Superior Drawing Tutorials Document

Every time there's something wrong with your drawing, it's because you're lacking in the fundamentals.
<http://www.sycra.net/TheFundamentals.png>
The fundamentals build on each other and many are intrinsically linked. You'll have to go in order to an extent but you'll also be revisiting fundamentals you've already partially learned.


FUNDAMENTALS 101 (recommended, but optional)

<https://www.ctrlpaint.com/library> Sections 1-5, 17-18

Ctrl Paint is a great website to get a primer on all fundamentals, especially for the absolute beginner. With 5 minutes per video, it's low-commitment and easy to fit into your life while you're still building up the drawing habit. It introduces you to fundamentals you will need to learn later, and more importantly, it shows *why* you'll want to learn them. Ctrl Paint doesn't go in-depth into any of the fundamentals; instead, it prepares you to learn them.

The full library of videos teach you how to go from absolute beginner, to making digital art. Sections 2-5 take you through the drawing fundamentals and show you how they can improve your art. These can be done on paper. You don't have to grind a lot of homework on these videos, but you should take some time to grasp the lesson instead of bingewatching.
Sections 17-18 are about the drawing mindset.
Optionally, sections 6-16 are about teaching painting in digital. He goes through Photoshop specifically, but most of the tools are found in any decent art program. If you have basic Googling skills to find your program's functions, this is a great way to get comfortable with a digital workflow.


OBSERVATIONAL DRAWING

This guide focuses on anime (though the fundamentals are the same for all visual arts) so you probably got into the anime style by copying anime/manga drawings and screenshots. Copying a drawing isn't as hard as drawing from imagination, but it still trains important observational skills and will attune you to what looks correct. But learning by copying works best if you learn to draw what you see.
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI68ClDpxTYREFVVjXl-Me1WXq0-4Iig_> Ctrl Paint videos will show some techniques in five minute chunks. This is equivalent to section 2 "Traditional Drawing" from the library.
<https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/measuring-techniques/notes> Proko combines the skills into one lesson, which is too fast for your first time through, but it's good to see another take, and you can read it instead of just watching videos.

With visual measuring and related techniques, you can copy - not trace - an anime image reasonably accurately, which will help anime studies.
This is good practice, but don't post it online. It's permissible to post it in private chats like Discord if you include the reference, but there's not much point in getting feedback, since all you have to do is compare your drawing to the reference yourself. (On digital, you can literally superimpose and resize the drawings to see how far off you were.)


ANIME PROPORTIONS

Anime characters can vary in proportions based on style but the standard anime styles are based on reality, keeping in mind proportions between parts of the body. These will only be perfectly visually accurate in extremely static poses from the front or side, but you must know the "real" proportions of what you intend to draw.
These guides assume you fundamentally know what anime characters look like, but not to mathematical precision. Combine this knowledge with observational skills from the section above.

Head/Face: <https://pastebin.com/NbAqE8nV>
The head/face tutorial is just to get you started and will change drastically with style. You should just copy a lot of heads once you know the basic measurements.
Head proportions are loosely based on the real thing, so it may be useful to take a look at <https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-draw-the-head-from-any-angle/notes>.

Body: <https://pastebin.com/W3Dq585h>
Anime proportions closely follow realistic proportions so you should look at the diagrams of the real thing: <https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/human-proportions-average-figure/notes>

Key observations:
- Characters are generally 6-8 heads tall.
- Legs are half the total height, meaning the crotch is halfway down the body.
- Wrists approximately line up with the crotch. This is the halfway point of the total height.
- Elbows line up with the bottom of the ribcage. This is the halfway point of the arm, not including hands.
- Hands are about two thirds the length of wrist-to-elbow. Tips of the fingers reach about halfway down the thigh.
- Looking at the total leg length - from halfway up the pelvis to the heel - the knee joint is halfway down.
- Feet are about as long as the forearm. They are often drawn smaller but should not be shorter than the hands.


