I love to draw, but lately I've been very self conscious about drawing. Almost every time I attempt to draw anything, I think the drawing looks fine. But when I look at the mirror image of that drawing to find flaws I normally wouldn't be able to find, I notice that my drawing looks very flawed. This happens to me all the time, and it's pretty disheartening when I put effort in a drawing only to discover that it's distorted. I usually try to fix the problem, but If I put a lot of detail into the drawing, it's hard to tweak it even slightly. Basically, I'm looking for advice on how I can avoid this problem. I've been studying anatomy, but not even that is helping. I have my most recent sketch here as an example. It's not a pony, but I wanted a recent example and this happens with drawing ponies as well. I'm also wondering if I'm just being too hard on myself, but I'm still looking for criticism :derpe: Spoiler: drawing
There is of course, the general rule of thumb that the more you draw, the better you will get at it. Also, never despair if you don't like your own image. Good artists almost never like their own images; if you believe you've done good enough, you haven't done good enough. Proportion is a very frustrating business because there are a very wide variety of proportions, yet despite this, it's easy to draw proportions "wrong". To "learn anatomy" you often have to practice a very specific human anatomy (the Mr. Universe seen in the textbooks) before branching off - even if you're drawing animals or cartoon ponies - which is more of an improvement of awareness rather than of accuracy. Important proportions you need to check for a human-like are: - Head height compared to torso length (or head height to total height for normal standing poses) - Leg length compared to torso length - Arm length from shoulder to around the thigh area - Head height to head width - Shoulder width compared to head width - Chest / rib width compared to shoulder width - Butt width compared to shoulder width - Tail position (so many artists get this horribly wrong it's depressing) Looking at your image, it seems to me that one problem is that you're doing a standing pose yet not all of him is "on the screen". This makes it a bit harder to gauge his vertical proportions properly, such as his head to height and his legs to torso. He looks alright from the ribs up to me, but his torso seems short for his legs, and thus so are his arms. I think his thighs need to be a bit thicker, closer together. EDIT: Yeah, I think the main problem are the legs in general - they look really thin and too far apart. His left hand (our right) is also a bit flat on the page. I highly advise you try a more "dynamic" pose - proportion is much more forgiving that way and you'll be more excited to draw it. Front standing poses are simple, but they are among the hardest to get proportionate. In addition, it might actually help you draw humans if you draw things that aren't humans. Drawing lots of different things will help you in awareness as you're exposed to the quirks of each one, and animals have just enough similarity to humans to be great practice. I was helped immeasurably by drawing the correct connections between arms and bat wings, or between human legs and horse legs.
Thanks for the tips! I've been really stressed about my art lately, and the criticism and advice really give me confidence to try again. It's really appreciated
I can't really do accurate anatomy either, though I don't study it. (I'm actually fairly uncomfortable with a lot of biology related things). Luckily I'm not an artist, though I do draw for fun. I could be wrong, but as a guess the cheeks on his face seem somewhat wide and his chest seems somewhat wide and slightly too round on the sides. I'm not completely positive though. The rest looks okay to me, but again I'm probably not the person to ask. hn.. a very different brand of advice.. though I know it's not the sort of advice you actually want. It's always possible when you still don't know anatomy well to do something much more cartoonish or stylized. In such a case it can be much more inacurate, but since it doesn't have the semblance of trying to be realistic the inacuaracies look a little less uncanny. It's also so becomes kind of clear that the picture in this case isn't taking itself as seriously so some people may care less about anatomical oddness. The theory behind the uncanny valley is that the closer something looks to human the creapier or more obvious the inhuman elements seem. As a result drawing very silly and more representational things are, to an extent, an option. That said if you are serious about art you shouldn't rely on this, and should definitely learn as many styles as you can... If it's for fun though and you just a way to play around and get your ideas across, then it could be a possibility. That said I'm guessing you want the more serious style. Also your picture really doesn't look bad. It's not perfect, but it's a good drawing.
