Engineer here as well (BSME, PE). Went from no drawing skills whatsoever to drawing like this.

Go get the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Your mind will be blown. The book focuses on portraits mainly but it has the side effect of making your engineering sketches look like something Da Vinci would do.

edit

Are you an (engineer and sketching) noob or an engineer and (sketching noob)?

This is only relevant if you want to make it more realistic. Try drawing what you are looking at. Like, look at what you are drawing and not what you think it should look like. Like look at your drawing side by side with the original. I see you've done a bit of shading on the forehead, but in the photo the whole right side of his face is in shadow. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards is a good starting place.

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Done in Photoshop, off and on over the course of several days. I downloaded some new brushes and painted one skull with my old brushes and the other skull with the new brushes. I decided to keep practicing with the new tools by adding in all of the flowers and fruits. I feel like it's apparent which flowers I did first because they are lower quality than the ones I did when I had a better grasp of the new tools. Ideally I should have evened every out but I decided to just wrap it up and move on to something else :)

[edit: Because people are asking about the brushes. I used Kyle Webster's set, the oil painting brushes almost exclusively :) https://gumroad.com/kyletwebster#]

It seems your problem is you don't have a full grasp of the 3d shapes you are attempting to portray. You can't think about it simply as drawing a portrait. You are drawing a sculpture that exists in your imagination.

I think you should practice drawing simple geometric objects like coffee cups and lamps, not by thinking about the lines you're drawing, but the shapes. Look at things and try to rotate and manipulate them in your imagination. Work out a process for demarcating features of the objects consistently (the handle begins 1/3rd of the way from the top of the cup, the top of the ear lines up with the eye, etc.). Read Andrew Loomis books (I recommend "Drawing the Head and Hands" to you). I realize this sounds like a lot of work, and that's because it is. The most important thing to do is draw smartly. And do it a lot! Hope this helps you out a little, you've got potential; you're already working on one of the most important exercises! I'd like to see some of your other drawings too.

The eyes are a little wide set, and there are other proportion issues as well. The best way to improve those problems, is to draw from life or from photo reference a LOT. Just constantly draw more and more faces.

As far as the actual digital technique, there is definitely some improvement to be had. The background is really sparce and barely painted in, and the values are really flat. Being able to use the whole value spectrum from white to black is important, and takes a lot of practice but is totally worth it.

I would recommend trying to find the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" and downloading all of Andrew Loomis' books here. Those are the best resources I have found personally, for learning how to draw. If that's a bit too in depth, some money well spent would be on a lesson from the CTRL+Paint Store. Those are a bit more helpful if you work specifically in photoshop, but the basic rendering lesson and the greyscale to color lessons are great to start with.

Overall, my best suggestions would be to start teaching yourself the fundamentals. With a better understanding of value as well as just practice drawing the human face, you will see a lot of improvement. I hope this wasn't too rambly.

My best advice to you is to practice drawing from life, a lot. There are also a couple of books I recommend, <em>Anatomy for the Artist</em> and <em>Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain</em>. Anyone who wants to make a graphic novel, regardless of their chosen style, should put in lots and lots of hours of drawing nude models in dynamic poses. Find an artists co-op in your area that meets regularly with life models and practice, practice, practice.

If you're trying to draw realistically, move away from the anime style ASAP.

As brother of fiesta said, drawing what you see instead of what you think you see is crucial. Not knowing what that means is fine, but I would highly recommend either buying this book on the cheap or borrowing it from a library: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Flourishes are decorative floral patterns that are used a lot of times to compliment design work. They're pretty tricky to make! I'd suggest using graph paper and transferring designs to a vector format using a program like Adobe Illustrator.

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

I can tell that most of (all of?) these drawings were drawn from photos or images. If you want your drawings to breathe, to captivate, to look real, you need to build up your gesture and imagination skills.

Get inspired. Find artists whose art really bowls you over -- save your favorite drawings, compile them, study them. You have to be having fun -- find some friends who are interested in drawing, take art classes, carry around a ringed sketchbook and a ball point pen, or whatever else feels comfortable.

Here's some links that look cool: https://sites.google.com/site/artandwhatnot/

Thank you! So I use a mix of brushes by Lolishand Kyles Megapack (which is a purchased brush set.)

The texture was a random paper texture from google that i set on overlay :) /u/notblakely

Cool stuff!

So firstly, it's kinda important to know what you're looking for, otherwise I dunno what to tell you.

Alright, I'll cover a few things anyway.

If the thing that looks "off" to you is the faces of your drawings, and you want a more realistic looking style, try using construction lines and check out books by people like Andrew Loomis (his "Drawing the Head and Hands" is great!) as they will give you a great starting point and you'll see results instantly.

If, however, you're more concerned about the illustration and improving the style you already have, a few pointers I will give are consider the space you're working in. The second sketch is very cool with all the objects around the girl's head, but it's squashed on the left which takes away from the symmetry, which is very important when creating work like this.

I like the style you draw your characters in, although I would say that your noses need to be rounded out a bit to match the rest of the style.

