Drawing is the foundation of many things. It’s needed for building houses, making a cartoon, even in designing big machines like tanks and rockets, drawing has a part. You can’t bake a cake without buying, preparing and mixing the ingredients. There are steps to get from the beginning to the end. This is the same for drawing. You can’t get to where these good artists are without the steps to get there.
Importance of Learning the Fundamentals
Practice isn’t too fun, I know but it is necessary to get good at something you want to do. When you master the basics you can draw anything you want because you know how to draw them instead of just tracing from life. When you trace from like you lack the depth and how to make that drawing. When you want to draw something you will have to look at a reference drawing or how you would draw the item you want. When you master the basics it’s all in your mind you know how to draw it without even looking at it.
Basic Drawing Tools and Materials
Starting out you don’t need all these types of erasers, pencils and sketchbooks. Though they may be helpful, you can draw with a simple pen or pencil on a random sheet of paper. There is no right or wrong when it comes to art.
Understanding Line, Shape, and Form
Before getting into the important stuff, let’s talk about the shapes and lines that build your artwork. When drawing, your lines matter; they are basically the foundation of your house, but in a drawing. The different thickness of lines can add depth to your drawings. All things can be broken down into simple shapes and it’s good to start training your eyes to see those shapes in objects. When adding shapes and lines to your work it builds a form and that form will be your drawing after adding the fundamentals
What are the fundamental of drawing
Perspective
perspective is basically Turning 2d things to 3d using your point of view/ Reference. It gives volume to the drawing instead of looking flat and boring.
Construction
Construction is how it sounds. It’s the act of building your drawing using 3D shapes. This will be the foundation of your drawing. For example Using cylinders and spheres build a arm, a square and sphere to build a head
Gestures
Gestures are important because they help build your characters and give them emotion. This is different from anatomy because it’s just drawing the poses of characters instead of focusing on the character itself
Anatomy
I’m sure a lot of you know what this is but to put it in words it’s basically the body parts that make up the body, skeleton, muscles and fat makes up anatomy. Focusing on how you draw hands and feet and other body parts are anatomy and it’s important to practice this so your characters know to how fit in the style you are giving them
Shading
Shading is important because just like Perspective it brings your 2d art into 3d using the lights and shadows of your artwork. Shading is the act of adding shadows to your drawings to show the light.
Design
Designing your drawing basically helps tell the story you want to portray with your work without the use of words.
These are the basic fundamentals and you can get into textures, coloring, portporation and many more.
Practice and Experimentation
Being consistent is key. I know, I know everyone says it but for example if you were to pick up an instrument and learn a few notes or chords and then pick it up a year later are you going to remember that? No. Now if you practice that instrument for years on in and pick it up after a couple of months, you may not remember every single thing but that’s when muscle memory comes to play. Practicing often leads to muscle memory and once you build that up it will be way harder to forget what you have learned. Practice doesn’t always make perfect but practice makes your goals.