CONSTRUCTIONAL DRAWING

Learning constructional drawing in 3D is one of the biggest leaps in improvement you can make, and it's essential for drawing from imagination. You can construct complex objects by breaking them down into simple building blocks: boxes, cylinders, and spheres. This means you can draw *anything* if you learn constructional drawing - you just have to study the reference and figure out the forms the object is made of.

Here are some optional demos on how it works:
<http://ctrlpaint.com/videos/simplifying-form>
<https://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/constructive-form-pt-1>
<https://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/constructive-form-pt-1-5>
<https://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/constructive-form-pt-2>
<https://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/form-not-shape>

And here is a lesson on how to apply it:
<https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/structure-basics-making-things-look-3d/notes>

--DRAWABOX
<https://drawabox.com/>

Drawabox is an exercise-based method to get you comfortable with the most basic form - the box - and how you can use it for more complex constructions. Highly recommended. Take the basic lessons, the 250 Box Challenge, and the 250 Cylinder Challenge. You can take the challenges right after Lesson 1.

The Lesson 1 lines and ellipses exercises are great for daily warmup; you can build up muscle memory without it getting in the way of drawing.

The advanced lessons teach construction itself - using the basic forms as building blocks to draw something more complex. Very useful long-term investment, but you might choose to move on at this point.

--PERSPECTIVE
Perspective is deeply tied to form and construction, and is essential for making scenes work, which is why it's in this section; however, you can come back to it later.

Moderndayjames has a more conceptual overview of perspective.
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgKJMTFp_25iQVZ6ItpZKTSN9Yo44YSTs>

Marshall Vandruff has a good intro on perspective as well: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R60e9_ofV68>


OVERVIEW OF THE FUNDAMENTALS, REVISITED

Observational and constructional drawing are the two broad most important and most basic drawing skills but there are many fundamental concepts to learn as well.

<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtG4P3lq8RHFRfdirLJKk822fwOxR6Zn6> Proko's Drawing Basics
Proko focuses on human anatomy, but humans are one of the most difficult subjects to get right, requiring a full understanding of all the fundamentals. So he has a good overview of drawing basics.
Unfortunately, his website doesn't have the playlist arranged in this way, but you can search for them in <https://www.proko.com/course/figure-drawing-fundamentals/lessons> if you want to read the notes in text form.

<https://www.youtube.com/user/ctrlpainter/playlists>
This is Ctrl Paint again, just in a different format separated by topic rather than listed in a first-time learning order. After learning construction, you essentially have more freedom to learn things in whichever order you want, so this gives you a chance to do so. There are many topics here that won't have been covered in the previous recommendation, so it's worth taking a look to patch up gaps in your knowledge.


-- DRAWING HUMANS --

ANIME FIGURE DRAWING

You can draw figures as soon as you are comfortable with construction.

Pin2D is an excellent resource for drawing anime-style characters specifically. The figure tutorial shows you how to draw a mannequin that is essentially how your final character will look, only requiring you to add the hair, clothes, and facial features. The anatomy is close enough to the real forms that you can just trace the outlines of the sketched mannequin to get a decent-looking character.
Hair and clothes lay over the human body, so they can only really be learned after you can draw the head and body beneath them.

(Pin2D) Digital Drawing Correction Playlists:
Figure Tutorial
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd9YlgrhwWqCSiGwPwA_N_nqKfTLY1Kn8>
Hair Style Tutorial
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd9YlgrhwWqDg-O1kdp84Py30Tev8W4Ch>
Folds Tutorial
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd9YlgrhwWqDYEC3rgA1G479-6hxLIEok>

Pin2D's mannequin is pretty good as something immediately usable, but as a simplification based on anime it's not perfect. Most of the information is close enough to correct but it's designed to be simple. Anime anatomy below the neck is largely the same as real human anatomy with slight modifications to proportions.


FIGURE ADD-ONS

Anatomy details aren't too important at the basic anime mannequin level but hands and feet are complex, detailed, yet very important.

