Learn to create art

Learn how to draw

  • Nowadays, you pretty much need a tablet. It's faster to work, and to learn. If you want to go traditional, not all advice on this page will apply. Traditional does have some advantages - like being able to sell physical artwork. Note that you don't need a tablet to START - it's fine if you end up getting it somewhere down the line, like couple months or a year into your practice. Or maybe you will want to stick with traditional, your choice.

  • Always use reference, 3d or real life. Best photo ref - AdorkaStock on Deviantart (formerly known as SenshiStock). Don't trace it but keep it to the side while drawing. Tracing is good practice, especially if you want to 'steal' elements of someone else's style, but never claim credit for traced work, and don't post them online. Try to not reference other people's drawings, it's frowned upon. It's ok to trace art you have rights to, including art you drew, 3D poses you made, or public domain photos, and bases that are specifically available for public use. If artist doesn't say it's okay to trace - don't.

  • Best 3D ref - Posemaniacs if the site is up.

  • Make your own 3D ref - use DesignDoll, it's allows customization of the model using smooth blending between different body types via Morphing tool, changing body proportions via Scale tool, and it has a construction skeleton mode. Alternatively, you can use MakeHuman combined with Blender, or Poser (which is a paid tool). Speaking of construction...

  • Early on in your career, you should always draw 1. gesture, 2. then over that, construction skeleton before your main drawing. Construction is basically a 3D stickfigure that you draw before the main drawing to keep your proportions correct. Gesture, or line of action is a line that dictates direction of the limbs, head and spine of your character - for a good dynamic pose, it should be curved like an S or a C, or at least form triangles. Tutorial on dynamic gesture.

  • To learn how to properly use gesture, try gesture drawing. The idea is to draw from some photos in quick succession, copying only gesture and basic suggestion of the limbs. This can be timed or not: most people recommend timed, but I found if you have anxiety or are neurodivergent, this can be stressful - so you can take it easy and just don't fret the details. I recommend doing one drawing every day, or if you draw rarely, 5-10 before your main drawing as a warmup. Best sites for this: Line of Action and Quickposes

  • Human proportions tutorial

  • Learn anatomy and style on Youtube: Sycra for style, Proko for anatomy, Modern Day James for general knowledge, Borodante and Sinix and Ahmed Aldoori for coloring, composition and painting.

  • Look up tutorials by Etherington Brothers if you're not sure how to draw something in particular, and by Nsio for general foundations.

  • Best art teaching books are by Andrew Loomis. You will learn about construction from Fun with a Pencil. Get them here - reading order:

  • Fun with a Pencil -> Succesful Drawing -> Figure Drawing for All It's Worth -> Drawing the Head and Hands -> Creative Illustration -> Eye of the Painter

  • If you don't know how to draw something - simple process to learn: First, draw it quickly from imagination, without any reference. Then, pull up some reference phothographs, and draw it with reference. Pull up another photograph, and draw it again. Repeat this 3-5 times. Now, compare your first drawing with your last, and marvel at your growth.

  • How to draw backgrounds: cheat as much as you can. I recommend beginning by tracing 3d backgrounds (make your own in Sketchup or Blender, both free 3D programs) or for nature, tracing photographs from Pexels. Remember to draw your characters within the background, interacting with it. Medibang Paint (and I think also FireAlpaca) has a Perspective ruler that allows you to adjust perspective lines to any two parallel lines in a picture, so you can use it to extrapolate perspective from an existing background pic - SUPER handy.

  • For making your own backgrounds, learn 2 point perspective and later, 3 point perspective. 2 point is easy (especially once you remember 90% of art programs let you draw straight lines by holding Shift), and makes drawing backgrounds made up of boxes easy, if time-consuming. Perspective rulers make it faster. Remember to place vanishing points far outside your main drawing - Clip Studio Paint allows that with its perspective ruler, or you can also work on a much larger canvas than the final product. You might need 3 point perspective to avoid extreme deformation at the edges especially in very vertical drawings, or if your vanishing points are close.

  • I recommend 'cheating' with 2 point and 3 point - boxes are easy, so focus on boxes. Does that table in your interior shot need to be round? It can be a square table, standing on square legs. Sofa? Made of boxes. Bookcase? Boxes holding more boxes. Later, you can learn how to draw complex objects in perspective using perspective boxes.

How to make money/gain popularity off art

  • I'm not an expert, but here's what others say:

  • Draw fanart. This will make fans of that property share your artwork - free publicity!

  • Remember to pace yourself. Do your personal projects AND fanart AND paid work. All are important.

  • Look up good posting hours and days on social media you're on. Look up both optimal engagement in general, but also for your followers. Pick 1-3 posting times per week, and post your artwork in batches. Use relevant tags. Twitter suppresses posts with many hashtags, so use max one when posting - but you can later QT your art with hashtags. Also, repost your old art, no shame in that.

  • Make art-only accounts where you post all your artworks for those who don't want to see you talk and meme. However, still promo and share your artwork from art account on your main (since good chance early on your main will have more followers). Don't be ashamed of plugging your work.

