Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Hi ^^

Like the subject says, how have the artistic types here learnt to draw? I’ve been making odd sketches for a while but I never seem to get proportions/scale right, especially when trying to draw people. I can sort-of draw some things, mostly small items; when I try drawing something which is big and a few meters away it ends up looking really wonky.

A can and a tube (sorry about the message, it was intended for someone else ^^)
A spanner and caliper

Thanks in advance for any replies

Sometimes it helps to have a ruler.
And practice makes perfect.

I learned to draw by watching DBZ :I It was pretty ridiculous back then to say the least haha

I have the same problem nobody. I can’t draw people/animals for shit.

I’d recommend drawing what you ACTUALLY see rather than what you are symbolically seeing. Your perspective is terrible because you aren’t drawing with it at all; the wrench and caliper look much better than the can and tube because you are drawing them straight-on.

Look at that can. The top is a circle in your drawing, but that is wrong, it should be an oval from that perspective. Likewise with the sides of the can.

I picked up most of what i know about drawing from webcomics…….dunno if this helps….(BcB helped me the most with humanoids, and eyes)

Like Titanium Dragon said, references, especially real-life ones, are really helpful. I have a terrible time “designing” stuff in my mind and have thus developed a habit of just messing around on the paper until I get something (or deceive myself into thinking that it’s something) halfway decent. It takes a huge amount of time and could be remedied just by checking a reference.

But often times you don’t have what you want to draw in front of you. I found this one book with a ton of different objects and examples of how they looked at different angles. It was quite diverse and rather helpful. You can probably find something like that at a large bookstore (or, more probably, online). I just happened to get lucky and find a hard copy.

EDIT: And, of course, if you’re drawing BCB characters, it’s helpful to save some of the pages onto your computer as a quick reference.

titanium dragon just gave you the most sensible advise youre ever gonna get BOY
this may sounds dumb and useless a fun way to practice drawing just what you see and loosen up a bit do a bunch of relaxed blind contour drawings if people and things
this helps to teach you look closely at the object itself and significantly loosens up your lines which is always nice esp because your lines dont look confident at all
i would experiment by setting up and drawing a still life or model and then going back, doing a few blind contour drawings and then try trying it again
9/10 you will see an improvement
you can also try taking a photo or someone or something, then turn it upsidedown and draw that, it will teach you to draw exactly what you see and teach you to separate it from what you want to/ what you symbolically see
and you need to work a lot on your shading as it kinda seems like an after thought
it needs to be more subtle and less exaggerated, and most of the time (if not all the time) shadows are darker the closer to the object they are
for example a trees shadow is usually darkest directly under the tree
while under your soda can, the shadow seems to get darker the longer it goes on

also try doing things from more interesting perspectives those last 2 objects head on are boring to look at, boring to draw, and dont challenge you at all

also dont listen to rasputin drawing from photos makes everything a lot more boring
i strongly suggest you go out and actually look at what youre drawing

and if youre drawing bcb characters or other cartoon shit instead of focusing on actually learning to draw realistically at least decently beforehand, you will find they come out ugly, out of proportion, and uninspired

like most fan-art

Wow, snooths is being sensible.
Lots of great advice here.

Snooths is frequently sensible, but few people pay attention when he is.

Well it’s not total crap.

YashiS!!!!