Look up some comics or cartoons for inspiration on the nose front.

I would also suggest using a black fine liner to go over your pencil and clean up the lines, this will make your drawings look a lot more dynamic.

You may want to ignore that advice, however, if you plan on shading and rendering your work. Or look into inking (my new favourite thing!).

Finally, drawing from life, or photos if you're a recluse like myself (just make sure they're all different and challenging) will improve your drawing infinitely.

Hope this wall of text was somewhat helpful, and keep up the drawing!

I did a google search I am sorry if I confused you. I can be very poor at explaining things sometimes. But if you look at these pictures you will notice that there (in most pictures) are less lines but they have more detail. I suggest to start out by drawing a line art of the animal and its basic features then work on that by making the lines flow together.

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello, my name is Khaynã Ferreira and I'm a freelance illustrator and character artist.

I love creating fantastic world and characters!

My comissions are open! Contact me at:

https://www.notion.so/Khayn-Ferreira-77893e373b564674921b5c6621f12bba

I look forward to hearing from you!

Tea Wei is a huge inspiration! I love his work. And Julian Ardilla is also really great, and another huge influence. I highly encourage you to follow his work if you're interested in illustration!

I use it to build texture in specific areas of the piece, not over the entire area. I usually paint watercolor on large pieces of cold press paper. I will add gesso and/or molding paste to various areas, often with a palette knife. Again, you can mix the paste with watercolor paint beforehand or paint directly on top of it once it’s dry. Experiment with both to see what works best for you. Here’s a link to what I use. https://www.amazon.com/Golden-35705-Molding-Paste-ounce/dp/B0007W5RB8

As someone who bought myself the Wacom from Best Buy I have to say, it's definitely a change! If you can, play around on someone's before you make the investment. I've had mine over a year and still will just draw on my paper then scan it in and color it/ink it that way. Maybe I'm just stupid and can't get the hang of it, but it's way more different than you think it would be! The nice thing about the one I linked (and most, I'm sure) is that it does have pressure on it so pushing harder will make a darker/thicker line. There are ups and downs to all of them I imagine but, the one I linked is $100 and comes with Photoshop Elements. It's not the "complete" package of Photoshop but as someone who mostly just draws on it and colors it in with some mild blending, I have never found it wanting. I hope this helps! :)

You should pick up books by burne hogarth.

Your dynamic human forms will thank you.

Practiced drawing realistic hands – not perfect, but it was fun! Used a free-to-use photo I found on pexels.com as reference.

Well, painted technically! There's still two for sale at my website and I'm getting them made into posters via a Kickstarter project! Whatcha guys think? :D

A couple days ago a lot of you guys liked my "Grumpy walnut" drawing, so here's my full collection of nut characters. These are all old concept drawings for my upcoming comic series called The Gastro Gang. Stay tuned for the first episode, "Wrong Place Right Time", at https://gumroad.com/gastrogang

How did you end up using SAI? I've never heard of it, until now - I'm really curious. Last version is from 2008, according to http://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/.
I love your palette.

You will not be able to get shard/crips transitions that you need with a soft brush, you can use a hard edge brush with the opacity adjusted to allow you to layer your colors and blend. I, personally, use a this brush set and use brush the second brush in the pack for 90% of all my painting. You can get a blended look with a hard edged brush, but you cannot get crispness with a soft brush.

Many many many hours of clicking. If you're interested in seeing some detail and process shots here's the profile link.

It's also available on Threadless pending a successful campaign.

Thanks for checking it out!

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You got the proportions correct at least but there is no value and outlines are all the same width so they're not doing the job either. I'd recommend revisiting this after looking through, "Drawing the Head and Hands," by Andrew Loomis.

"Wait, evidence of what? Teaching myself to draw?"

Yes, evidence that you're understanding any of the features that go into a face as just one point.

You seem to have a very two dimensional approach to faces, as if saying "well the nose goes in the middle and the eyes on either side then as long as the mouth goes under there then that constitutes a face". I see nothing suggesting that you know what cheekbones do for one. Or that you understand how a nose actually looks beyond "two long lines and some nostrils" and fill in some kind of shadow even if it doesn't match anything.

All of these are the basic things that you should be reading+understanding before trying to produce something.

The same goes with any other style: I see you mimicking them without taking the time to learn them. That's what I mean by "shortcutting" and though you may deny it that's what I see when I look at your DeviantArt page. So take it as you will--defensively or as sound advice. But I'm not pointing this out merely because you added the words to the title (I would have said the same exact thing if you just wrote "some pictures that I drew")

I inherited a bunch of my granddad's old drawing books so I doubt you would be able to find most of my shelf. But a couple good ones that I will recommend are Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist--Stephen Rogers Peck, and The Hidden Elements of Drawing--Joseph Mugnaini. But as I said, there are tons of them out there and all you likely need to do is visit a bookstore or library.

And for people looking at cartoon style drawing I often reference this site that at least tends to get one thinking about how any human figure will adhere to rules--even when using exaggerated figures there is still an anatomy at work.

