with drawing, I'm largely self taught and I rely alot on DA's critiques and tutorials that I find on the net. And just recently I think I've found the big one.

Eatpoo art forums had posted up a 'sticky' for "art noobs" , and it's a wonder how i didn't catch it for such a long time. The article had hit me in the sweet spot. It talked alot about 'loosening' up when drawing and doing a lot of studies, in particular from life. For anyone who is like me, please do take a look (if you haven't already). It helped me alot, and I hope it could do the same for you too.

[link]

Eatpoo tutorial forum section is awesome for tuts, advices. I personally found it especially useful when it comes to resources. Otherwise, please check out conceptart.org or CGTalk

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HUMAN ANATOMY

On the same thread, I also manage to find Andrew Loomis's books online. One is on figure drawing, which you can get here in mess studio. If you're new to this, mess studio is the collab effort of *HOON ~MIROART *Jujika ~C-A-U-T-I-O-N. They are pretty popular so it's hard to miss.

[link]

Please be aware that the pdf is quite large (23 meg).

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HUMAN ANATOMY + OTHER

The following site, "Andrew Loomis Lives!", has his other publications. unfortunately, they are in the form of thumbnails and not pdf.

[link]

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BRUSHES (PS + Painter)

Generally forums such as conceptart.org and eatpoo will have a thread where everyone swaps custom brushes. Here's a standalone resource site (pensnpixels) i have found.

[link]

Also, if you're a lurker or just a stunned mullet (like me) wandering around CGTalk, you should be very familiar with Robert Chang. One of his pieces graced the cover of 'D'artiste', a coffee-table publication on digital painting. He has posted up the brushes he had used for the general public to use. They are Corel Painter brushes. I have tried them out and they are pretty damn awesome.

[link]

Please read his instructions very carefully before downloading or asking for his advice. I am sure he'll appreciate it very much


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LIGHTING

For those of us who struggle much with lighting, in particular on skin tones and environments, I have found these sites to be quite useful.

GFXArtist (at the top, Features> Tutorials)
[link]

and

Itchy Animation Studios
[link]

The latter link also have a page on inking on computer.

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TEXTURES

I am not a painter myself. Pots of paint and a large blank sheet of paper just scares me shitless. But for people who are adept at it, textures could come in handy.

=resurgere does excellent batches of high-res texture photos

Following link goes to "Mayang Texture LIbrary". All high-res, but please be aware that there is a download limit.

[link]

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ENVIRONMENTS

For perspective, please go to 's perspective tutorial.

If you can draw well, go to Feng Zhu's tuts for doing up advanced background environments. it's always a humbling experience for me

[link]

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I apologise if I am pointing out the blatantly obvious.

I want to eventually be working as a 2d animator. And learning on my own had been very tough, especially with family who is not so supportive. It took me THIS long to finally realise that just staring at other awesome artists' works on its own is ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS if I don't do the basic hard work (ie. draw from life, do perspective). I've been putting it off for far too long so I had to dredge up the stuff I need from the internet.

So i'm sharing it with everyone else. I hope people who are like me can find this post useful. Otherwise, please ignore my rants.

Thank you for patiently reading my journal Take care.


cheers,
Rachel