Learning to draw

A couple of days back there was comment asking for help on starting to draw and paint. I’d asked him to join the WetCanvas! Classroom forum and to look up some additional sources from this site.

This morning I got a newsletter from drawspace . I find that it is growing to be a wonderful online resource for drawing lessons. These are divided into 3 levels – beginners, intermediate and advanced. drawspace also has a forum which is slowly growing and the activities are focussed on drawing with pencil, charcoal, color pencils and pen & ink. All the lessons have been written by one person and you have a choice of viewing it for free online or downloading the pdf version for a small fee. Brenda Hoddinott whose lessons populate this website is amongst other things a self taught artist. She is currently working on a new website along similar lines for Fine Art.

Today, Mayank has got an update with details of this site as an alternative and few other suggestions one of which I shall put in a fresh post as it is worth its weight in gold for anybody wanting to paint.

Make Digital Art

Haven’t had a go at making art digitally? There are at least two really great pieces of software out there for you to try. One that I’ve mentioned in an earlier post and Corel’s Painter IX.5. You can download a two month trial version. It is the fully functional version, nothing has be disabled. Here’s a WIP that i’ve made with Painter.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Betty Edwards book has been a huge success. While putting together the last but one post I found a thread on the CGTalk forum based on the exercises in the book. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was the first book on drawing that I purchased and it got me started. This was over two years ago but I haven’t got around to finishing the exercises in the book. I’m hoping to do so sometime soon and this thread will come in handy then.

Figure Drawing Resource 3

This is the 3rd in the series of Figure Drawing Resources that I find fantastic and which has been provided freely online.

Rey Bustos teaches anatomy and figure drawing in Los Angeles. I enjoyed the Flash based resource of figures with the musculature overlaid, provided for students of art and anatomy. You can see an example of it here here. Rey’s Anatomy is just one part of the site. You’ll also find his blog, figure drawings and many other resources on his website.

“As an educator I have worked hard to make my passion for anatomy more accessible to more students and professionals seeking a more interactive mode of studying or using anatomical reference. In this web site, I along with my designer Yariv Newman,have tried to give a taste of what I am striving to achieve but in a larger scale sometime in the near future. Please use my email to reach me if you are interested in any of the work that you see here or for any help that I can avail myself to you.” – Rey Bustos

I plan to return soon to study it at leisure. I hope you find it useful too.

Technorati Tags: figure drawing, resource, blogschmlog, rey bustos, drawing, charcoal, pencil, graphite, ujwala

Figure Drawing Resource 2

This post has taken far far longer than I had planned. As promised this is another great online resource for figure drawing . This one is by Rebecca Kimmel – the 3rd Rebecca.



She is an artist and an illustrator and the Anatomy Forum Leader at CGTalk where she has put together a bunch of assignment and links for beginners. “Rebecca Kimmel draws on her extensive formal training under master instructors Burne Hogarth, Harry Carmean, and Richard Bunkall to instill the basics required to accurately and faithfully interpret the human form” as aptly described by CGTalk. You can find her work here. She holds a 9 week workshop – Figuratively Speaking, Annalysing the Human Form but that’s isnt for free :D. You can see some of her work on the forum here.

You will find a bunch of other useful links about Artistic Anatomy and Figurative Art from Kirk at CGSociety here.

UPDATE : July 21, 2006: I had written to Rebecca asking her for some additional links on her work and received a prompt reply. Here they are.
Portfolio – on CGTalk
Drifting – her blog

While there have been visitors I havent had much feedback in terms of the usefulness of this site or the posts. I found this rating box on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Please rate this post in terms of its usefulness as a figure drawing resource and if you have the time do leave me a comment.

<br/></div>

Technorati Tags: figure drawing, resource, blogschmlog, rebecca kimmel, drawing, charcoal, pencil, graphite, ujwala