A Few Drawings
 

So I draw pictures as a hobby like post people do and I'm completely self-taught like most people are. If you didn't catch my welcome thread, I'm new around here.

These are a few of my favourite pictures but I love drawing new ones every day. None of these are really original though except the one in the middle. I have heaps of original drawings of these guys with huge necks and brilliant teeth but I didn't want to scare anyone off.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions on what to draw next, I'll happily post them here. I can pretty much only draw one every 24 hours though.

tl;dr Just hover your cursor over each image for a brief description you probably don't care about. Likewise you can open the image in a new tab to see if full-sized. Enjoy.

Incredible!


Keep it up! Draw something spontaneous like the one above.

Tip: Learn to draw well before you start drawing manga. Understanding real human shapes will make your cartoons better, but the inverse is so not true.

I've never really tried drawing manga tbh. Making my drawings accurate isn't really priority if I'm going to be just doing it for fun. I understand what you're saying though - if I try drawing something serious I'll learn about human proportion and whatnot.
I don't really know what you mean by this.

He means that by limiting yourself to drawing cartoons or manga you cannot get an accurate understanding of how anatomy works in reality, however, by learning realistic proportions first you can then apply those skills to your style of choice. It also makes drawing much easier and faster, even if you are just drawing for fun.

Your bottom two pictures are in manga style, I would assume MM is talking about those.

I haven't watched Elfen Lied in years..keep up the good work.

No matter how good you get at drawing a cartoon style, it won't make you any better at drawing realistically.

To reiterate, practicing drawing realistically will give you valuable skills in drawing whatever cartoon style you choose. You can't exaggerate proportions effectively until you know what those proportions are normally.

Basically what Vyrien said.

Oh, I get it now and I totally agree with what you're saying. It's true I would like to be able to draw the human figure straight off the bat without reference so biological proportions are maybe something I should look into.

Very good. And to add on to everything that has been said already, you don't have to entirely wipe out drawing in a more cartoony style, just try to avoid doing nothing but a cartoon style. You will find that when drawing the human figure, it becomes difficult to make it look realistic without shading, which can take many, many hours (even days) to do. Don't be worried if your stuff looks "too cartoony" at first.

If you have a sketchbook, I suggest taking it with you everywhere, and whenever you see someone who catches your eye for whatever reason, do a gesture drawing of them. A simple outline or a stick figure of however they're posed at the exact instant you see them.

The faster you get, the more detail you'll be able to get into your drawing in a short amount of time.

Eventually, you'll be able to loosen up with no problem and draw in a cartoony style that looks good. Heck, it might even look great! Also, there's no problem in drawing inspiration or using comics/manga as a reference, as long as you keep a close eye on the anatomy of your picture. If your stuff starts looking like a Rob Liefeld drawing or even something out of Elfen Lied, you may want to take a different approach.