Author: Iris

Need a place to start? Loomis: Free to Download & Figure Drawing Master

When people ask me how they can learn to draw, I always recommend “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” (Amazon link). It’s a book for everyone. Even if you never held a pencil before, you can learn to draw with it. The downside of the book is that it focuses on copying rather than using your imagination. That’s kind of a bummer. “Hey, I’m an artist, but I can’t create new stuff.”
Good news: there are more books that teach how to draw for beginners.

Mr Andrew Loomis himselfMeet Loomis, the man who will teach you to draw people from imagination!

He is an expert in drawing figures and has a book aimed at beginners: Fun with a Pencil. His book starts off so easy that you’d think it’s a joke! But gradually he adds more information and before you know it, your drawings turn from cartoon faces into real characters. His books are among the best to learn drawing humans.

The best part? You can download the books for free here: http://www.alexhays.com/loomis

I prefer printed books, but have been using the PDFs so far. The real ones are on my wish list!

Fun with a Pencil will start you off with simple cartoon heads before introducing realistic faces. After the heads, you will learn to draw the whole body – even in movement! At the end, you get a quick introduction to perspective and light.

Now, why is Loomis so popular (even long after his passing)? It’s because he teaches you a solid drawing method. You learn a skill you can use throughout your art career. For example, I applied his construction method to animal drawing 🙂

Loomis - Fun with a Pencil, example pages
A few examples from “Fun with a Pencil”

 

When you finish the first book, Fun with a Pencil, there will be more of his (free!) books waiting for you. Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth and Drawing the Heads and the Hands are my favourites. They teach all you need about drawing humans. Oh, except for genitals. So eh… you’ll have to figure that out yourself, I guess?

So check him out & happy drawing!

– Iris

Why would I end up an artist? I wanted to be a caveman

Caveman artist

What do you want to be when you grow up? At 23, I finally have an answer. I want to be an artist.

It took me a while to decide. In university I mixed culture and biology. Yes, it was interesting. I dissected a rat and then went to a lecture on Asian art. As a teenager, my dream was opening a pet store. My childhood dream was becoming a caveman. Weird how I went from dreaming of lush, curly hair all over me to plucking of my eyebrows.

Why art?

I have always been scared of art. I couldn’t paint like Rubens. Drawing was nothing but frustration. No talent, no future.

You need to be born with a gift for art.

That’s what I believed.

But a new idea sprang. You could learn. I understood that Rubens didn’t come out of the womb with a pencil in his hand. He practiced. All the great artists practiced. They got better till they became masters. What does this mean? That there is hope.

Current artists show  that you can go from an average doodler to a professional painter. Do you want examples? There’s Algenpfleger (before & after), MindCandyMan (before & after) and Marek Okon (before & after) .

I had to start somewhere.

A lot of art books are step-by-steps or aimed at artists with experience, but luckily some people recommended me books to get started. Books like “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” (Amazon link) assume that you have zero experience and teach you drawing methods instead of only showing you steps.
I started drawing just one hour a day.

I saw my art improving every day! This was my progress in one week:

Ivy leaf - first drawings by Iris Hopp

I passed the first stage. I went from being an “absolute beginner” to being just a  beginner. There is much more to learn… (wait for it, I’ll show you my level of car drawing in just a second). I want to be a good artist. That will take time and effort. That will take an awful lot of drawing practice!

My plan is to create a portfolio and go to art school. This means self-studying art for half a year. Isn’t it contradictory to first study art and then go to art school? There are two reasons for this. First of all, I will know whether I have the drive to buckle down and study art. Doodling is fun. Measuring perspective and analyzing anatomy… well, that’s not as fun as doodling.

The better my portfolio, the higher my chance of getting into a good art school. I have a lot of stuff to learn.

For example, drawing cars. Don’t laugh, but this is my attempt at drawing cars:

car sketches sketchbook

See? I am nowhere yet. The good side of sucking really bad is that there will be improvement. Even if I don’t get on Rubens’ level, hard work will get me beyond where I am now.

It takes some courage to acknowledge failure. I have a Tumblr to showcase my “happy accidents”. Those paintings made me go “Ooh, maybe I do stand a chance”, but I was hiding the bad work. Even worse, there were weeks of not painting at all.

“Don’t be upset with the results you didn’t get from the work you didn’t do.”

I have to draw every day. I don’t want to be a caveman, I want to be an artist. A pretty good one.

– Iris