Hands (structure): <https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-draw-hand-bones-anatomy-for-artists/notes>
Hands (shape): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBMQ-H-qUVk>
Hands (gesture): <https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/3251>
Hands (details): <https://www.pixiv.net/fanbox/creator/25310139/post/299975>

Hands (Hampton): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj-sHRh8Ep4>
Feet (Hampton): <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WinWCg2CZUI>

Moderndayjames also has a good video explaining folds, especially in regards to movement <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz7SdRoMhT4>.


FIGURE DRAWING

<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXkHosWORUv6bxfPGz31WESqw_87adQ5r>
Love Life Drawing's beginner playlist will take you through the basics of learning figure drawing. It teaches you some aspects of gesture, as well as a more complex version of the stick figure based on anatomy landmarks and a constructional approach to figure drawing. This makes for a strong introduction for drawing the human body. If you've gone through Ctrl Paint's tutorials, you'll see how this is an elaboration of the stickman and three-major-masses approach to gesture, but this one brings you closer to the human form and lets you rely on what you can directly see.
For review, you can read the same info on their website: <https://www.lovelifedrawing.com/introduction-to-the-course/>

They recommend using the sports section of a newspaper because they assume you have access to that; if not, you can copy+paste references from the internet and draw over them. Keep in mind they think the sports section is good because there's a new set daily, and many shots will be from the front; this is not the case for all other references.

See also their month-long Figuary session for improving figure drawings: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcS3927iLYw&list=PLXkHosWORUv60xC_Wv9mZlHODxUYrbB5v>

Once you're comfortable with the understanding of figure drawing at this level, you can also do practices to help you draw the figure quickly. This is useful because it'll make sketching humans a lot faster, which in turn makes practising figures and drawing people less painful. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-UY4CVW1NM>

Rather than worrying too much about increasing your knowledge about anatomy, it would be better to master these basics first. Mastering the basics will allow you to draw the base of every drawing much faster and more intuitively, which will also improve your ability to build on this knowledge with anatomy later.


GESTURE DRAWING

Learning gesture is an important part of being able to draw humans in motion that look good, although it's somewhat different from drawing people correctly. I prefer a construction-first mindset, so I'd recommend being comfortable with Pin2D or Proko's Mannequinization before delving too deep into this.

There are two main approaches to gesture drawing, one based on the flow of movement through the figure and one based on getting the angles and structure right. You'll likely have a preference for one or the other but you should be capable of both. Constructive gesture is the type that builds off the stickmen, like Ctrl Paint and Love Life Drawing above. Flowy gesture is more intuitive and less logical, so you may have to try out many different methods before it clicks; Proko's library can introduce you to a few methods, but here are a few I'd point out.

Line of movement: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bw3BW4Q6VM>
Action line + CSI curves: <https://www.proko.com/how-to-draw-gesture/>

Vilppu: <https://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.3/3.3pages/3.3vilppudrawing.html>

FORCE method:
<https://www.proko.com/profile/mikemattesi/lessons>

Hampton:
Gesture lecture: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSzB3ESpfE0>
Demo: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApyH98uufXg>
Gesture to Construction: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzSW9L_HGHw>

--GESTURE DRAWING WEBSITES

You'll need references to practise off of, so here are a bunch. Don't get bogged down by how many links there are - they all serve the same purpose of having bodies you can copy, most of them on a timer.

AdorkaStock (formerly SenshiStock): <https://www.adorkastock.com/>
Various gesture drawing websites with volunteer photo uploads: <https://line-of-action.com>, <https://quickposes.com/en>, <http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en>
Gesture drawing videos: <https://vimeo.com/croquiscafe/channels/moderated>, <https://www.youtube.com/c/NewMastersAcademyorgNMA/playlists>
Bodies in Motion: <https://www.bodiesinmotion.photo/> (Quick Draw as the timed drawing app is available on a free account)
Pose Trainer (formerly Posemaniacs): <https://pose-trainer.com/search/>

Sports photos (Roel Ubels): <https://www.flickr.com/photos/21019716@N05/albums/page1>

HUMAN ANATOMY

<https://www.proko.com/course/figure-drawing-fundamentals/lessons>
Proko has a large library of free videos leading you to drawing the human body. He focuses on realism, but if you want to make your own style, draw muscular characters, or improve your anime drawing, it really helps to know the real things that stylistic simplifications are based on.

