Hello =3.
Please post your drawing tips here, or if you have links to good drawing tutorials, please post and share!!

Note: This thread is for tips and tutorials for actual drawing.
If you have tips and tutorial for photoshopping technicals, please post that on Photoshopping Tech Hints, Tutorials, and Help thread.


ETA:
Von Hohenheim has kindly agreed to share some of the secrets to his amazing drawings in these tutorials! ^^
Von Hohenheim's Drawing Tutorial: Global Lighting Tutorial
Von Hohenheim's Drawing Tutorial: Projective Geometry and Perspectives Tutorial

Some other tutorials around the Web:
How to Draw Manga Eyes: Male Vs. Female
How To Draw a "Realistic" Manga Face: Anger

This looks like it has the potential to be a very promising thread. It will be nice to have a place on the forums to post fanart and get constrictuve critiques of it.

I, for one, would love to see some tutorials on CG inking and coloring. I am able to crank out some O.K. lineart (Example?), but I can't color in Photoshop to save my life!

Thanks for making this thread up, EdShrimp!

I'm more of a pencil-artist and usually get my friends to do the Photoshopping for me (since I don't have Photoshop myself ) but I can offer a some drawing advice that usually works for me.

When you start drawing, it may look awkward at first and you might not know why but don't worry! After you get a bit tired, go do something else for a bit. Later on when you go back to draw, take a look at your picture before doing anything to it and you should be able to work out what's wrong with it. Maybe it's just me but I find while I'm drawing, I get accustomed to my mistakes but when I come back to it after a break, I can pick most of them out.

One thing I'll stress even though I'm hopeless at it: light source!!!

baKa-neKoh - I totally agree with you on taking breaks every once in awhile! Sometimes I'll draw and draw for hours, feel all good inside, go eat dinner, then when I come back I'll wonder if I was on crack while drawing it Like you said, somehow when you look at something for a long time you just get accustomed to it.. so you won't see what you want to fix. To prevent a lot of frustration, take little breaks after you've drawn some.

This might just be me, but I really like putting on music while I'm drawing.. it's relaxing, fun, and you can get in the mood of what you're drawing! Be careful though; once I started drawing a really happy picture while listening to sad songs, and somehow the picture turned into some kind of angst-romance thing..

One thing that can really help and kill at the same time is practicing something over and over again.. uh, this sounds weird, but when I was in school I ALWAYS doodle on handouts and whatever I have in front of me, and somehow I got used to only doodling faces on ONE side.. so, I got really good at drawing on that side, but when I tried to draw from the other side - it looked so much off..

Also, if you're running out of ideas for what to draw, don't strain yourself to come up with ideas. I get "artist's block" a lot.. sometimes I'll try to draw for months at a time and NOTHING will come out.. if this happens I just don't think about it.. I look at other artist's work as motivation, read stories, just do normal things.. and then there's always something that will spark, and I'll be motivated to draw again

One last thing, I find that drawing things that you have experience with, or things that you've experienced is like writing in a journal. I really love drawing and I usually don't like to talk or write in a journal about my feelings because it just feels awkward to me So, I draw.. sometimes I'll feel so worn out from drawing out my feelings that I'll just go to bed and the stress will lift a little, or my feelings will have been put into a drawing and the same effect.. so if you're ever feeling real sad, or real happy, try drawing it out

I have to agree with you Tian-Ai, putting music on is great. I always put my FMA or Pokemon CD on. I'm always so surprised how fast they seem to end. (both of them take more then 70 minutes XD) It's wierd to think that there's so much time passed since you started drawing.

Thanks for the tip about doing something else when you get a drawingblock. I get that often lately. What's also frustrating is that I know what I'm going to draw, but not the poses of the characters. It's killing me. x.X

The last thing you said sure is right, drawing is more than putting lines on a paper, it's an expression of what's going on inside of you.

Okay, one of the things that I experienced:
When you're final pencil sketch is done, surround it with a black pencil. It makes it come out better. But be carefull, you can't whipe out wrong lines.
Also, when colouring with colour pencils, rub it with a tissue after finishing a colour.
Don't be afraid to rub out of the lines, you can easily erase it. The colours will be a lot smoother, and you won't have those disturbing lines.

Putting on music is really good for finding inspiration in the words. Or maybe even the mood in the song, (if it's a forgien language you can't understand.)

Sometimes drawing really agitates me when I try drawing and I can't seem to get anything right. I show it to people and they end up calling me crazy, it's just that people have their own opinons on things.

I totally agree with taking breaks too. Sometimes I get really mad at myself and don't draw for a few weeks. Then when I feel like drawing, I'm on a drawing spree XD.

my tips:
Anytime possible allow critics to be given to your picture. It's good to know your flaws in your pictures so you can fix it.

