LEARNING ILLUSTRATION

I am not a professional illustrator.

That is where my advantage lies when discussing this topic, because I'm approaching it from the perspective of someone who is learning, not teaching.

This Article is not intended as a comprehensive guide to illustration, I like to think of it more as a signpost, pointing folks in a direction that helps them on their journey of discovery.

Learning illustration in 2020 is quite accessible, all you need is an internet connection and a desire to learn.

Where do you begin

Start with getting an understanding of your chosen illustration field, for the purposes of this article I'll be focusing on character design.

In character design the most basic of basics is an understanding of human anatomy and proportions.

Laugh all you want at the image, but your characters head defines a lot about the rest of their body.

Youtube

Youtube has a trove of creators on it that are hyper focused on sharing their techniques for a variety of illustration styles.

At the time of writing this article I currently have an intern I'm hosting over Discord, and by having them focus on specific creators their character design skills have improved by leaps and bounds.

To name a few:

Ethan Becker: A bombastic personality and former Disney illustrator, I highly recommend his video on art style (link below) and watching his deconstruction techniques.

mikeymegamega: An illustrator who focuses on the manga art style with loads of videos on their channel focuses on manga drawing tutorials.

Robert Marzullo: An illustrator with a western comics style, and once again has a large list of tutorial videos.

You can find any number of creators with various skill levels that can fit you.

Not only is Youtube a great resource for finding creators to follow and learn from, it's invaluable for learning the in's and outs of digital art software.

Especially custom brushes.

They are evil.

Pinterest

The other invaluable resource is Pinterest.

The sheer number of how to draw tutorials on Pinterest is amazing.

While videos can provide you with the creators methods and style, Pinterest will give you a page focused on smaller details.

Search how to draw:

eyes

hair

faces

torsos

arms

legs

hands

You will find a plethora of images you can create a board of resources of tutorials that you feel help you the most.

Closing Thoughts

As I said this article was not about some awe inspiring secret, it's so laughably simple.

But that's the thing, very few illustrators are shown the simple solutions.

The resources shown in this article can be accessed by anyone, so if you want to learn illustration, you really have no excuses.

Just do it.

Cheers

KT