emihaumut wrote:Thanks for such in depth-ness and examples.
Haha, I still have trouble with the hand sizes. I know that I draw them too tiny, but I keep making the same mistake. I guess I'll just have to overcompensate a few many times to get myself out of that habit.
Eyeline too high... Hrmmm. I always felt it was the other way around. The head's supposed to be at a slight tilt forwards, but that'd make the eyeline even higher than it should be. (*A*)
Interesting, my art teachers always taught me that the face is 5 eyes wide... ( ._. )
Well, you can see in the example about that each person's face is about 4 eyes wide. Get a ruler and check it for yourself. 2 eyes, 1 eye in the middle between them, then about half an eye's width on either side of the actual eyes.
I understand why your art teachers taught you that. 5 eyes wide isn't wrong really, the face width after all isn't perfectly 4 eyes, it is more like 4.5 eyes or so. And it varies from person to person again. In some faces 5 eyes wide IS correct, in others, 4 eyes wide is right. Most are in between that.
Again, like all ratios, it is a guideline to make sure you don't go wildly off-plan when drawing a face. If you are drawing an actual likeness, you need to take your own measurements. But if you are drawing an original face, it will be up to you to decide how many eyes across their face should be. But because of the ratio, you'll know that for realism's sake that width can't be more than 5 eyes across and can't be less than 4. I personally prefer to use 4, because it makes the eyes as large as realistically possible, and I just like that better aesthetically. 5 eyes wide is on the other end of the realism scale and makes the eyes as small as realistically possible (without deformities) - so I don't favor it so much.
You don't need me telling you that art is subjective. From the first drawing I can see you have talent and skill, you just have to make the proportions and anatomy an innate part of your drawing now by practicing them correctly over and over again until they are ingrained. My instructors (two of whom drew for Disney and one who is a comic book artist) always said "Practice DOES NOT make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect." They meant that unless you critically examine each drawing you do and make corrections until it is right, studying a specific thing with each drawing, practice wouldn't necessarily improve your drawing. If someone draws people using the same incorrect visual shorthand they have picked up without ever critically examining their drawings or correcting them, then they could draw everyday forever and never get much better.
I find critique threads a little weird here on these boards - when we held critiques at my art school, we were NEVER allowed to say nice things or give compliments. After all, compliments do nothing for the artist's skills, only their ego, and that can get in the way of improving their skills. We weren't allowed to insult either or just say something sucks, but we had to give constructive feedback and criticism. Oh, and we were never allowed to defend our work - the reasoning went like this - "You aren't going to be standing next to every picture you draw, be it on a museum wall or on a comic book page. You won't be there to explain WHY you drew something that way if a viewer says it looks wrong. The picture has to stand all on its own." It was all extremely helpful once you learned to suppress your ego.
Of course, my art school also had an extreme prejudice against anime or manga art - it was forbidden to draw. In fact, you could FAIL a class if they found a manga picture in your sketchbook. It seems horrible I'm sure (especially on these boards! Haha.), but they had good reason. A lot of art studios would hire artists based on the strength of their manga art only to discover that was ALL the artist could draw. Manga and anime art also causes new artists to get the wrong proportions stuck in their head, since anime and manga is a stylistic distortion of the human body.
Many young artists that draw only anime and manga don't realize that the manga and anime artists they admire and emulate were trained to draw very realistically, and did figure studies and life drawing, and can draw in any style asked. For those professionals, anime and manga art is a stylistic choice they have purposefully made. If an art director asked for a true to life realistic style they could do that easily. That, to me, is what separates good anime art from bad - a lot of anime art is generic and interchangeable and all the same style, because anime artists are just copying each other slavishly. Boring. Boring and uninspired. Good anime art has its own unique style - you can identify the artist just from their pictures. And almost universally those are the same artists that are classically trained and can draw in any style. When you know how to replicate reality, you can PURPOSEFULLY choose what to stylize and WHY you are stylizing it. You create something new and fresh and UNIQUE.
Okay, I'm done. This wasn't directly specifically at you, Emi. I just hope other artists on the board read it and learn something from it or let it inspire them.
