Getting started in art

[Dr.House]

First of, I should mention that I'm an artist now for more than 22 years, half of that number was spent doing traditional art like drawing on paper, painting, etc.

The other half was spent working digitally, and I got asked a lot by people, how can they start with art, is it hard, can anyone do it?

My answer was always a "Yes", you can do it, but needs to put some work in order to achieve some nice results.

Some Q&A - This is not a tutorial about how to draw stuff, it's more about how to get started and what to do in some cases.

I never tried drawing/ never tried seriously, I suck at this, can I get to be good at this or even pro?

Yes, it doesn't matter, everything depends on your brain, eyes collect the informations and send them to the brain, the brain tries to recognise the patterns, the more you train aka draw, the better the results will be, also you will train your hand which will make things easier to control.

There are no people with talent and people without, it all depends on the brain like I mentioned, some people recognise better different patterns, like those used in math or whatever, but the brain can be trained and things can be learned.

What softwares should I use first?

Whoa, hold on cowboy, you first need to draw on paper, and the reason for this is mentioned above, to understand shapes and to imagine shapes, to have control by training your hand, in order to draw whatever you imagined.

Of course you can start directly digitally, but then you will miss the best parts, also, the harder it is, the better it is for you, on paper you don't have Undo, Copy/Paste and such, you're limited, and that is good, because you need to think more of how the shape you're drawing needs to look, once you get used you won't need to erase stuff so often.

What are the important things I should know or do?

The most important one is to Observe, observe the world around you, the objects, the lights and shadows, the colors, how everything is arranged, observe the perspective, the depth, and so on.

Replicate the rules you've just seen in nature, try experimenting yourself with your own sources of light, materials and such, by materials I mean things like glass, metals, wood, clothes, etc.

At first, use pencils, do not use colors yet, you need to be able to handle the shading of objects based on what you've observed in nature and in your own experiments.

After you managed to understand the above things, start experimenting with colors, buy some cheap kids painting colors, try mixing them, see the results and such, then learn more about colors by reading books or from the internet.

Sketching is also important, you can use lines or stains, see which is more comfortable with you, ofc you can use both.

Another important thing is Composition, how you arrange stuff on the canvas, and trust me, things looks better when they're properly arranged and have more to it than chaos, google more about this and also about Golden Ratio.

I want to go digital, any advices?

The basic rules from traditional applies in digital aswel.

Digitally you don't have so many limitations like you have on paper, you can work faster and also use your work for different purposes other than to be admired.

I'd recommend getting used with some softwares, like you would get used with pencils and brushes.

What are the best softwares to use?

Whatever you feel comfortable with, a tool doesn't make the artist, neither its art better, but it can make the workflow faster, depends on which software you like and what you're trying to achieve.

Like on paper you should learn to use more than just 1 tool, meaning, digitally you should learn to work with more than just 1 software.

What are the important things I should know or do?

Again, observe, take a look on the internet, see others work, style and techniques.

Learn about Raster and Vector, see what can you achieve with both, take also a look at 3D modelling, rendering and such, it's always good to have alternatives when working on something.

Work with Layers, save your work frequently and you can also save separate copies just in case.

Do not copy and edit someone's work, it's ok to look and see the details and understand the technique, but never plagiate, or edit and say it's ur work!

Mouse or Graphic Tablet?

My answer is, what you are the most comfortable with.

But, I'd recommend using a mouse when working with Vectors, because you work mainly with shapes  and lines and you can easily manipulate those shapes or lines by dragging and moving the anchor points.

On the other hand, when you work with Raster, I'd recommend using a tablet, it's easier to control the lines and shapes you're making, like drawing on paper.

Of course, you can use both mouse and tablet at the same time, like I do in some cases like when drawing in Adobe Animate [aka Adobe Flash], I draw the characters and correct some lines by mouse, since those are vector based.

In PixelArt I'd recommend using a mouse, you need precision, same for 3D modelling, but of course you can say otherwise and do it with a tablet or whatever technology exists nowadays.

 

Tutorials or no tutorials?

Tutorials are good, but you shouldn't replicate stuff, you need to understand the core of what the tutorial wants to teach you, so you could create your own things other than replicate step by step and in the end to be confused on how the hell you created that or how the hell it ain't looking like in the tutorial.

If you have any questions feel free to post them and I will gladly answer. 

Btw, why is creating such a large gap when writing on a new line?

It's just ugly

[gaveitatry]

Thank you for the thread.  I have a few questions, if you don't mind.

Q.) What are rasters and vectors?
Q.) What do you mean by tablets?  Do you mean mobile devices, the ones that I can download apps on?  Or something else?  If something else, what are they and how much do they cost?

[gaveitatry]

29 minutes ago, Dr.House said:

Btw, why is it creating such a large gap when writing on a new line?  It's just ugly.

Yeah, I agree.  It's stupid.  Pressing Enter should give us one line break, not two.  If I wanted two line breaks, I would prefer to press Enter twice.

[Dr.House]

20 minutes ago, gaveitatry said:

Thank you for the thread.  I have a few questions, if you don't mind.

Q.) What are rasters and vectors?
Q.) What do you mean by tablets?  Do you mean mobile devices, the ones that I can download apps on?  Or something else?  If something else, what are they and how much do they cost?

Raster graphics, also called bitmap graphics, are digital images that are composed of tiny rectangular pixels, or picture elements, that are arranged in a grid or raster of x and y coordinates (includes a z coordinate in case of 3D) in such a way that it forms an image.

Vector graphics is the use of polygons to represent images in computer graphics. Vector graphics are based on vectors, which lead through locations called control points or nodes. Each of these points has a definite position on the x and y axes of the work plane and determines the direction of the path; further, each path may be assigned various attributes, including such values as stroke color, shape, curve, thickness, and fill.

On raster when you zoom you can see the pixels which forms that image, but on vector images you can zoom how much you like and scale the image and it will never lose anything or deform.

In the image below you see that the raster line is made of many pixels, while the vector line is made from 2 anchor points.

 

By tablets I mean Graphic Tablets, I corrected that on the original post for a better understanding, google Graphics Tablet or take a look on Youtube to see how one looks and works.

[gaveitatry]

Thank you.  That is a really nice photo illustration you provided.  One more question.

Q.) Do vectors need to be converted into rasters before using them in ORPG makers like Interact?

[WereAlpaca]

Well outlined! I still prefer to start directly on computer with pixel art, but I feel that it's likely because I enjoy low res sprites. I'll definitely stop in here to check it out every now and again, seems I can learn a lot from this thread.

[Dr.House]

48 minutes ago, gaveitatry said:

Thank you.  That is a really nice photo illustration you provided.  One more question.

Q.) Do vectors need to be converted into rasters before using them in ORPG makers like Interact?

Yes, you need to save it as png or jpg, gif, bmp

[Dr.House]

51 minutes ago, WereAlpaca said:

Well outlined! I still prefer to start directly on computer with pixel art, but I feel that it's likely because I enjoy low res sprites. I'll definitely stop in here to check it out every now and again, seems I can learn a lot from this thread.

Pixel Art is a great way to learn things, mainly because of its limitations.

Use whatever techinique you feel it's easier for you, like drawing something dot by dot and line by line [wireframe like], or drawing filled shapes and chop the pixels until you get the wanted shape [shape sculpting], you can use both at the same time, depends on what you're drawing.