The girl who wants draw a body correctly, not a alien (but aliens are cool too)

Since I was a child, I remember looking at my friends whose had the "gift" of drawing and asking myself wich type of pact with the devil I need to do for learning how to draw. I give up at the age of 12, and now at the age of 25 I know what is necessary isn't a deal with the dark lord but practice. With someone is like me, an old-beginner-artist, pls share the thoughts.

P.S: plus I'm learning english, so feel free to correct me, pls :)

There’s a bunch of tutorial material here, both in the tutorial you can do in class mode and under the learn tab in the header.

I’d usually start here: https://line-of-action.com/article/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action

To go with it, https://vimeo.com/348036268 is one of a series of Croquis Cafe videos on methods to try for a skeleton. The rest of the series was lost to Youtube’s Porn purge for now (because clearly drawing videos are very very porny), but it should be up on Vimeo eventually.

Class mode is great if you’re new. Use it. Yes it’s hard. Yes it will be exhausting. But it’s based on something like 200-500 years of experimenting with how to teach good drawing skills fastest, and it really does work.

If you mark up your work after, mark which drawings are the best you did that session. Class mode will produce lots of bad drawings. You will make so many bad drawings so fast. If you focus on the bad drawings tho, it makes it hard to get better. You want to make a note of the stuff that works so you can try to repeat it.

Hi Torrilin! :D

I know Croqui Café and I'm reading Vilppu Drawing Manual, so the tools of line of action sounds perfect to me right now. I have a question: how much time I need to wait for submitting my drawings to critique? Is better wait until my drawings improve a little bit?

Thanks for replying me, you're very kind :)

There’s not really a right time for critique or a wrong one. It’s got a lot more to do with how your brain works than how advanced you are.

See, I don’t put up a lot of stuff for critique. I have a thing called ADHD, it makes my attention span weird, and my memory is funny, and it means I’m super sensitive to criticism. I can take a 100% positive comment and turn it into something hateful and cruel, and it can affect me for weeks at a time. So for me, critique is a good way to be self destructive. Even with self critique I have to be very careful or I’ll destroy my urge to practice. And you can’t get better if you don’t practice.

Someone else who always sees the best in their work and they have a hard time seeing flaws, they’re going to need outside criticism to learn. For them critique can actually motivate them to practice.

Most people are a mix of the two, sometimes one, sometimes the other and sometimes in between.

If you don’t know for sure that you’re always at an extreme for how you approach criticism, try it and see what happens. If you find it’s helpful, keep going. If it’s harmful, don’t.

Even if you’re the sort where it’s harmful, learning to give criticism is good. It’s easier to forgive flaws in other people. And it’s a good way to practice being kind. Not nice, kind and gentle. You can say true things in a hurtful way or a kind one.

Thanks Torrilin, you make me reflected about this :)

My husband has ADHD too, I know how hard this condition can be, but at the same time, he is one the most intelligent and curious person that ever meet in my life. Probably ADHD causes some problems to overcome, but I'm sure you are strong and your passion for the drawing will be worth the price in the present and future.