My kid’s been doing art for a while now and is feeling their first plateau of improvement. Anyone have any formal resources online that are free and would be appropriate for them? They’re about 10.
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There are 2 separate ways of thinking that artists need to learn. She need BOTH. The two ways are 3d constructive thinking, and 2d shape thinking. Both are equally important. Here’s a guide to learning both.
2D skills
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Dorian Iten Accuracy Exercises
Level 1: https://youtu.be/HMX3K3YMbd8
Level 2: https://youtu.be/ecJO1LnjXpA
Level 3: https://youtu.be/LPywXVsRKT0
Accuracy guide:https://dorianiten.gumroad.com/l/accuracy?layout=profile
Use code “DORIAN” to get it for free.
The above videos + the accuracy guide is the easiest way to develop her observational abilities. No pencils, no knitting needles, no measuring shit. Just train your eyes to be so accurate you can draw anything with no effort, perfectly. This takes years.
Try at least 30 minutes a day. She shouldn’t be depressed if it comes out badly, she should just do a bit every day and try her best.
Ethan Becker Dragging Art over Reference: https://youtu.be/RXb-Y_kz2aU
The above link is the same thing, just applied to cartoons / animation industry.
These are very important, because observational skills give her the ability to duplicate her instructor’s strokes. In other words, it’s impossible to properly learn construction, gesture, anatomy, lighting, composition, color, if you cannot even emulate what the instructors are showing you. Observational skills are like reading skills for writers. Reading by itself cannot get you good writing skills, but it’s a necessary foundation that you build your writing skills upon. Reading and writing is both important for the writer, and 2d + 3d skills are both important for the artist.
3d skills
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There are many ways. Hampton, Vilppu, Weston, Peter Han, Loomis, David Finch, etc. I recommend torrenting a course / downloading a book for her and getting her to follow it. Do one lesson a week. DO NOT RUSH. Repeat the homework over and over again, even if she think she’s already good at it. She wants to practice the same lesson beyond the point of boredom. When she’s done with a course, go back to the first lesson and repeat the course.
All form drawing courses pretty much teach the same things too. One is not necessarily better than the other. But some teachers might say things in a way that makes more sense to you, so it doesn’t hurt to poke around and see which works best for her.
Some courses which might interest her:
Ron Lemen: https://www.youtube.com/@RonLemen/videos
Glenn Vilppu: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Fr4y1q7nK?p=2
David Finch: https://davidfinchart.com/where-to-start-and-where-to-go-from-there-a-roadmap-to-professional-quality-art/
Don’t do all 3 at the same time, just pick one and stick with it.
The above links mostly concentrate on figure drawing, which is probably the best way to improve her drawing skills. If she can draw human characters, she can draw anything! Ron Lemen’s youtube is pretty much a complete, overly-detailed college course on figure drawing, so if you just do that, you’ll go from knowing nothing to knowing how to paint a figure in full tones. I, however, love Vilppu much more. I think he’s much more skilled than Ron Lemen, at least when it comes to imagination drawing. He can be difficult to get into, but the more you draw, the clearer his words become. All 3 courses are very good though, you can eventually get around to studying all of them.
Now for the David Finch roadmap, I think this is the best one to follow out of all 3, because of how concise and simple it is. Also, Finch gives you a direct transition from fundamentals into making the exact kind of art you’d like, whereas with Vilppu you’re stuck with Renaissance drawing and the transition to anime or whatever is kinda difficult. When you get to the Bridgman step, remember that you don’t have to use Bridgman, swap it out for any other anatomy book, I suggest . And make sure to use the Cognitive Drawing method instead of the more difficult, impractical method he outlines in the guide.
Other useful free online resources:
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drawabox.com is a great course that’ll teach her draftsmanship, basic perspective, and construction
These two links are a collection of art resources, references, communities, channels, and video courses that cover every major subject:
https://hackmd.io/7k0XRnIQR6SValR77TDfZw?view
https://sites.google.com/site/ourwici/
Gesture drawing and quick-pose drawings are important too. Practicing this will preserve the energy in her drawings. quickposes.com
posemy.art
Just gonna casually steal all this for my students.
You’re gonna like this then
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:0aebc0f02e6c179b62e04c69af3e5adee3abee12&dn=IC-STUDY
The magnet link contains a shitton of paid courses, books, and references. It’s a massive torrent, roughly a terabyte, but you don’t need the whole thing. Just browse the folders and pick and choose what to download.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
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Link 5:
I don’t have anything specific, but I know most libraries have free access to a lot of paid stuff that may be worth checking out. That way you don’t have to navigate YouTube/ads/etc. my local library has online resources for everything from art to language learning.
Oh this is a good call. I would have never thought about that
What kind of art are they doing? Do they like any specific style of art? There are a lot if “how to draw X” books aimed at kids they night find interesting.
But also, of their into drawing characters you could always encourage getting books or comics or graphic novels they enjoy the look of and encourage them to trace or try to copy the art inside the book.
Also, I’ve been seeing this book on tiktok recently that I’ve been tempted to buy myself: https://thisisnotasketchbook.com/collections/frontpage
I was just looking at the book you linked and I don’t know if it’s legit but people are selling them way cheaper on ebay and amazon.
I loved those “how to draw X” books as a kid.
the most important part about learning to do art is to enjoy the process, not to have an image in your head from the start and try to correctly create that thing, gotta teach them to love the process of learning and exploring and experimenting along the way, otherwise art becomes work, or if they’ve got a good eye for it, they’ll feel like they’re not doing it right/ good enough because it didn’t end up like they wanted
I struggled with that (and still do) quite a lot and it just gets in the way of being able to create things and express myself!
Fun with a Pencil by Andrew Loomis is free to download and is a really, really great introduction to thinking and drawing in 3D space. The caveat is that it was written the 1930s and there are three pages containing racist caricatures, but those pages don’t have any instructions on them so you can just delete them from the PDF.
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