How do I improve my art skills?

How do I improve my art skills?

Im not particularly awful (Ok, I am..) but Id like to get better. Other than taking classes, what are some other ways to improve my drawing skills? Usually portraits of people or landscapes?
Thank you :)

Best Answer

It sounds cliche, but practice. The more you do something the better you get. Remember when you were little and you first started walking? How did you get better? You didnt read books on motor coordination. You didnt subscribe walking tutorials online. You just kept doing it and got better as you got older.

Im sure youre a better artist today than you were last year. Remember, anything that takes skill and experience (like drawing) isnt going to come to you any easier or better reading a couple tips in a short paragraph on Yahoo Answers. Itd be awesome if that were true. But, until science catches up with Matrix technology and we can all learn anything we want instantly from a big USB port in the back of our heads, youre just going to have to be patient and know that time and dedication is the only way anyone gets better at anything. Graphic Designer / Digital Illustrator 8 years

Other Answers (6)

Learn Light & Shade and Perspective to improve your drawing skills!

In order to draw/paint something realistic you must understand how the subject is lighted:
1. Side Lighting
2. Three Quarter/Conventional Lighting
3. Frontal/Front Lighting
4. Top/Overhead Lighting
5. Back/Rear/Rim Lighting
6. Diffused Lighting
7. Stage Lighting.

As you observe how the light falls on the object, your next step is to draw/paint it. The 7 lighting arrangements mentioned above are shaded in 7 different ways on an object using 5 values. In order to make something look realistic, you must use a variety of values from light to dark.

Learn to draw/paint the 5 values on an object:
1. Shadow
2. Halftone
3. Light
4. Highlight
5. Reflected Light
(The above 5 terms are found in Darren Rousars book)

Other terms used for the 5 values are:
1. Cast Shadow
2. Shadow Edge
3. Halftone
4. Reflected Light
5. Full Light

Learning light and shade is a very detailed subject. These two books will help you understand the elements of shading (5 values) and the different types of lighting :
1. Cast Drawing Using The SightSize Approach Darren R. Rousar
2. Light, Shade, & Shadow E.L. Koller

Also, in order to draw/paint something realistic, you must learn perspective, which is the illusion of depth and dimension on a flat surface (flat surface being paper or canvas). Things look different when viewed from various positions, which is called one point perspective, two point perspective, three point perspective, or foreshortening. If you learn to draw/paint things as it really appears to the eye when looking at it, then your object will be in correct perspective. Learning perspective is another detailed subject. The book, Perspective William F. Powell is an easy book to understand!

You can buy all of these books on Amazon official website.
Great comments. Theyre all exactly right. Start with the basics and practice! The thing that discourages the most people: they dont like what it ends up looking like, so they get frustrated and give up. The key is to keep drawing! I wouldnt suggest portraits or landscapes as ways of practicing.. gotta go with rapid sketches of simple lines. Cartoons, like disney characters. Those simple outlines form the base of everything else! Eventually youll get comfortable with them and start going into detail!
What I find that really helps me is when I take apicture of a landscape and try to draw it as it looks to me. Or when its something like trying to draw anime, Ive never learned from books, Ive watched tons of anime movies and paused the screen at the really awesome looking screen shots and tried to draw them. This has helped me a lot. If youre questioning how well I draw after all that time of doodling in binders and on sketch books, i am getting a booth at the next anime convention in Sacto and am selling my art. Ive also entered in a couple competitions. I hope I helped!
Some good movies with good scenery to draw are sense and sensability, pride and predjudice, Phantom of the opera, Gone with the wind, Titanic, The Girl Who leapt through time and etc, etc.
Start off with basic drawing after you master that basic drawings move on to harder drawings with harder drawings I usually do the outline of it and after it actually looks like it sort of start putting more details into it I hope this helps good luck with your drawings
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&sugex…

Pick a site, open it up and learn how to do the best portraits
Practice~