Learning Figure Drawing is a must before getting into the detailed anatomy lessons. If you've done the Pin2D tutorials above, note that all of Pin2D figure drawing is contained within a single topic, "Mannequinization", which means that there's still a lot to learn.

<https://www.proko.com/course/anatomy-of-the-human-body/overview>
Once you can draw a decent mannequin, you can jump around to work on the face or learn aspects of anatomy that interest you, and simply graft your new knowledge onto the mannequin. But if you just want to get good at anatomy in general, the lessons are in a highly sensible learning order; in particular, the three major masses (skull, ribcage, pelvis) connected by the spine form the core of the body, so it makes sense to learn these first.

<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnx8zKs3c3yeFPYQ2QzMqLA/videos>
<https://twitter.com/MangaMaterials2> / <https://www.instagram.com/manga_materials_en/>
MangaMaterials is an alternative approach to learning anatomy, and more or less assumes that you're starting from being able to draw mediocre anime mannequins and want to improve by adding some anatomy knowledge on top of that base. Although she promotes learning actual anatomy, she has also done the learning herself and translated it into tips to improve your art.


ANIMAL ANATOMY

Not really as fundamental for most desired skillsets, but when you can draw humans, you can easily transition to drawing animals by learning simplifications of their anatomy.
<https://monikazagrobelna.com/?s=sketchbook+original>


-- PAINTING SKILLS --

Up to now most of the skills have been about line drawing. Good painting requires understanding of drawing fundamentals and should be pursued after you have drawing skills. Painting and colouring skills have a lot of overlap, even for just cel shading, so these lessons will be helpful for both.

SHADING

To colour anything sensibly you should understand the basics of how light interacts with form, and why shadows look the way they do.

Proko has a good overview of the basic things to consider for light and shadow.
<https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/shading-light-and-form-basics/notes>

Moderndayjames's "Marker Rendering" tutorial goes over the basics of casting shadows and is especially useful for cel shading.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsgevRz7c5k>

Some more tips for shading:
How light changes with angle: <https://youtu.be/6vapw6n6FyU>


PAINTING

<https://www.ctrlpaint.com/library> sections 9, 11; 8-12 for digital
Ctrl Paint shows up again, as an overview of the basic painting skills. Start here if you've never painted before and don't know how to start. It also goes over basic digital painting tools through Photoshop; most popular programs have analogous tools, so you can do many of the same things but may have to look up the different commands.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpeB_uJfP38> FZD's Intro to Digital Painting
This is an hour-long video that goes over many digital painting concepts.
You may first want to look at FZD's Sketching 101 video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22XYoenU-0c>.

<https://mega.nz/#F!CHBUEahQ!YmW9EueacdNsKW3mZYGRRA>
CGMA's Art of Color and Light (Ryan Lang ver.) is a good series that will take you through rendering and colour concepts. You'll have to download it, as it's pirated.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDsCONGlxUo>
Boro's doughnut tutorial explains the logic of adding lighting to materials, focusing more on an understanding of the physics than of artistic colour.

<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLmXZMqb_9sbNLM83NrM005vRQHw1yTKn>
Marco Bucci's 10 Minutes to Better Painting series goes over some basic concepts but also many that are more useful to intermediate-level painters. The rest of the channel has other good videos that are worth checking out; in particular I'd highlight
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnhj5efzN_w> Edges
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fLV5ezO64w> Ambient Occlusion
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwLQ0cDb4cE> Understanding Shadow Colour

LANDSCAPES

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWMMo1v594Y> The Fundamentals of Landscapes - Art Camp 3 Preview with Noah Bradley