Sebastian's Guide on How to Draw Good

By Sebastian

Introduction

Art is a wonderful thing. If done correctly, it can stimulate the mind, it can make the people looking at it think about deep, meaningful stuff, and be completely ignored by art dealers, art critics, and, by and large, the public. If done incorrectly, it'll make rational thinking people think "What the crap is this crap?", it'll make idiots think about what was going through the mind of the artist when he painted a black square in the middle of a dark blue square, and it'll almost always get lots of attention from art dealers and end up making the artist a millionaire. If you belong to group #2, stop reading this at once. Anyone else -- continue.

Actually, I'm sure you didn't come here to hear me complain about how good artists are ignored and crap ones are lauded. You came hear to learn how be a better artist. So, let's get to that, shall we?

Part I: Don't be a Camera

To begin, here's an interactive lesson. Take a piece of paper and a pencil, and draw a Lil' UFO. It doesn't need to have any massively intricate shading or colours - just a pencil drawing is enough. When you're finished, compare your drawing to the Lil' UFO as it appears in EB. If it looks even remotely different from the actual sprite, you're well on your way to being more awesome. If it is almost, if not exactly like the sprite in terms of shape and shading and what-have-you, you should realise that the purpose of drawing fanart is not to exactly duplicate whatever it is you're drawing - It's to put your own spin on things, make something nobody would expect.

You might now be thinking, "But it's just a flying plate with two dots for eyes. How can I make it look any different?". I assure you, it is very possible. Try thinking of UFO's you've seen anywhere else - be it in films, comics, other games, anywhere. The majority of them usually have something on them to make them stand out from the others - glowy lights, multicolours, some kind of spinny bit, stuff like that. So, why not try putting some glowy lights on the Lil' UFO?

Example:

You see? It's still recognizably a Lil' UFO, but now it's got a personal touch to it! But if glowy lights aren't your thing, you could try experimenting with UFO's of different shapes and sizes.

Examples:

You see how with just a few little changes, the UFO's become very different from anyone else's? That's a sure sign you're on the path to developing your own style! However, don't just stop at UFO's - try doing all sorts of changes to all sorts of EB characters. If you inadvertantly make Carbon Dog look like Wile E. Coyote's twin brother, that's not bad - it's unique!

Part II: Splitting Anatomy

Chances are that if you've been posting art on the forums for a while, sooner or later someone will have told you something like "That's really good, but the arms are too long/the legs are too short/the face is too lumpy/arms don't bend like that, and so on. I say you shoudn't listen to these people. One of the great things about art is that you can do anything you want with it. Imagine you wanted to draw an Annoying Old Party Man. You could draw one with perfect anatomical proportions, but that's not the point of this exercise. Try drawing one with funny limbs and legs and things, like this:

Or maybe one with exaggerated features, like these:

The moral here is not to shoot for perfection, but expressiveness! Anything that adds to the expressiveness of your characters is a good thing. Think outside the box. Try things you normally wouldn't. You might surprise yourself!

Part III: Deconstructive Criticism

This subject has been talked about in part II, but I'll go into it in more depth here. This is just my opinion, but don't pander to criticisms . If someone tells you what they think is wrong with your art, and you just agree with them and fix it instantly, then it's not your drawing anymore. To quote my own father:

"I NEVER EVER allow anyone else to tell me what to put in my painting or how to paint it. If I did it would be the end of my intergrity as an artist..Before you know it I would be changing a face here..a pattern there and my work would end up being a collection of other people's opinions and ideas..It would never work and it would no longer be a work of art."

Your art should be an expression of yourself. If someone else wanted to express themselves, they should make their own art, and not use yours.

Part IV: Shady Business: Computers

Let's move away from my opinions of art for a bit to show you, via pictures, how I do things - in this instance, shading.

Shading can be a good way to add depth to a picture. You don't have to add shading to your pictures, but if you do want to, here's a guide.

NOTE: This tutorial is best suited to Photoshop 6.0 and above. It could also work on any version of OpenCanvas with a bit of adjustment. Also, these shading methods will not work if you don't have a Graphics Tablet.

This will teach you the best ways to shade a Slimy Little Pile. Here's one I drew earlier.

Doesn't look too good, does he? He's a bit off-colour. Still, we can cure that.

If you drew the Pile directly into Photoshop, create a new layer below the lines and add some colour to that layer. If you drew the pile on paper and scanned it in, put a blank layer underneath the lines, set the layer with the lines to "Multiply", then colour into the bottom layer. Soon, you should soon have something like this:

But he still looks a bit plain. Let's shade him up a bit. Select the paintbrush tool, and get a size 20 brush with 0% hardness and 1% spacing and 30% opacity. Then bring down the Brush Dynamics menu, and set both size and opacity to "Stylus". Put two layers above the colours but below the lines, and call them something like "Dark Shading" and "Light Shading". Select the Dark Shading layer, select Black as your brush colour, and start scribbling all over where you think there should be shading. After a bit, your pile should start looking like this:

Not bad, but it could be even better. Select the Light Shading layer, select White as your brush colour, and once again start scribbling. Your pile should soon resemble this:

Which I'd say is pretty much done! You could stick a background, or some weird colours on there if you wanted, but regardless, you've got one good pile there!