Thanks for the reference! I looked it up on Amazon, and am considering buying it - but would like to know more about his other books.

Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life, Drawing the Draped Figure, etc. What are the key differences between those and Constructive Anatomy? And how much about anatomy do you need to know prior to learning?

Sorry about all these questions - I really want to improve my drawing abilities but am a little nervous about approaching it as I've had very little formal art lessons, etc.

Honestly, despite all the nice drawing gear I have lying around, I do most of my drawings on plain white printer paper with a mechanical pencil. As others have said, right now you shouldn't be worrying about things like that—you should be concerned with teaching yourself how to see like an artist.

The most important thing is that you do as many drawings as you can. As agloriouscuppa said, draw everything all the time. The second most important thing is that you reflect critically upon your drawings. It's crucial to learn how to pinpoint the flaws in your drawings (less "that face looks...off..." and more "that face looks off because the mouth is too high and the eye is drawn from a different perspective than the nose"). Once you pinpoint your flaws, it's usually pretty easy to construct exercises to fix them. But far too many artists just think "that hand looks weird. Oh well, I guess I'm bad at drawing hands" and never give enough consideration to how they can solve these problems. Books like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain will probably point out a slew of flaws you didn't know you have, which is a great start.

I use these Winsor & Newton - Cotman Water Colour Pocket Plus Paint Set https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000ILZAXI/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_OFidxbTYQ7F98. This YouTube channel really helped me get started https://youtu.be/-scpBUY_Fn0 Hope this helps!

Thanks! I actually love the textures and improvised look rather than everything being consistently finished. You probably described my work better than I. I just picked up the brush pen a few days ago and it's not forgiving when it comes to mistakes so I try to start out light in certain areas and then squeeze the pen so more ink will juice the brush up. It dries out every few minutes so you can add those lighter tones and is very much like painting.

Here's what I used. http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-Color-Brush-Black-GFLBP101/dp/B002PIFTRE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1455590281&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=brush+pen+color+pentel

Thanks! I know how you feel - when I'm first working on a project, it's all new and exciting to see things come together. But then, there's the phase where it's mostly done but there is still a ton of detail work to do. I definitely was in the "I'm so over this" phase for the last two weekends.

I'm using the Walnut Hollow tool - http://www.amazon.com/Walnut-Hollow-Creative-Versa-Temp-Temperature/dp/B005P1TRAS

It works pretty well and I'm excited to get to play around with more projects (probably a bit smaller scale though).

That's a brush pen. If you'd like to check them out, I'd recommend a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen or try this sampler pack.

I have a tablet but my light table is just a small portable one kind of like this ! ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KNHRH6/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1535523702&amp;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&amp;pf_rd_t=201&amp;pf_rd_i=B005OM0D9W&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_r=05WG1SDT378CQCK4YDAB ). Cleanness is also overrated , i love rough loose sketches ! those tend to be my fav :) !

ORIGINAL DRAWING
FOUND IN: Drawing People: How to Portray the Clothed Figure

Also, if you want to continue with skeleton studies, you should totally check out this book! It's a standard for many osteologists.

These markers, with This paper.

Rather than working from photographs, I would recommend the book <em>Anatomy for the Artist</em> and working off of live models as much as you can. Many communities have artist co-op type groups that will have a weekly modeling session for a small amount of money. I cannot recommend enough the benefits of working from live (especially nude) models.

I also wanted to add that the head you've drawn is too oblong and the neck too short. Heads are larger at the top and taper to the chin, even on people with very strong jawlines.

If you can afford to purchase one, get a copy of Bridgman's Anatomy book. Try abebooks.com for a used one (it's 350 pages or so, make sure you get the big book).

Get yourself some tracing paper, too, and trace the book 2-3 times. You'll see solutions to anatomy and plane problems a lot easier once your hand/brain connection (from all the tracing) has been trained a bit more. Tracing helps a ton.

In terms of the 3rd and 4th drawings, remember that sometimes, less is more.

Keep up the great work!

I'm still learning. I hope to someday be able to afford a drawing tablet like this. I'm sure I could improve the quality when I get it. I started with a pencil sketch and then went over it with a marker and crayons.

Thank you! That's really awesome to hear. Bandage is a long time personal project, and it just came out this past July, so hearing any kind affirmation that some people are into it is basically fuel to keep working. Pass that jam on to anyone who you think might be into it.

And yep, it's a graphic novel, or at least I consider it to be. There's also a hard copy if you were interested, but I hope that doesn't come across as "buy this now!!" because I just wanted to let you know (I'm a print snob, myself).

For touch based drawing it's not bad, I know I couldn't stand mobile sketchbook on my ipod touch. If you're serious about learning digital art though, I would consider investing in one of these to start out with

You have potential, if you're interested in drawing you should consider reading through this book It's what I recommend to anyone just starting out.

Edit:: Also, you've got football eye syndrome, you have to start seeing eyes as forms instead of eye-shaped symbols or the eyes on all your drawings will look identical.