I think it's done using DrawingSkills CS4 with the Perspective and Object Drawing Pack 2 plugins. Just a bit of a goof. In all seriousness, this was likely done using a vector drawing program like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. Also, I'd agree that this is a technical drawing. In order to do technical object drawings such as this, you'll need a solid grasp of the rules of perspective. I'd highly recommend Perspective Made Easy by Earnest R. Norling PDF| Amazon, Perspective Drawing Handbook by Joseph D'Amelio PDF| Amazon, and How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments from Your Imagination by Scott Robertson Amazon.
I'd highly recommend the Scott Roberston book as it has complimentary videos for the lessons that can be accessed via a downloadable companion app or through the link provided in the book. That being said, I'm sure you can find a myriad of useful free video tutorials on youtube. Me personally, I like to stick to books because that's what I've found is most effective for my learning. I wish you the best and will leave you with some pretty good, albeit tangential, videos: The Road to 10 000 Hours - Lessons From My 2.5 Years of Art Every Day, Perspective Drawing - How to Learn and Practice.
Ultimately this is a skill that will take a long ass time to develop. You'll likely encounter a frustration barrier where your skill level doesn't quite match up with your perceived skill level. Personally, I'm struggling with that as I'm learning to hand letter. My recommendation is that you just brute force your way through the daunting early phases . It's been working for me thus far. Good luck, OP.
For me perspective did not come naturally, and it took several classes for me to really begin to understand it. In my opinion, it's a really simple concept, but the process of learning it is really hard. In the end, I basically learned it by making a lot of drawings with bad perspective. I would also recommend this book, as I found it to be a very simple to understand, yet comprehensive introduction to perspective. Choosing a perspective is a completely different topic, and requires the study of composition. This book is a great guide on composition, but you can also learn by studying films you find inspiring.
Perspective Made Easy is a great place to get it right!
I actually feel like you should look into form and perspective before anatomy and proportion. because it doesn't really matter how much proportion and anatomy you study if you can't wrap your head around 3d form. I would highly recommend this book on perspective https://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Made-Easy-Dover-Instruction/dp/0486404730 and look at this YouTube channel for form, and anatomy when you get to that stage https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClM2LuQ1q5WEc23462tQzBg I think if you study anatomy too much now you will have to back track and learn the things that come before it: light and shadow, form and perspective but I'm definitely no professional and can't say for sure.
​
That said, I think it's a wonderful piece :)
These are some resources I've read / watched, some in part and others in whole.
Books
Videos
This book is cheap, a classic that was recommended to me by a pro animator, and has been helpful for me so far: https://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Made-Easy-Dover-Instruction/dp/0486404730/
If you want a more accessible book on perspective, then try:
The Marvel comics how to book is more catered towards getting artists into a quick, efficient, comic style production. I really like that book because of how much emphasis it puts on simplifying certain parts of the human figure while still giving you a process to layout your human figure drawing in a convincing manner. The more you study your anatomy and human figure drawing, the better your simplified drawings will be, but comic style art can get away with less technical knowledge of the human figure.
As far as perspective goes, that Scott Robertson How to Draw book is extremely inaccessible for newer artists. I personally love that book, because of how complete and thorough it is, but the first time I opened it I couldn't get much out of it.
Perspective Made Easy is an older book, but it's far more readable. The laws of reality haven't changed so anything that was printed a hundred years ago regarding perspective will still be true today.
I personally find the Perspective! For Comic Book Artists book to be campy in it's presentation being comic styled panels, but it still gives you a basis for perspective as it relates to drawing comics.
As far as learning how to draw in order to construct Gundams, I honestly think you'd have an easier time just studying human figure drawing and human anatomy than setting the bar at believable, fantasy robots drafting. The OG Gundam artists were exceptionally skilled drafters with a firm command over perspective and believable human figure proportions. Gundams have their own proportion rules you need to follow and they're far more blocky and detailed than the organic forms of musculature that can often be hidden with clothing in similar anime.
If you wanted to draw Gundams, or anything like Gundams, then you're going to want to get to a point where that Scott Robertson book not only makes sense to you but is something you find valuable enough to teach others out of. Check out this mech drawing by Scott Robertson, or these sketches. Being able to draw with that level of perspective understanding will greatly help you build convincing fantasy mechanical constructs that are Gundams. You're in good hands with that Robertson book, providing you can understand it and grow with it.
Grab a copy of Perspective Made Easy, ready it cover to cover, then go back through and use the examples as drawing exercises until you understand the concepts.
Okay, that explains the source of the frustration. You're doing what I, and probably a lot of artists, have done and that's jump into anatomy first. I totally understand not being able to draw circles and simple things. The first day I realized I couldn't draw straight lines kicked me down a few notches but it was all progress from there.
First off, get your hands on some sketch books, pens, and pencils. You don't have to produce traditionally, but I promise you it'll be easier to learn the fundamentals if you take the added step of a digital interface away. Ideally, you'd practice with both digital and traditional but when you're starting out you want to isolate the core concepts and make learning as simple as possible.
SO HERE GO.
Watch the exercises at the beginning of this video: https://youtu.be/TiVxL9iLNGA?t=449
Peter Han took over a dynamic sketching course from his professor when his professor passed away suddenly and Han taught that course for at least a couple of years, I believe, at a school. The Draw-A-Box creator took Peter Han's dynamic sketching course when they went through the school and used those principles to create the draw-a-box courses.