Try drawing dramatic poses to widen your sense of anatomy and movement.

If your a pencil artist and get so many smudges on the paper because of your hand sliding across as you make strokes. Use a tissue paper or a piece of paper and place it beneath your hand, so the paper won't get a lot of smudges, (And so the side of your hand won't get some smudges too!)

(I don't know what else even though if I have stuff in mind, I have too much to say and I'm afraid it might be too long. LOL).

(EDIT: Oh my gosh spelling mistakes, what was going in my head when I was typing this? XD...)

The type of music you listen to helps with what pose or scene you want. Rock music
may help with action scenes or outrageous styles while
slow paced classical music or something similar would be good inspiration for a more romantic scene or deeper themes.

I believe the issue with working at fixing something for too long is because you get to be so focused on that aspect that you start to isolate it from the rest of your drawing--which doesn't help because your drawing doesn't look the same without the rest of it. When you come back to your picture later, hopefully, it will actually look different enough that you can tell what's wrong with it.

Which brings me to my next point--even a subtle change can make a huge difference in your drawing. If you change the lighting ever so slightly, or change even some of the lines in your sketches, the results can appear quite different. The only problem is that they're difficult to notice at first.

When coloring, always start with the background first. It's easier to get the light source right that way. I know we're all excited to add color to the foreground. I know I am too. But have some patience. It will pay off. You can't do light source properly if you do it in isolation of everything else on the canvas.

Start with general shading first, and then shade in the details last. That way, you won't waste any effort by covering over the details with shadows because you neglected to pay attention to light source from the beginning.

Skin tones are never consistent. They can be rosier in certain areas. Appendages like noses and ears are often rosier.

Here's a most horrifying revelation: If you've gotten better, everything will start to look hideous, not just your own artwork. If you plan on getting better, get used to stuff you thought was cool before not being so cool anymore.

And last of all: There's no such thing as talent. Don't ever use it as an excuse to limit what you can and can't draw.

If anyone is interested, I can post on how to use a ruler and compass to draw transmutation circles. They can also be done with ruler alone or compass alone, but they go faster if you use both. The alchemists in FMA all seem to draw very precise circles freehand, and it would be possible to do so using your bare hands and arms as a ruler and compass if you know a few simple geometric principles, which I would be willing to share.

Also, I know a little about the mathematical symbolism of shapes and ratios, like the Golden Ratio. I also couldn't help but notice that the seven-sided polygon that Ed Elric discovered for use in human transmutation is one of the shapes that is not constructible using ruler and compass, which might be tied into the forbidden nature of human transmutation. And the Golden Ratio is all over the transmutation circle that Ed and Al used to try to bring back their mother, and many of the others from the show as well. There's also a relationship between constructions and solving equations, so you could actually view a transmutation circle as a physical manifestation of a mathematical equation.

I'm a math geek and I always hesitate to geek out on math in front of other people, so I thought I'd ask first before I start going on about Steiner constructions and send everybody running for the punchbowl.

@sarahbn - Please do! (Yes, we love geeks on our board, and appreciate what they can share with us!)

Like von Hohenheim said, it's best to take breaks from drawings and come back to it at a later time. That usually helps me.

Whenever I draw something like a face or a body, I usually take the whole drawing/sketch, and flip the picture around. If it looks anatomically correct in both the normal version and the flipped, it's probably anatomically correct (or close to it). If I flip the picture, and the anatomy looks wonky, I usually make changes. (Flipping it also gives a fresher look to the drawing, so I can more easily pinpoint the problems with anatomy, etc.).

Just looking at art every day can help you improve and develop your own style. It's okay to play with other artists' styles, and develop your own style out of a hybrid of other artists' styles that you like. "Stealing" styles and being influenced by other artists is something artists normally do (including famous artists like Picasso and Dal¡, etc.). This is a very cool article I read a while ago: How to Steal Like an Artist

Also, try and draw realistic things, even if you're a "cartoonist". Learning about anatomy really will help you draw cartoons.

Here's some tutorials that help me immensely:
Phobs' Face Tutorial
^ ever since I found this tutorial, I have improved so much. I still often reference it while I draw.
Lackadaisy Expressions
^ a great tutorial on how to draw unique facial expressions. This artist has made other useful tutorials, too.

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don't let drawing eyes intimidate you. they are really preety easy. just make the bottom of the eye in the middle of the face and work up.
if you keep messing up on the insides, just make the shading half white and half black diagnoly.

Welcome to our board blue alkahestry, and thank you for the nice drawing tip! That sound great, and I'm going to try that!
Hope we'll hear more of nice drawing tips like that!