looking for art teacher/tutor

Watch Bob Ross on PBS.
That's how I learned to paint.

 

[video=youtube;YLO7tCdBVrA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLO7tCdBVrA[/video]

 

It's really hard to teach somebody how to draw over the internet, hell, it may even be impossible for most of us.

However, we can give you suggestions.

Go to youtube and look up art tutorials and follow the steps.
Art is 1% Know-how, and 99% practice, so the thing you want to focus on the most is just diving right into it; if you want to get better, you have to practice.

If you plan on going into digital art, invest in a good-quality tablet and find an art program that suits your needs. A good tablet is the Wacom Bamboo, however, I personally use the Genius G-Pen series. It's cheap, reliable, and works wonders.

A few suggestions for art programs would be Photoshop, GIMP, Sketchbook studio, and Painttool SAI.

If you plan on staying strictly traditional, then you might want to invest in some sketch pencils and a sketchbook. From experience I can tell you that proper shading can be a nightmare without the proper tools.

 

I had a massive post ready, but the connection here is all levels of profanity I cannot post here. Feel free to PM me in regards of arty pointers. But right now, all I can say is get comfortable with paper and pencil before getting a tablet. Unless you already have a tablet. Then you can get comfortable with both.

 

A large part of art is perception. Meaning how we see the world around us. The trick of it is not to draw how you think it's supposed to look, but how it actually looks. And for that, you need to learn how to see.

There was a quote from some guy somewhere that said art is many small parts that don't make sense adding up to one big piece that does make sense. If you try to draw something out of your head, right now, chances are it may not look right. But if you observe said object in real life closely, you'll see that how you think of it in your head is a quick "symbol" and does not usually have all the details nor the proper perspective that the real thing does.

If you observe things in real life closely (VERY closely) you'll notice a lot of really cool things that may not seem to make sense individually, but make perfect sense when added together as a whole. Lines, planes, angles, highlights, shadows...all change depending on how you look at it. It's all perspective.


Anyway, before I ramble on too much, I'll recommend a book or two that will help you understand all this stuffers.

A great book to start with is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. The first edition I posted a link to is considered the best, and you can buy a copy for like 10 bucks. There's a lot of good exercises in there.

If you're interested in learning how to draw figures (people) a great book is Drawing the Head and Figure by Jack Hamm. That's the book I'm practicing with right now. Drawing people is a pretty important skill that almost everyone wants to do and most find it quite challenging to do. So a book that breaks down and simplifies the process like this one is great not only for learning, but for reference later on.



As for supplies, if you just wanna do it pencil and paper, invest in a sketchbook with blank pages, so you're not trying to draw on a notebook with lined paper or something. A number 2 pencil will prolly be fine in the beginning, but after some practice I'd consider getting a pack of sketch pencils in a variety of hardness, then after some practice with those you can add to your collection with more utensils like pens, charcoal, markers, different types of paper, different types of pencils, etc, etc. There's many, many different types of traditional drawing utensils and mediums out there, start simple and the more you get into it, the more you can branch out.


P.S. I see you mentioned proportions so I'll add a bit about that. To get proper proportions you will want to lightly "flesh" out your drawing first. It basically involves drawing rough shapes that represent the major components of your drawing (like for a person, circles and ovals can give you rough ideas of the head, chest, legs, arms, etc.) You get these rough shapes assembled in a way where everything looks like it's in the right place, then you basically just connect them using lines to form a more defined shape of your drawing.

Google fleshing out a character and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about. Also, looking at concept art that still contains the fleshing out and reference lines of the rough shapes of the drawing helps. Lauren Faust has some on her DeviantArt (fyre-flye) if you want to see how it's done with ponies.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

First of all art is a very personal thing, everyone will have their own way of learning and their own way of teaching.

How would you say you learn best?
For me I'm a very visual/hands on learner, so I tend to teach myself simply by jumping in and drawing learning as I go, yet try to teach me with theory and I'll blank.

Knowing how you learn best will give you the starting point for teaching yourself. Because ultimately, the majority of what you learn will come from yourself.


We can link you to tutorials, explain concepts and practices, recommend products or answer technical questions but it's quite hard to flat out teach someone how to draw. Teaching needs to be ongoing thing, working on specific areas over time. If you like you can add me on Skype, I'm on most days and I'd be happy to help out with anything art related problems.

 

all i can say is whenever your trying to draw ANYTHING just try to imagine it in a three dimensional space...how would it move/fall/talk etc all details are important

 

Yes to this. Visualizing what you're drawing in your head is very important. Most cartoonists and stuff "see" their characters as being alive in their minds, how they talk, walk, react, etc.



Forgot to add a big yes to everything Zephyr said, especially about the practice bit. Art is lots and lots and lots of practice. Actually, a good bit of advice I picked up comes from Mrs. Faust - imagine that you have a thousand bad drawings in you, and you have to get them all out on paper before you can begin to draw well consistently.

Basically what that means is practice makes perfect.



Also, no matter what type of art you want to draw, be it cartoons or whatever, all aspects of your art will be improved by practicing realism. Realism means drawing things realistically, a lot of which means sitting down and looking at something or someone in real life and transcribing what you see onto paper. This will greatly help your perception and your observational skills. It also helps in other styles as well, such as drawing cartoons because if you know how to draw things the right way, it makes it much easier to draw it the "wrong" way, as cartoons are just oversimplified forms with exaggerated features.



Now break out a pencil and get to it!