistake is to draw one detail
too saturated, then something else nearby looks grey, so to compensate you increase saturation on that
detail too, and as a result the whole painting end up too saturated.

8olor identity
It's easy to get carried away and go over the top with highlights. $his makes it hard to see what color
the subject is. Instead you should use shadows to describe the volume of the subject.

Flatten and simpli"y
#ork with larger brushes and remove unnecessary brushstrokes. See the bad and better e*ample below.
I really didn't do much on the second one. It's actually simplified. It's surprising how much a little
flattening here and there can do. I did spend some e*tra time on the face though. A bad face can ruin
everything. Image is from reference.


Fo#us points
A painting is a hierarchy of important and less important details. If you're doing a pin6up the main
figure and silhouette is the most important. In comics they often use a fat outline around the silhouette,
whilst the less and less important details get thinner and thinner lines. #hen painting you do the same
thing, but with brushstrokes insteadM (ou use differences in hue, saturation, value, edges, sharpness,
detail and composition to lead the viewer's eye towards the focus point of the painting.
If you use the same rendering everywhere on the painting it will look flat. (ou can lead the eye toward
important spots, but once the eye is there it needs something interesting to keep it there, like proper
details. $he amount of details on a spot should be proportional to the amount of time the eye stays
there.

Attempt to isolate some of the techni%ues you can use to attract the eye.
4ere's an e*ample I made& A! Important forms N 5! $e*tue N +! 5oth
It can be very dangerous to get e*cited about rendering details, especially at an early stage. (ou can not
render details the same way in the shadow as in the light. 2n the second one 5! I just rendered all the
details to demonstrate how it can look if you just scribble down all the detail without thinking about the
important forms A!. +! is still a bit confusing but that's more of a construction issue. Side views can
only get you so far, and the anatomy is pretty odd which makes it harder to read.

A is the form without detail, 5 is the detail and + is both. 5e careful not to do too much 5, the form has
to readM
5erspe#ti6e and #onstru#tion
I'm not going to have a long perspective tutorial here. Instead I'm just going to mention how much
easier it gets if you make a few guide lines to align the figure/environment after as you draw.

If you're reluctant to do environments just because perspective is tedious to set up, you can use a simple
: point perspective and just guess in the details. It's surprising how much easier it is to align things
correctly with a few guide lines for me anyways!. It doesn't have to be perfect to appear correct.
$here's a risk that your designs will suffer if you can't improvise %uickly and have to consult the ruler
every other stroke. ,irst draw a horiLon line, then radiate lines from both ends in a random manner,
then just crop and sketch away.

4ere's a few %uick freehand lines helping me to align the shoulders and stuff. #hen drawing people, it
can help to align stuff after a 'spine'.
$ine art
./a%%erate 6 2ne great thing about art is that you can e*aggerate things, like hips and boobs. 4aha,
no, actually I'm serious. It's a good thing if important curves are more pronounced.
Simpli"y 6 $he advantage art holds over photos is simplification. In a photo you'll get distracting
details. #hen drawing, you can remove objects that aren't relevant to the scene. #rinkles and minor
protrusions can be removed to get a better line flow. A common mistake I see is when someone has
drawn all the abs belly muscles! with an overly amount of crosshatching. It's better to leave out lines,
especially if you're going to color, because then the contrast between different color fields can work as
lines.
)armoni9e 6 Another word for this is 'swooshyness'. 0nlike the above things it has to do with the
relation between details and how lines intersect and take over ofter another. $ry having a few swooshy
lines that you align several parts after.
Styli9e 6 #hen going for a style it's important to be consistent. (ou can turn curves into hard edges, or
you can go for sweeping sinus lines. I prefer a combo where I turn a curve into a hard edge at a certain
threshold.
$ine wei%1t 6 #ith a few e*ceptions, I'm not a big fan of fi*ed line width. 4ere I'll attempt to devise
some general guidelines for when and how to vary line width.
1ines are thicker on the shadowed side, thinner on the lit side.
1ines are thicker near the viewer, thinner further away.
Silhouette lines are thicker. Inner details get thinner lines.
1ighter materials get thinner lines.
$hin lines works good with detailed motifs.
$hicker lines work well with simple figures.
,at line art works well with flat colors cel! .
$hin line art works good with realistic rendering and pronounced volumes.
Also, you do not always need to draw a line. Sometimes it you can just hint the ends of it, and the eye
will fill the rest in. 3*amples are places where skin is pushed together, like the mouth, buttocks, pushup
boobs etc. It's good to make the line a little thicker where there's a gap. 3*amples are places where
clothing stretch over gaps between muscles or... cleavages.
,inally, here are a few illustrations. $he first one is 'hotoshop ;.;! A #acom tablet and there is no line
%uality to speak of, but I hope you get the idea. Second one is an inked thing from a few years ago.

