Before you post your art to ask for critique, please read these tutorials. They explain the basic principles of drawing and figure drawing. Most posts where these basics are missing will never get a response, as people are quite frankly sick and bored of explaining over and over that you would have to pretty much learn how to draw first, before you could improve.

Courtesy of Arne Niklas Jansson: Basic and comprehensive drawing and painting tutorial
Courtesy of Bakaneko: Figure Drawing Basics, Further Anatomy, Hands

These were brought to my attention by Aeresque#Artist. Courtesy of Scribd: Drawing the Human head, Drawing Dynamic Hands, Dynamic Figure Drawing
And for those of you who want it a bit easier, we also have the whole thing as one neat rar with all three books in pdf form.

NEW! These were brought to my attention by MajorTom in #fchan. Courtesy of Andrew Loomis: Creative Illustration, Drawing the Head and Hands, Eye Of The Painter, Figure drawing for all it's worth, Fun with a Pencil, Successful Drawing, Drawing Dynamic Hands.

If you think you know a good basic tutorial that would fit in here, feel free to contact me under Xenofur in IRC and I will add the link.

File: PaintedDrey.jpg -(603383 B, 759x1221)
Drey 10/01/08(Fri)22:21 No.472 472
Source: Furaffinity.net/user/stinkbird

Hey guys, I'm in need of more advice. Yall have been super helpful in the past, so, let's get this thing rollin'

Alright, so I've been going towards this style of art that doesn't use any lines. I'm using Photoshop CS3 with pretty much one brush. It's just pressure controlled opacity. This is the third time I've actually applied this method, so, I'm seeing a bunch of mistakes already.

Here's where I see I messed up. For starters I was pretty timid when it came down to laying down some good difference in values. I probably did the spots wrong, too. I just put a layer on top of the main one and laid down some black... The ruffles on the neck were completely new to me. It probably looks more like a bunched up sweatshirt than feathers.

So here's my question. Should I have attempted to go lighter to make the picture 'pop', or should I have gone darker? I had a really hard time finding a deeper, more saturated shade of tan/brown...

I guess it would help to mention that I'm sort of aiming for an older 50s look to art. People like Leyendecker and Rockwell really appeal to me, so, I'm trying to go for their look. I did one practice run before this for color and value, but I sort of disappointed myself this time.

(i'll post the practice to give yall more to crit on)
And guys, if you have any tips on how to do this faster... please don't hesitate to share. It feels like I took waaaay too long on this.

So yeah... I'm in the early stages, now's the time to make good habits.

File: ClothingTestWIP.jpg -(271080 B, 668x1000) Drey 10/01/08(Fri)22:23 No.473 - 473 And here's the practice The anatomy is atrocious, I know... I am shame. But that aside, you can see kind of what I'm aiming for. There is definitely TF2 inspiration in my coloring.

Xenofur#Admin 10/01/09(Sat)07:11 No.476 - 476 I honestly think you need to get a book or three on shading and depth perception. Not necessarily anatomy, but yeah, drawing some skin-less muscle-figures would likely help you work stuff out as well. When comparing your images with Leyenfeld/Rockwell there's one glaring difference: Your images are both extremely flat, while their art is ridiculously three-dimensional. You attempt to shade things a bit, but do so only for the legs and then seem to lose motivation/direction for the torso, head and arms. Maybe try drawing figures that consist only of geometrical shapes, like cubes, cylinders, etc. without relying on line-art, but making sure they they are uniformly three-dimensional.

10/01/11(Mon)15:45 No.499 - 499 >>476 Hey thanks man, I'll give that a shot. I found a neat book called 'anatomy for the artist' by Jeno Barcsay that's chalk full of skinless figures. At first I thought it was a medical book because of all the crazy detail, but I think it'll do just fine for what you're suggesting. Also, yeah, the whole three dimensionality thing is really pissing me off. I'll work some more on that.