[Art Tip] Art Basics + masterpost (Patreon)

In this post I aim to make a list of the different art skills I personally found useful to study.

In this post I aim to make a list of the different art skills I personally found useful to study. If things go well, I may make a separate post for each.

As I said in the chats, I really appreciate the interest and enthusiasm, you honour me with your trust. I'm happy to offer guidance and point you towards places and actual masters, but for now, that's all I can do. I don't believe I'm qualified to teach, and the last thing I want is people to repeat my mistakes.

This post will be updated as we go. You'll get a notification.

Please bear in mind that this set focuses on human figures. If you would like to specialise in environments, for example, you will need a slightly different set of skills.

Art Skills (in the order I found them the most efficient)

measurements

perspective

cubes, cylinders, cones and drapery

gesture drawing

human anatomy

values - light and shadow

Up to this point you only needed pencil and paper. If you would like to draw illustrations, now comes the part where you specialise in your chosen media and field. For me, it's digital art and men.

Illustration skills

color theory

composition

references

your own art style

backgrounds and textures (I literally have no input for these, besides "USE REFERENCES")

How to learn these?

As I said, I may make more detailed posts about these parts. The way I did it, and try to keep doing it, is...

Step 1

Focus on each of these and familiarise yourself with the concepts, to get some confidence, and to know what you don't know.

Step 2

Get to work and use references! You can learn as you go - but make sure you always use references. Otherwise you'll end up repeating your own mistakes all the time.