#hen painting, subractive edges which are remnants from the line art or construction stage can be
harmful. (ou can separate shapes with other means than black lines, such as different value, or a bright
line. 4ere's an illustration of a few possible solutions and what they convey.

A line art image might go several stages of refinenement where previous, rougher stages, are constantly
faded and painted over. ,inal stage not completed here.

Studies
I didn't start making studies until just some years ago, and that I regret. (ou won't stumble upon the
right lines with guesses and wild scribbling. 0sing reference will only get you so far. In order to be
loose and fast you need to be able to draw without having to think about the general construction of
things such as basic anatomy!. $his way you can concentrate on the actual design and detailing.
+onstruct your drawings/paintings. Con't march around with the pen doing detail by detail. Always
check the general proportions and don't get caught by details too early. 'lace marks where the
important features are. $hese well be like landmarks you align after.
$ry to learn one thing at a time. (ou can't learn juggling while also practicing I88m hurdles. If you
want to learn how to handle the medium/tool, try making studies of easy stuff like fruits. If you want to
learn human faces, use a medium you know so you won't have to struggle with that as well. If there's
several things you can't handle then you won't see what it is you're doing wrong. Ouantity is also
important. I wouldn't recommend making anatomy studies with tedious woodcarving tools for e*ample.
$ineart 6 'encil studies doesn't have to be more than a few %uick pencil thumbnails on a paper. I spend
a few hours on studies when I do them, and I put about @8678 on each sheet AI!. I only do a couple of
studies a month, but I certainly notice improvement each time. 9ust imagine what would happen if you
did them several times a week for years.
@ 6 : 6 Some older study sheets made from a comic poses! and photos faces!.
5ainted 6 #hen I do digital studies I use 'hotoshop and mostly a picture from the net. I duplicate the
window and clear the new one. $hen I start placing the larger color masses on their appro*imate
positions. After that I gradually increase the details and value/color accuracy as good as I can. #hen it
looks close to the original, at a distance or with the eyes s%uinted, it's finished. I always work with the
largest possible brush allowed to render a given detail. I don't color pick from the original, but I do
keep the windows in the same siLe so I can see if I misplace anything. If you want to increase the
difficulty and reward! you can always try to draw in in a window with different siLe, and mirrored, or
paint something from still life.
Statue study& @ N : 6 ,irst one is 2+ 2pen +anvas!, second is 'S 'hotoShop!.
@a 6P @b N : 6 4ere I tried to be as economical as possible. Second one isn't a study but an e*ample of a
cleanup, which isn't necessary for studies.
@ N : 6 $hese are made from reference. I took the liberty to add some line art and style.
@ 6 2ne of my first studies.
Sub:e#ts to study
Study everythingM (ou need to build a large library of shapes and things in your head to be able to draw
intuitively. $his takes about a lifetime or more to do, so you better start nowM
)uman anatomy 6 2ne of the most important things you need to know. 3ven monsters have traces of
human anatomy.
$he whole body. 0se photos, anatomy books, statues or real people.
$he face is the thing we look at first. If you misplace a line just a bit the whole e*pression of the
face will change. "ake studies of photos, your friends or yourself.
$he hands are also important and hard! to learn.
$he feet can be tricky too, not because of the shapes, but because you need to plant the
character on the ground so it doesn't look like it's falling over or the ground is leaning.
Caily clothing. It's important to learn how cloth wrinkles, how different types of cloth looks and
fits.
,estures ; styles 6 (ou need to be diverse and get fresh ideas. 1earning some different styles can be a
good idea.
Craw from life using your friends or people at a cafe, a bus or somewhere. 4ow does a person
pose when he opens a door, reaches for his keys, and looks intimidated by an artist)
"arvel. 4ow does the "arvel artists represent the human body with lines) #hat details are
important and what is simplified)
"odesty 5laise, or some fairly realistic comic style. Crawing gradients with just blacks and
whites isn't easy.
"anga or a style you like. Again, how does the artist convert the human anatomy into lines and
color blobs) #hat parallels can you draw between the different styles)
.n6ironments 6 'utting your character in an environment really brings it alive. $his is something I
definitely need to learn myself.
1andscapes with fields, mountains or whatever.
A dense forest or a jungle.
An urban or industrial 'landscape'.
An indoor setting, like a room with furniture. 5oring, I know. $o be honest I haven't done this
yet.
Fet#1 an animal boo3 6 ...and draw some animals. A good way to design a monster is to morph
different animals into one.
All living things. "other nature have spent millions of years perfecting the designs, so you
better study them.
4orses, +ats, Cogs, birds. $hese are especially important since they are more commonly seen.
Ma#1inery 6 (ou also need to practice drawing machinery. It can be useful when designing robots and
planet6smashing vengeance6craLed battle droids.
+ars of different models.
Cigging and working machinery.
"ilitary vehicles.
8lassi#al still li"e ob:e#ts 6 2r basically anything. ?ood for learning how to draw and paint in general,
