The First Step When Learning To Draw An Illustration

One of my latest drawings.
Not perfect but it was a lot of fun!

                You know those moments in life where you get a really good idea and you think, "You know what? I think I can draw that....yeah...yeah I can totally draw that!" And then you draw it and suddenly it turns in to,"HOLY swearwords what is that?  Literally nothing in this sketch is working! How did that even happen?!"  Well my friends you are not alone.  When I decided I was going to switch from learning how to do realistic portraits to illustration that was the conversation I had with myself EVERY time I started to draw.  I would get unbelievably frustrated, swear off drawing forever, watch T.V., get another good idea and start again.  SO FRUSTRATING. Well after practicing, and practicing, and practicing I found I wasn't getting any better.

        After a few months (yes unfortunately I said months) of illustrating only a handful of decent pictures I finally opened my mind up to the duh factor.  If you, like me, want your illustrations to have a clean somewhat realistic feel to them you need to understand a few things: 1. Anatomy of the human (if you like to draw people like I do) 2. Proportions.  Good laws proportions are the worst of the two.  I felt like I could never get my eyes right, or my nose correct, or the mouth right when my cartoon is angled.  The more I tried, it seemed, the worse it got.
              Cue in my second duh factor...reference photo's. I have this real complex when I look at a reference photo.  I feel that looking at an image is copying and makes me less "artsy".  What a dumb thought! If you are ready to take your first step in drawing illustration the best way (the only way in my opinion) to learn is to study reference photos. Study anatomy, proportions, angles, all of it.  I have started pinning a million reference photo's to help me understand how to better draw people.  Here are some of my favorites:

1. Noses.  You would think that noses wouldn't be that big of a deal, but they make a huge, huge difference!  They can help make your character look younger (if the nose is shorter and more round), more feminine, masculine, snobbish, etc. These are just a few I like to look at as a general reference:

   

                                        Devian Art                                             Batcii

2. Faces.  Drawing a character that is angled gets so frustrating for me.  I can't ever figure out how to do that back eye! They always end up looking like a modern fail of a Picasso piece.  These references help a ton with that issue!

        

                                              Pinterest                                          Rebloggy

3. Eyes.  The windows to the soul according to most.  Also SO HARD.

                                Sharpie Eyes                                        Facebook

                                                                         Drago Art

4. Mouth. Last but not least is the mouth.  

                                       Instagram                                                           Deviant Art

Hope this helps give you guys a little direction! To check out more references I use go to my pinterest account! 

Learning to Illustrate In Photshop

*To skip all the fluff and nonsense go straight to the section at the bottom titled "Get To The Point"*

The start of my digital media excursion....kill me

I finally did it.  After years of pining to learn to art on the computer, and after years of giving in to the overpowering laziness that is myself, I finally convinced my husband to research drawing pads for the computer.  He's such a good husband.  I tried to convince him to research how to become a digital media phenomenon as well, but turns out his kindness only goes so far. Boo towards him.

I don't think there is anything I hate more then learning a new task on the computer.  I'm not one of those people who do very well with "self-taught" things.  You people who can just figure things out on your own make me sick (just kidding good for you that is great...). I do better in a classroom with a teacher standing over me guiding me as I try to sprint towards my learning goal, flicking me back on course as I constantly get distracted and weave off task...because squirrels.  You can only imagine how unbearably overwhelming the task seemed of learning how to illustrate in photoshop (a.k.a. paint on the computer). Just the thought of starting that process made me feel the need to give up and eat a sandwich instead. I can make sandwiches...and I don't even have to look up how, it's a win win really.
There were so many questions I had and so many answers I needed to find.  I tried not just once to start, but multiple times.  So, to stop my rambling let me tell you how I finally learned how to get ready to learn (what an annoying scenario).

1.  Decide if you are going to use Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop (or neither because spending money is lame. Unless you spend it on something you love.  Then spend money for days).  There are other free sites that are pretty comparable to these (well I think there are a ton, the only one I know of was given to me by an extremely sophisticated and handsome source -a.k.a. my husband- it is called gimp. It's free and said to be comparable to photoshop. By my husbands professors.).  I found a bunch of different sites that gave you a very in depth description of what the two programs offer and when you should use each.  Like this one, and this one.

These are two of about 500,000 blogs and sites that tell you the difference between the two.  I will make mine 500,001.  They will give you a lot of information and tell you all about a man named vector (just kidding but they do refer to vector images a lot).  Basically all I really needed to understand at this point was that Photoshop was for illustrating and painting and Adobe Illustrator was more for graphic design and logo building-well that was my translation. So hooray I picked.  Photoshop it was.

2. How are you going to draw on the computer.  I really don't suggest using your mouse.  It's hard and it's frustrating and I can't ever get the lines straight.  I decided that I wanted to invest in some sort of drawing ipad for the computer (cue husband).  We found lots of different types of drawing tablets and ended up with the Wacom Intuous Draw.  We got ours on Amazon for about $72 (go here).  This is the most basic one they have (I think. We'll say I'm assuming since I laid in the fetal position while my husband did the research).  When it came I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it. It seemed really small and felt nothing like a pencil on paper (that's weird...).  I had very little control and the squirrel I tried to draw ended up looking more like a drugged out dinosaur (not as cool as it sounds).  I lost interest pretty quick and let it sit to collect dust for about a month or so.  I have since gotten over my lazy attitude and worked harder to get used to it.  I am now loving it.  The pen is light weight and doesn't need batteries.  The tablet is small (which is still annoying sometimes so you may want to get a slightly larger size) which does have the benefit of not taking up too much room and the ability to be toted anywhere easily.  It also has a few shortcut buttons that have made working a lot quicker.  Overall it's a good starter pad.

3. Now the hard part.  Learning to illustrate in photoshop.  I swear there were so many tutorials and blogs on using photoshop to edit photos.  I was getting really frustrated when I found a 13 hour tutorial on adobe.com that taught you how to use photoshop. I was so pumped, until my computer refused to open it.  Boo computer.  I searched and searched and searched and finally came across THIS little gem.  Aaron Blaise ladies and gentleman.  What a stud.  This is the perfect tutorial to introduce newbs into the illustrating/photoshop world.  I will give a blog on this tutorial later this week after I watch it 500 times.

So congratulations to me and now to you.  We have gotten started on our long journey to illustrating in photoshop.

Happy drawing.

Section titled: Get To The Point 

How I started to learn to illustrate in Photoshop: This information is brought to you in the form of my non-professional, short-hand, what-it-boils-down-to style:

1. Pick: Adobe Photoshop (if you want to do children book type illustration pick this one) or Adobe Illustrator (do you want to do more graphic design and logos pick this one-and this blog is not for you. I am learning how to photoshop...go...away). Wanna buy it or get a free trial? Go to adobe.com. Upper right hand corner click on search. Type "photoshop CC" then download.

2. Pick a drawing medium.  I don't suggest your mouse. You can get lots of drawing tablets for pretty cheap.  Or really nice ones for an obscene amount of money.  I went with the Wacom Intuous Draw tablet found here. Mine was only like $72.  It's smaller and drawing with it has been a bit odd, but coloring/painting with it has been awesome. Overall I think it's worth the money.

3. Learn how to use the photoshop tools.  There is a free online course at Adobe, but I couldn't get it to work.  Instead I found THIS tutorial and it helped me a ton (Aaron Blaise, you're on point). Start there. Practice.