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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 3236220" data-attributes="member: 7177">On to the first lesson!So you have never done any artwork before beyond the mandatory classes back in high school, and even those were pretty boring and a very long time ago, so you fogot everything you learned there. But now you have bought the hardware and installed the software. Are you ready to create your first masterpiece? Well, what shall it be? A noble paladin in shining armor? A fierce orc charging with his battleaxe? A voluptous sorceress in diphanous robes (hem, hem)? A raging dragon destroying a village with his fire breath?Heh. Let's not kid ourselves.If you are anything like I was eight months ago, you don't know a thing about proportions, anatomy, shading or any of the other things an artist needs to know to create original work that looks halfway decent. And until you learn all of these things, your art is going to... well, it's not going to look good, and I am not going to coddle you and pretend otherwise.Fortunately, all of these things can be learned. And while this will take some effort on your part, it's not as difficult as it might seen at first.There are several ways of learning these subjects. One of them is to go to art courses. But these take a long time, cost a lot of money, and are often problematic to fit into one's schedule. Another one is to read good textbooks on the subject. But frankly, I read enough try texts as part of my day job as a scientist, and I don't have any desire to do too much of that in my free time.So that leaves diving right into practice. Let's start with drawing people and faces. People are a quite complex subject to draw - but it's one that you will do again and again if you decide to pursue fantasy art, and the basic lessons you learn here will be invaluable for your later works.First you need some reference pictures on which you can base your first exercises. <a href="http://images.google.com/imghp?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wi&q=" target="_blank">Google Image</a> is always a good source for reference pictures, but for this particular exercise I recommend <a href="http://www.okcupid.com/quickmatch" target="_blank">this link</a> instead. It calls up random pictures from the users of a dating site, and thus has a large variety of reference images you can use. Just click through the images until you see one that inspires you. Save the image, and then display it with some sort of image viewer so that you can see it on the left side of the screen (I use <a href="http://www.irfanview.com/" target="_blank">IrfanView</a> for that purpose, but whatever gets the job done).Then load up GIMP. Create a new, blank image with File->New. I usually choose a size of 500x500 pixels for exercises like this - it is large enough for some basic scribblings without being too cumbersome. Move that new window until you can see both it and the reference picture in full at the same time. Now try out your shiney new graphics tablet and click on the "Fuzzy Brush" tool in the Tools window (you must use the tablet for this because GIMP "remembers" different tools for mouse and tablet usage. This will be useful later on), and click on the "Brush" field in the lower half of that window. Choose the "Circle (03)" brush (though you can experiment with other brushes later - in fact, I recommend doing so).Now move the "Opacity" slider to "20,0". This means that when you paint with that brush it won't use the full intensity of the color you have selected (the current "foreground" and "background" colors can be found slightly above the slide, and you can change them by clicking on these fields). But if you repeatedly paint over the same location, the color intensity there will eventually reach full strength. Using a low opacity for the brush is ideal for making quick sketches - this way you won't have to correct every single brush stroke you are unhappy with.And if you have followed my advice and bought a Wacom tablet (and if not, why not?), you can also make use of the "Pressure Sensitivity" field in the lower half. Switch on "Opacity" and switch off everything else. This means that the opacity of your brush stroke will be fine-controlled by just how much you push the pen against the pencil. Try it out - it's pretty similar to drawing something with an ordinary pencil!Now before we continue, some advice on how to remove the test scribblings you have made (and anything else you want to remove from future drawings). One possibility is to use the "Edit->Undo" function in the window with the image - but I usually only press Ctrl+Z instead. You can use that function multiple times in a row without any problems. Another one is the Eraser tool, which can be selected from the Tool window. I usually use the mouse for this, and select a large brush size. This way, whenever you move the mouse across the image, the program will automatically switch to the Eraser tool - and when you use the tablet again, it will switch back to whatever paint tool you used last!But back to the exercise. You have a reference picture on the left side, and a blank image on the right side. Now try to copy the reference picture. Don't bother with colors or other brush shapes and sizes - just try to capture the outlines and shadows as accurately as possible.Oh, and do all this in no more than 10 minutes.After this time is over, stop. Save the image (by going to "File->Save As" in the image window. Note that you need to add the ending of the image format you want to use manually to the file name. I recommend saving all files in the ".xcf" format, which is the "standard" format GIMP uses and which prevents any data loss. Save it with a ".jpg" ending if you want to display the image with other programs) for future reference and comparison (hey, I'm sure you can use the laugh a couple of months down the road when you will have improved vastly...). And then start with the next reference picture and a new blank image.Sure, you could spend an eternity trying to get this picture "just right". But only frustration lies that way for a beginner. What you need now is getting a good eye for basic proportions, shadows, and anatomy, and the best way to do that is by drawing as many different people as possible as fast as possible.And conveniently, this exercise is short enough so that you can easily fit it into your daily schedule. Try to do one or two such pictures every day, and you will improve fast. And what's more, you will also teach yourself to create art fast, and that's a useful skill to have. Sure, some people like to work at individual pictures for many days, if not weeks - but unless you get paid for this effort, it's probably not worth your time. Better to create reasonably-looking art in a reasonable amount of time, I say.And as a final encouragement, I'd like to show you four pieces of art I have created. The first two were the very first exercises I created using this method - about eight months ago. The last two are two pieces I created this weekend. Granted, with the latter I used color and some additional tricks (which I will get into later) and put some more effort into them, which meant that the time I spend on them was about an hour instead of 10 minutes. But I gained the basic skills required for them from this exericise - and I must add that I often went througn weeks without doing any art. But still, I'd say the difference is noticeable.And if I can do it, then so can you.</blockquote>

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