Drawing Tips/Tricks?

What is a good website/book for people like me who are completely new to drawing but want to learn? I am currently doing the lessons on drawspace.com, but am wondering if anyone has an especially good book or website. I am interested in drawing realistic style art, like faces or people, for the most part.

I see some really awesome artists on this site, and am curious to know as well how long it took them to get as good as they are. I have been drawing for like 6 or so months, and am still pretty bad, but getting better . So if anyone has any tips/tricks for me, I would really appreciate it

register on deviantart.com > read a lot of tutorials > stalk artists such as David Rapoza who stream their painting process almost every week, to see exactly how they do it. And most importantly:

Practice, practice, practice!

This site! I started drawing here and still here and still learning a lot

I've been drawing for about 1,5 year now, think I started in about oktober 2009, got my tablet in december of that year.
I learned a lot from dA tutorials. Though I never really work following tutorials or some sort of 'draw-along-with-me'. I always get an idea I want to draw, then go try it. If I get stuck somewhere, I go look up how others do it. Sometimes I google photo's, sometimes I go to deviantart, sometimes youtube, and I have some artists I really like that I try to 'steel' the style of. For example for muscles I'd like to end like how Kekai handles them, where other artists on dA have very inspirational faces or hands etc. etc. So most of the time I tackle problem by problem, see where it gets me and how I manage.

And feel free to post some of your drawings here, I'd like to see them Plus I'm sure a lot of people here would be happy to give you advices along the way. Sometimes you don't see something is off, forgotten or whatever, and others see this. After you get corrected (perhabs a few times) you won't forget it anymore! I've found it really helpful to post my process of drawing here, I always got wonderful advices.

a slightly more advanced site would be http://www.conceptart.org/

but as mentioned before only practise makes perfect

Deviantart is a good resource site as mentioned. There are no tricks, just practice and draw from references/real people (the latter is recommended and said to be the best way)

Quote: am curious to know as well how long it took them to get as good as they are. I don't think I am really that good yet but I have been seriously learning how to draw about a year and 5 months. Started Jan 2010 when I got my wacom tablet. Before that, I just mostly doodled and really didn't have any intention to learn.

(I am going to use the same characters in the sample pics. Just noticed I drew them at different points in my drawing evolution lol)

I haven't drawn anything since 2003 but I found my sketchbook and I started sketching my Guild Wars characters around May 2009:




Then picked up a pen tablet to try digital drawing last Jan 2010. I also started looking for tutorials in DeviantArt.



I practiced a little more , looking at so many tutorials and applying them.

I group the learning process into 3 categories:

1. Tutorials (find, and follow, tutorials on sites like dA and CA.org) - I don't do this very much.
2. Observation (analyze the works of artists you admire, see what makes it so admirable. learn from it.)
3. Experimentation (pull out that pen and just start drawing, see what you can do!)

definately deviantart.com It's best place to learn imo. when i joined i was a total noob... but now i improved a lot ^.^ plus u make a lot of friends there too :P

As a continuation on Ariias tip about the 3 categories;
You can mix them while you learn to increase your understanding. You can observe how other artists draw something and compare it to a photo reference, then you experiment with how you've seen others draw it and how it actually looks and ask yourself "why is it drawn like this or that, which lines or shadows should be emphasized?".

It's always better to work with real photo references or observe things yourself IRL, but in the beginning it can be useful to see how more advanced artists to to help you on the way.

For more tips, look at this thread:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/a...t10380408.html

Practice is definitely the most important. Tutorials are awesome and all for figuring out the basics of how and why things work together - but simply reading tutorials isn't going to make you good at drawing.

Also, don't get discouraged if it takes you a while to get the hang of things. I know I tend to get discouraged when I'm drawing, because for every decent sketch/drawing/painting/etc. that I create, I have several failures, or drawings that I'm just not happy with. It happens.

And don't be afraid to use photo references! They can be very helpful for figuring out poses and stuff like that.

Drawing on the right side of the brain- Betty Edwards
Loomis figure drawing- Andrew Loomis
Drawing the living figure- Joseph Sheppard
Drawing realistic textures- J. D. Hillberry