Upgrading My Art #2 - Practice Makes Perfect, but Style?

 

This week I've learned a couple of things and realised a few others about where I am with my art and where I would like to get to.  In the last week I haven't really finished anything I can share, but I have done a few things.

So to start with what I've been up to with art, after getting the majority of my new blog headers finished, I noticed that a new PenUp challenge has gone live.  The challenge this time around is "Gummies", as in the gummy sweets we likely all enjoyed growing up.  When I was thinking about what to draw, I had just finished watching more YouTube videos discussing how to actually improve, when I decided I would like to be able to draw an image of a girl being fed by gummy bears standing on each others shoulders to reach up to her.  This idea would allow me to practice drawing a person, and the idea is progressing, but I am seriously noticing my shortcomings when it comes to drawing people, and they're all the normal problems; proportions, perspective, hands, feet, etc.

The YouTube videos I had been watching explained that to be able to get used to drawing people, in whatever style, requires practice, and that it can be easier to focus on a single body part or section at a time to get used to drawing those parts comfortably.  Obviously I haven't done this (yet), so my attempt, while getting better, is requiring consistent tidying up to try and keep the overall shape together enough to at least look OK.

Overall, this need to practice, reflect, repeat and then improve makes absolute sense, and is the same as learning any other skill.  For drawing, it is about making those shapes and patterns stick in your mind to make future drawings easier to create, while also building the muscle memory that comes with the repeated actions.  I suppose for now that with so much to work on, that picking a starting point is both the easiest thing to do and the hardest thing to decide.  If I break it down, I need to work on the shapes of the body, limbs, appendages, head, face, hair, the overall proportions, and then there is the clothing to consider as well, how different clothing forms around the body, how it hangs, folds and bunches up, and then considering the different styles and layers of clothing.  This is just to draw a person.

Then there is the perspective you're looking at the person in the picture, the pose of the person, the setting and background elements.  In other words, a lot of work.

Before my last post in this series, I chose to look at practicing anime style eyes, just the eyes, front view, no angled perspectives or other complications.  I found the results pretty good and started to play with what I was drawing, but this one bit of practice on its own will never be enough to help me.  So for now, I need to start practicing all the other parts as well.  Once I can comfortably draw those parts with sufficient detail, I'll then move onto proportions, poses and clothing.

In the mean time, I will also continue with my ideas for the challenge and try to pull it together for next week.  I just hope I can feel some confidence in the result by the time I get there.

Regarding style, if you haven't already noticed, I'm a fan anime and manga style art, whether it is drawn or rendered, 2D or 3D, and it is a style I would like to eventually be able to emulate.

Ever since I was a teenager, I have always found myself drawn to the art style, and thinking about it today, I think there are a few reasons why.

Firstly, the style itself can range from visually stunning and beautiful, through to horrific and distorted.  The range of expression artists manage to achieve in this style always seems to push the boundaries of what western society thinks can be achieved in what is essentially a cartoon.  For decades, any cartoons aired on TV in the UK where I grew up were always aimed at children, and therefore expressed childish views and concerns.  However, with anime and manga, it is treated as an art form that is used to express almost any story or subject.  As a result, there more than a few shows that should never be shown to children, and many more that would push the limits of what a normal person would expect to find in a TV show.

This leads me to the next reason I enjoy this style, and that is the stories of anime and manga.  As an art form, the stories told through the medium are as varied as any other artistic medium.  Some of the stories are also more complex and varied in themselves than any other modern media that I can think of.  In western made movies for example, you can have a franchise that goes over multiple films that might last 12 to 13 hours, like Lord of the Rings, or for example with the MCU where you have more than 20 individual films that loosely come together every now and then, but are entirely separate stories until they make an Avengers film.  With anime however, you can have a weekly running show that will comfortably destroy the runtimes of those other franchises, but it is all one story that carries through the experience for years, sometimes decades.  Personally, I tend to watch anime for the escapism it gives me, the unrealistic art style supports this and allows me to enjoy the stories for what they are.  I also normally find myself drawn to the fantasy and sci-fi stories more than the more soap opera drama style varieties, which I suppose aligns with the escapism I chase by watching them.

The last reason why I think I'm drawn to anime style art is the expressiveness of the characters.  As I've loosely mentioned in some recent posts, I have recently come to the conclusion that I am neurodivergent, and my current life experience directly aligns with what a neurodivergent individual is expected to experience.  In one respect, I think this is a big part of why I enjoy the escapism given by the stories in anime and manga, as well as gaming, allowing me to imagine different outcomes and opportunities that would otherwise be difficult due the difficulties I have with social interactions and emotional expression.  In another respect, I think that the expressiveness of the art style, and the characters, allows me to be able to better understand the emotions being portrayed through the medium as they are often exaggerated, and rarely subtle.  Assuming that I'm on the autistic end of the spectrum, where expressing and equally understanding the expression of emotion in others can be difficult to relate to, in anime and manga, with their exaggerated expressions, it means that I can better understand the context of the emotions in the stories, and more easily relate myself to those stories.

This understanding of why I am drawn to the art style, not only reinforces why I like it and want to be able to emulate it, but also helps me to realise another important thing I will inevitably need to practice; the expression of emotion.  At the moment, most of my past drawings of faces have only ever been full open eyes and a small smile.  That's OK for making a reference image for a character design or practice piece, but for creating an image with artistic flair, if I can't properly reflect the emotions I wish to convey, I'll never be able to make my own art look "good".

I know this post has been more about reflection, but I think that knowing why I want to draw the style, as well as understanding what I need to work on will help me improve my art, and the drawings I want to create.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.

P.S. - I've actually done my planned posts within my own schedule, small progress but I'll take it!