What is Reddit's opinion of Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators: Mastering the Art of Drawing from Memory?

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oh thanks haha. Incidentally I actually bought and read this and it left me with a few questions I was wondering if you could answer.

It does a primer on perspective in the first chapter, detailing the difference between two-point and three point perspective and how to use grids with each to construct figures that have accurate-looking proportions.

Would practicing building figures with these grids be the best way to improve? Or would practicing without them be the best route just so long as you understand the concept of foreshortening and perspective? Can you really get as good as Jim Lee just by practicing with your intuition?

Good stuff! If you are serious about getting better, I would really recommend Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators: Mastering the Art of Drawing from Memory. It's really good at teaching the fundamentals, and once you learn them, everything else comes along quickly.

I mean, I'm no professional, but I did most of the chapters in Freehand Figure Drawing For Illustrators by David H. Ross. I feel that helped with learning things like breaking humans down into simpler shapes and how to balance the lines of actions to make a dynamic but believably stable figure.

I also feel I learned a lot from the Line of Action figure study. I stuck with the 30-second exercises because my drawings are fairly basic anyway. But it helped me internalize things like how limbs and the spine curve instead of being straight lines, as well as the overall scale of bodies from different angles - how big is a hand when it's stretched straight towards the camera?

But I feel I was able to best understand all this information by reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards - I personally used my mom's old 1st edition, but I assume any edition should be fine. While the neuroscience is... questionable, the results are noticeable. One thing Edwards talks about is how we all draw what we think something looks like, not how it really is. Think of how you drew an eye throughout your life. You'd start with a dot as a toddler, but then you'd realize that eyes have thickness, so you'd start drawing eyes as circles. But then you'd notice the eye has a few wings to the side, so you'd add them in. But when you draw a face from the side, those winged eyes look weird, so you draw the eye with wings for front views and as an arc for side views.

This is what I meant by the internal reference library - You're drawing based on past knowledge of what things are drawn like, so by expanding and refining your library, your art will improve. One of the exercises that really made it click for me was drawing my non-dominant hand while NOT looking at my paper. Instead, I turned as far away as I could and never took my eye off my subject, using my eye to scan all across the curve of my hand millimeter by millimeter. It's slow, tedious, frustrating, and the end result looks terrible, but when done right the process is meant to break your old habit of "pfft, I know what a hand looks like!" and start looking at your subject as they really are.

Hope this helps, and keep at it! Practice makes perfect!

use drawabox.com for very basics on form and perspective. Its some pretty dry material but trust me,itll be incredibly helpful in the future.

Learn to draw gesture and learn to draw a figure mannekin. Book on that here.

For anatomy. i recommend prokos courses and this book. Andrew Loomis book is also very helpful.

A book I found immensely helpful in working through proportion and perspective was Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators

Might be worth a look. Like $18 on Amazon.

I have a similar issue. The important thing to think about is that drawing is a skill just like any other. Try not to get discouraged with "I guess I'm not an artist" (beleive me - I went thru the last 10 years frustrated on that point) It sounds more like you haven't found the right teacher/book yet. In my experience, art teachers tend to be way too free-form and abstract for my learning style and thinking.

The two books that got me more into it and to breach through the barrier by giving me enough mental tools to use so I could at least keep up treading water with traditional-style art classes.

One for figures: https://www.amazon.com/Freehand-Figure-Drawing-Illustrators-Mastering/dp/0385346239

He breaks the figure into consistent chunks you can identify and replicate, and he doesn't really to much into that "overly gestural charcoal non-proportioned art-house nude figure for the sake of making charcoal nudes because it's art" territory that a lot of my prior teachers would spout about ad nauseum

One for enviornments: https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/

I love this book but to be honest I haven't even really cracked it open yet haha. It's densely packed, a true-to-form college textbook! It breaks down perspective and environment construction in a very analytical way, and it doesn't hesitate to say "don't feel bad about using computer aids/tools to help for complex environments, but it's still your responsibility to study and understand the underlying principles" Be prepared though - the author isn't screwing around, this book is go big or go home. But it is beautifully laid out and technical. A lot of the artists I have shown it to ran away because it does dig pretty deep into various forms of perspective and technical construction. If you have an engineer's mind (sounds like you probably do), this book may be an excellent stepping stone

Message me of you like/dislike those resources and I'll browse my bookshelf and Internet bookmarks and try to find a few others that helped. :)

If you are serious about getting better, I'd highly recommend Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators: Mastering the Art of Drawing from Memory. Once you get that down, everything else will come easy!