because of the simple shapes. (ou won't have too struggle much the shapes and can concentrate more
on the materials.
,lowers, fruit, skeletons, sculpts, chunks of wood, rusty metal parts.
Sel" #riti<ue
Analyse what you're doing wrong. It's easy to get blind from staring at the image too much which you
must do to be able to work of course!. $ry flipping the images, look at it upside down, through a mirror
I use a +C!, and Loom in and out or back away!. Con't sit and nibble too close to the paper or Loomed
in. (ou can also make a 'New view' 'S!.
(ou must also accept that just because you have worked on something for a while doesn't mean it's
worth anything. (ou must be ready to sacrifice the time you spent on something if it looks wonky. 3ven
if you're happy with the detail you might have to rework it Kill your darling!. Sometimes it's not the
the detail you're concentrating on that's wrong, but something relative too it, like the value of the
background or the perspective of another detail.
=rders o" importan#e
>ery generally speaking, certain apects of a painting are more important than other.
@. 8onstru#tion 6 #hat are you trying to paint) (our subject and composition should work on a
fundamental level. If not, then no rendering in the world can save it. Con't have any illusions
that you will be able to salvage the piece later. If a pose look wrong now, it will look stiff when
finished too, even if -embrandt himself painted it.
:. *alues 6 ,or a painting to work you need to use values to sculpt the forms. >alues can do a lot
of work grouping and separating shapes. 3*ample @ 6 $he first version here is obviously wrong.
3ach shape has just gotten the shadow and highlight treatment. Second one is better but there's
just one value type. $hird one has different values on different shapes. "aybe it fails at the
construction step thoughQ it's not a very interesting pinup. 3*ample : 4ere both value and color
is used to separate the foreground and background, although I don't like this painting either,
again it fails at construction.
7. 8olor 6 (ou can be a little off with the colors hue and saturation! and still get away with it. If
you just can't make the colors work, it is probably the values that are wrong. 2n a side note, if
the previous steps do work, it's easy to make fresh looking images with color balance tools. In
my e*perience the original choice is often the best.
8riti<ue and #ommon mista3es
#hen I give criti%ue on various forums I often end up typing the e*act same things every time. 4ere's a
list of the common mistakes beginner artists make.
Problem: To go shadow - midtone - highlight on all shapes, regardless of location and angle of the
shape.
Solution& $ry to Loom out, flip it, turn your head upside down. Con't render each detail individually one
at a time. 3%ually lit minor shapes flattens the painting and makes it hard to make out the important
major shapes.
Problem: To mix black into the shadow and white into the light, and then smudge the in-between
colors.
Solution& $his makes the painting look grey and dull. I've encountered a few people asking for 'shading
tutorials'. $here's no such thing. $here's no shortcut saying you should start with a dark color and end
with a bright color, then do that on every detail. (ou must learn how light works and almost render as if
you were a 7C computer program. Some might knee6jerk about that, but for me it's true, I often get the
best result when I let go of my bias and habits and just follow the 'render rules'.
Problem: To render and highlight details that will only distract the viewer. Dodge brush is real a sinner
here.
Solution& (ou will have to sacrifice a lot of details that could have looked awesome fully rendered.
#hat's important is the wholeness of the painting. So, no flares on the belt buckle on the unimportant
little guy in the corner. $he eye homes in on highlight, contrast and saturation. (ou should lead the eye
to the important parts of the painting.
Problem: lat and stiff poses, figures look fly-swatted.
Solution& I do this a lot. It's so easy to draw people from the side or front with arms stretching out. $his
will end up looking very boring and undynamic, unless you have a compositional idea, or you're doing
an icon. It's tempting to try to show all the details of a character in one drawing, but if you're going for
a dynamic pose that is rarely possible. 1etting the body obscure an arm might be sacrifice you have to
make in order to get a good pose. Also, when hiding a detail, you'll let the viewer's imagination decide
how it looks, which can be a good thingM It can look better in the mind than it ever could on canvas.
Anyways, 1earn foreshortening and dynamic poses from doing studies of comics and real life models
or photos. ,ly6swatted characters will only get you so far.
Problem: !ad stroke economy, or attempt at artsy "ooh, lookit #"m so spontaneous"-strokes.
Solution& 3ach stroke should be contributing to the piece. Some hope to get away with random artsy
strokes. -andom strokes makes random details. -andom details distracts the viewer from the actual
details of the painting or drawing. I know it seems like some artists paints a perfect scene with just a
few swift well placed strokes, but I think they actually do a lot of cleaning up and optimising. ?o over
the entire painting piece by piece and remove/flatten strokes that aren't contributing. "ake sure the
motif gets the focus and not some artsy stroke. $he major shapes and volumes are always the most
important and many neat strokes will have to be sacrificed in order to make the whole thing work.
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