The exercises shown at the beginning of that video are expanded on in Han's book The Dynamic Bible. I think you can get a kindle version of that from Amazon for $10.00 but I have the physical copy and it was extremely helpful.
You can also pick up Perspective Made Easy for really cheap to help you understand ellipses, perspective, etc.
Use an ink pen for all the following exercises. Isolate your hand to only hold the pen, use your wrist, elbow, and shoulder to draw with. It's super awkward at first, I know, but it'll get easier over time.
Now you can move back to pencil. You can move on to learning human anatomy. I'm going to recommend three books, but really you can use a handful of different anatomical models and if you don't want to use books, then you can find most or all of this information on Proko's YouTube channel for free.
Bridgeman's Constructive Anatomy
Loomis' Head and Hands, Figure Drawing For All It's Worth
These will show you how to break down all of the human body parts into forms and you want to construct them using the principles you learned from Peter Han's dynamic sketching. A hand is just a pentagon in three dimensions with cylinders that have been chopped into segments for fingers, as an example. Rib cages can be understood as eggs, the pelvis as buckets, spines as cylinders, skulls as spheres with half spheres coming off the front, etc.
I think you're doing great on the imaginative side of art, which is your visual library. If this was purely from your own random sketching, you're going to nail composition as an artist if you stick with it. A pretty useful technique you've picked up now that I think about it.
What you're lacking is something that is very learnable. Namely, perspective and form. I personally think they are the foundation of (technical) art. (I like to call perspective the prime fundamental)
Perspective is the simplest fundamental to get into, and also the most influential to master as every art fundamental leans on it. That means that a poorly drawn sphere or box will look bad no matter how great your value, color, composition, or concept is. If your form stinks, everything will reek of it. Perspective is essentially the multiplier of fundamentals.
You see that lantern the person is holding. Draw that in perspective. If you can do that, you will look differently at your entire illustration! You will have gained some, how to say, perspective.
;)
Sup brah. They're like this because they want to upload videos asap to get that mf'n ad revenue.
Anyways, to get started in art, I gotchu.
Perspective Drawing. MUST LEARN THIS!!!!!! This is the only art book you HAVE to read. This teaches you how to draw in perspective, which helps you draw literally anything. Beginners try eyeballing objects, and it always looks weird and off because they don't understand perspective.
​
If you want more,
Best book about color theory. EVER. Absolute beginner friendly!! This book teaches you how to pick good color palettes based on colors YOU LIKE. It even teaches you how to shade colors.
My favorite lighting and shading book ever If you're still hungry for art skills, read this book, but read the others first. This one is for those with some drawing knowledge and skill. This is more beginner - intermediate level.
I did not really mention perspective, I cant teach it as well as the linked resources. My critique is not perfect, if anyone has critiques for my critique please do.
Here are the resources I recommend for perspective:
https://drawabox.com/ Must check out /// Is more of a free course, follow lessons in order. Everything taught here is important, even drawing lines.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-i Must check out (PDFs available, the second image in my paint over is from this)
There’s probably lots of material online but this book is especially good: Perspective Made Easy (Dover Art Instruction) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0486404730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_59P4J5T7MTWCD5BJJBTN
I'm got/get by with my own put-together curriculum and a digital tablet. Going into debt to get an education is completely backwards reasoning.
Buy all of Andrew Loomis books and you've got yourself an education for $150. No socializing, no traveling, no debt. You save a lot of time too. Just grind it out 8/12 hours a day with. You don't need to spend a lot. As you become a better artist, you can spend more. Focus rather on good health and sleep and learning to study well.
Artstation has ridicilously cheap courses from fellow artists. Not just that but high quality reference packs to go along with it. Figures, nudes, environmentals, industrials, mechanicals, etc. Look to online retailers for books. Would you think this book for $10 is a world-class introduction to perspective?
Though I wouldn't bother with Youtube. Too many fluff artists that pat their bottomline with pretty clickbait. The more popular they are the more you should stay away. Showing art is not the same as educating for art. There are a lot of crappy art books. I mean, utter crap. Redundant beyond belief.
An important skill for the practicing student is learning to recognize bad teachers from the good. Why buy watered down books from modern writers when you can just go back in time and study the original author..A lot of "I want to write a book" types out there who make it all worse for everyone and encourage overpaying for a shitty formal education you can get yourself for 1% of the price.
It's such a pain in the ass that art isn't giving the proper rigorous training but rather seen as some stupid idealistic crusade of talent brought on by the ignorant public and their love for beauty they can't define. Art education basically is aesthetic engineering. If you like math you might as well be an architect along with it.
I'd practice some perspective fundamentals. This book is a useful quick read for a dollar --
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486404730
Good luck!
I thought this was a pretty good book on the subject, but a lot of stuff only sinks in with practice (at least for me). Lots of environment studies and architecture and the like help. :)
Other than that, honestly the best overall resource I've found are Nathan fowkes' schoolism classes and watching the feedback he gives to other students. It covers a bit of everything, though it's not specifically about perspective.
As for brushes.. well. There's definitely a good balance to be struck. I find that having too many will slow you down and distract you, but there are definitely some great helpful ones. The problem is that everyone prefers something else. :)
This collects artist brushes that are a lot of fun to check out and play around with, but I would advise to only keep the ones you find really useful and try to avoid to get lost in shiny tools. You could do a forest just fine with a chalk brush!
Not sure if you've checked out this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Made-Easy-Dover-Instruction/dp/0486404730
but it helped me a lot (and from time to time, definitely still acts as a valuable resource) for working in perspective.