02-04-2013, 10:16 PM
Hey Man, I know what you mean about technical skills and creativity. For a long time I felt exactly like you are now and said to myself "Hey I'll do creative stuff once I get good enough at drawing anatomy so that my characters look decent" But that method start's getting boring/frustrating. You have to get a good balance between studying and imaginative stuff to truly improve at a good rate in my opinion.
I'll go over a few things that I do and I feel have been working out pretty well for me.
Studies, I think it's best to stay out of the trap of studying for the sake of studying. You want to study what's going to help you. I love character art and want to draw/paint them. So Anatomy is a given.
I would suggest starting with studying the overall figure first, with quick figure drawings not worrying about detail (Dennis actually did a tutorial on this here ) and then doing a quarter - half of what you did from imagination. Once your feeling more comfortable I'd start breaking the anatomy down. When your studying, really think about what your studying, how it work's and why its the way it is.
You want to be working on your imagination stuff as well daily, try doing at least a page or two of imagination sketches. Just chill and enjoy it. These will also be helpful to see what you need to study. "oh ok, It looks like I need to improve my understanding of how armor is worn."
This method of working on imagination stuff and Identifying issues, Studying them, and then application works well for me.
Good luck Man, hope this was helpful :)
I'll go over a few things that I do and I feel have been working out pretty well for me.
Studies, I think it's best to stay out of the trap of studying for the sake of studying. You want to study what's going to help you. I love character art and want to draw/paint them. So Anatomy is a given.
I would suggest starting with studying the overall figure first, with quick figure drawings not worrying about detail (Dennis actually did a tutorial on this here ) and then doing a quarter - half of what you did from imagination. Once your feeling more comfortable I'd start breaking the anatomy down. When your studying, really think about what your studying, how it work's and why its the way it is.
You want to be working on your imagination stuff as well daily, try doing at least a page or two of imagination sketches. Just chill and enjoy it. These will also be helpful to see what you need to study. "oh ok, It looks like I need to improve my understanding of how armor is worn."
This method of working on imagination stuff and Identifying issues, Studying them, and then application works well for me.
Good luck Man, hope this was helpful :)