  • NSFW is something to consider if you're over 18. DO NOT draw NSFW if you're under 18, this could mean legal trouble for you and for your clients. But still, this kinda stuff is very popular among certain audiences, like furries. Just don't be a weirdo and don't draw NSFW of underage characters, ok?

  • Remember to make a separate NSFW account.

  • Concentrate your social media presence to one or two sites, max three. Pick sites you like using the most and that are relatively popular. Promoting your work on a dead site like tumblr (sorry) or MySpace won't do you much good.

  • Don't quit your job to make living off commissions, at least early on. Not only it's a hard work, it might take you years before you're able to draw full time. Promote your commissions and YCH (Your Character Here - illustration idea where people can insert their own character into your drawing, popular among furries) and maybe adoptables (characters for sale, also popular among furries) if your audience responds positively. You can also sell comics on Gumroad and itch.io, make visual novel videogames to sell on itch.io and make a Patreon - common Patreon perks are early access to work you make before posting, exclusive artwork versions (usually high resolution or NSFW), and a Discord server access. You can also sell merch with your designs (art prints, mugs and tshirts).

How to draw lineart

  • Use digital inking. It's just faster, and less stressful because you can infinitely perfectly erase, and use Ctrl+Z.

  • if you go traditional - godspeed. Remember to invest in white ink, whiteout and good brushes and pens. And don't smudge your ink with your elbow.

  • Best programs for inking (lineart) are Clip Studio Paint and Medibang Paint.

  • Ink on a new layer compared to sketching. ALWAYS sketch on a layer with lowered opacity, so you can instantly tell if you're drawing on wrong layer. You can also lock the sketch layer when you remember. In addition, In Medibang and Clip Studio, you can actually tint your sketch layer a certain color (any layer in CSP, 8bit or 1bit layer in Medibang - 8bit layer is grayscale so it's more than enough for sketching).

  • When inking for print, use a high DPI resolution (300 or 600) and don't use antialiasing (antialiasing creates grey pixels - and in print, gray are just tiny black dots, so you will create tiny dots next to your lineart...). In Medibang Paint, you can use a 1bit layer to disable antialiasing. In CSP, inking pens don't have AA by default - if you want AA, ink in high resolution, and shrink down exported pictures using Lanczos/Cubic interpolation, AA will be generated automatically.

  • Use a program with stabilizer ("correction") and bump it up to the max. I recommend Medibang Paint, Clip Studio Paint (formerly Manga Studio) or any program with LazyNezumi. LazyNezumi and CSP are commercial, while Medibang is a free option. Disable stabilizer correction when coloring.

  • For long lines, use line tool (usually Shift+Left Click) and for long curved lines, use Path tool if available.

  • Be creative! Don't just trace your lines, add effects, shading (pitch black, fine cross-hatching) and texture!

  • You HAVE to use varied line weight (through tablet pen pressure). Literally no other option, or your inks will always look mediocre.

  • Read this tutorial. - some of it applies only to traditional inking - but most applies to digital too.

  • If you want invest the time, find book DC Comics Guide to Inking Comics by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. You can find a pdf on PDFDrive. Don't worry about pirating it, Frank Miller is a huge islamophobic bigot (look up Holy Terror graphic novel) so not giving him royalties is good actually. "Storytelling" section applies to digital inking too.

  • In general: study western print comics and manga inking.

  • Good source for inked comics: these deviantart accounts: Ace Continuado MarikZero - NSFW! Diablo2003 JHarren Almayer

  • Also, find and study Batman Noir series of graphic novels - it's classic Batman stories, but only told in inks.

How to do colors

  • First, color picking. Learn about color theory and color harmonies.

  • Use Paletton tool to find good color schemes. Remember that you can vary lightness (brightness) and saturation (how vibrant color is) to your content - but changing the hue will alter the color scheme.

  • Flatting - to make 'flat' colors (no shading' use the Bucket Fill tool in Clip Studio Paint (paid program) or Medibang Paint on a new layer "below" your lineart layer. That is because they have two unique settings - Close Gap, which means that if you have a gap in your lineart, you won't fill entire background - and Expand, which lets you expand the bucket fill past antialiased edges of the lines (I recommend setting it between 2-4 pixels usually).

  • For shading, start by doing cel-shading - that means, draw on another layer with low opacity (20-50%) in a solid color. Don't shade with black - I recommend dark blue, dark purple or dark red set on Multiply.

  • First, learn how to shade simple objects, 'primitives' - spheres, cylinders and boxes. Take such objects, and light them from different directions - either in 3D in Blender, or in real life - oranges or apples make good spheres, hardcover books or well... boxes make good boxes, and and mugs and cans make good cylinders. Take a flashlight or a flexible desk lamp to rotate them from different directions - you can snap a photo.

  • Once you know how to shade simple objects, try shading complex objects (especially humans) - by breaking them down during construction skeleton phase into simple shapes. Head is a sphere for a skull with attached box for a jaw. Ribcage is a box. Limbs are made of cyldinders. Breasts or butt are spherical. And so on.

  • Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2

  • Look up channel Borodante for learning rendering in coloring/digital painting beyond cel shading.

How to make comics

( Made with Carrd )