Drawing techniques

[Ylvali]

I thought that with all the nice fan art published here, it would be nice to share and discuss some of our tricks and workflows for making art.

Myself I am mostly drawing in old fashioned pencil and paper style, and then pick out and fill in and colour the best ones.

One thing that I do which I´d like to share is to make emotional "energy lines" and directions for characters before giving them a body and pose. This makes it easier to maintain a sense of motion and feeling when have such lines to hang up my bodies on. I also make simplified expressions for the faces just to remember what felling they should have.

Here´s a 3 step example below, a young spaced out backpacker trying to mix in with local farmers:

What are your best tricks and ideas when drawing?

[Endoperez]

To practice more (I'm sooo lazy). Quick sketches of humans (1), outlines and negative space (2), etc.

1: http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html
2: http://www.posemaniacs.com/?pagename=negativespace

I've also seen many artists finish a drawing in black&white before coloring it. Aubrey also used it in rat concept art video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOXrAQhShDk
Also works in traditional mediums! I've seen it in a book that covered everything from pencil to oils to gouache.


One thing I also do: keep EVERYTHING. I have basically everything I've drawn in the two-three years I've been practicing, and most of them have a date (in notebooks etc, I put the date in every 10 pages or so). On one hand it shows how little I have drawn, since I have space for it all, but it's nice to see what has changed, and that even I have learned a lot.