Sketch Habit invites artists and art lovers, including myself, to explore the world and art history through a different lens by embracing the constant practice of drawing and painting.
Here are some of my additions: Nicolaides "the Natural Way to Draw" - many intuitive methods of finding proportion and recalling shapes and forms from memory. I prefer working with it over Betty Edwards. Bert Dodson - "Keys to Drawing" and "Famous Artists Correspondence Course" - the first is popular as a comprehensive "I want to cover every art fundamental in one book". The second is old, but scans of it can be found, and is a good alternative if you dislike the approach of Dodson. Jack Hamm "Landscapes and Seascapes" - like Hamm's other books, an easy to read introduction to landscapes and composition. Scott McCloud "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics" - the starting point for comics storytelling. Unlike Framed Ink which is very storyboard heavy, there is an emphasis on comics writing using page layouts, use of word balloons, panel gaps, and other design elements that are specific to sequential art. Preston Blair "Animation" - the Richard Williams animation book is a descendant of this one, which is tight and comprehensive, including constructive drawing, character design, layouts etc. Both are good but I would start by copying out of Blair. Ken Hultgren "Art of Animal Drawing" - a contemporary to Preston Blair, the book is low on words and heavy on pictures to copy. It is the book for studying horses in motion. The other animals covered are derived from the horse, which takes up the first third of the book. Rapid Viz: a technical drawing book that is faster paced than Hampton - one that I was recommended early on and still enjoy. Nancy Mellon - Storytelling and the Art of Imagination. This book ignores all the Hollywood screenwriting stuff that is common in books on fiction writing, and emphasizes what Mellon calls "healing stories" - folk tales and myths that people of any age can use to express themselves. It includes plenty of writing prompts and the followup books have some more. By far the best "how to story" book I know of.
It depends on where you are on your journey :) If you've never drawn before, I'd recommend Right Side or Bargue. If you already know a little bit of perspective, I'd go for How to Draw or Framed Perspective for which I have videos here. If you are pushing your painting skills, Color & Light will be a great option. And so on...
can you give us a high rez jpg of the whole page with the book covers. also amazing video thanks. ive been drawing for a long time now but i still get excited about finding new books :]
I did post the image on the community area of the channel. Let me know if that is hi res enough :) glad you enjoyed it! I’m really passionate about art books.
I’ll also start a newsletter soon where I’ll share all of these images and links :) you can already follow What I’ve Learned in Art on substack if you want, but the posts are only coming out in November
The thing which helps me the most with Perspective, is intuition. Like observing your surroundings first and how the lines behave as you, the station point move. How fast the foreshortening comes as you go from left to right and vice versa. Also, the rotation of the planes of an object and the difference between the exposure of the said plane as you move away or towards it. Like a table, as you move towards it, the face of the table will be more visible than when you get away from it. Second most important thing is Box rotation in any axes. This was the turning point for me when i understood how to make a box rotate as i imagined it to. With this knowledge, anything can be drawn. But, requires heavy practice. I realised what Perspective actually is that, first Rotation, then second, organizing the rotated objects in a scene. First one's gotta develop this intuitive sense then can approach the material of books like Scott Robertson's, as your mind automatically answers all the "Why's and How's", this making it a smooth sail. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, lol!
@@6y55trer8 It's more of a natural way of approaching, depending on what aspect you are focusing on. Even the whole L and R is very debatable and debunked by science if I'm not mistaken. The main thing is to understand if you are approaching the topic from a rational or perceptive standpoint. Perspective and construction will be more rational/logic and negative space/composition/gestalt will be leaning more toward the perceptive/aesthetic aspects. I'd highly recommend watching the last video I published as I go in depth into this.
1:10 Betty Edwards.Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain 2:51 Marcos mateu-mestre.Framed perspective vol.1 3:30 Scott Robertson.How to draw 4:06 Marcos mateu-mestre.Framed drawing techniques 5:25 James Gurney.Color and Light 6:17 Scott Robertson.How to render 7:16 Nathan Fox.How to paint landscapes quickly and beautifully.in watercolor and gouache 8:41 Doug Chang. Mechanika 9:48 H.Point 11:20 James Gurney. Imaginative realism
im gonna start this tommorow! are there any changes you would make 1 year later? im a complete beginner i just drew a few shapes and practiced a bit of 1 and 2 point perspective anything i should do before starting this?
@@sketch-habit ty for the answers! i also considered doing the artwod program by antonio stappaerts the free course contains 1, 2 and 3 point perspective - what are your thoughts on that? maybe even the full beginner course would be good going over perspective, figure, hard surface, organic? its just 10 bucks a month
I really like his work, but only seen one video of him teaching. The video I saw was awesome. It’s worth the try and if you want to go more hard surface/design come back to foundation group stuff
This has been my experience as well. Creative is most important. I gotta paint and draw as if I already know everything and have all the skills. I might create crappy art and animations, but it's value is massive. Put the soul onto the canvas. The aesthetic, logic, and technique come to support the creative part and elevate it. Imo the aesthetic, technique, and logic parts should be learned on a need basis, and the need is informed by what the soul puts to paper. Even tho I know this I tend to just do the things I'm comfortable with, which is simply studying some thing, practicing cuboids, copy and memorizing a pretty picture. The cycle of drawing from memory, comparing, correcting mistakes, drawing from memory again till it matches the original, takes about 6 tries to get them to match to a satisfying level - very addicting to see this quick improvement. The next step which I tend to skip would be to draw the character, their pose, or things I memorized in different situations, poses, envoierments. Like transforming what I studied into 'soul'. But I shy away from it cause it is daunting and unknown as I do it too little. There's this little gap to mind between knowing what to do and doing the right thing. The soul sketchbook sounds about what I need to do to overcome that phobia.
IMO it leans more heavily towards light and material aspects, covering also lighting strategies for illustrations, but mixing and gamut mapping are the cherry on top for sure.
I’d suggest Arthur Guptill and the book Creative Perspective for Artists and Illustrators then :) but try to be a little more open minded because there are great artists and educators on RU-vid, and a whole lot of crap as well (I know). From all I’ve seen, Modern Day James videos are very good to help understand, build and alter tridimensional form. Artwod would be another great resource.
@@sketch-habit I recommend you watch 10.000hrs channel he explains how to learn drawing plain and simple no BS. The problem nowadays students cant focus because of too much tutorials too much subscriptions and some digital hoarding is the worst. Always remember that fundamentals exist 500 years ago when Leonardo Da vinci was alive. No internet no youtuber.
@@sketch-habit speaking of crap the first thing comes to mind is John Park Gumraod tutorials. Those are the worst tutorials I ever experienced. Not gonna recommend to newbies. Its cheap yes but your time is worth more than these artist milking from beginner artist.
@@riccia888 I learned a lot from them otherwise I wouldn't recommend it here on the channel. It got me in contact with a lot of the learnings from schools like Art Center that I wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. That being said, please share some good resources you know to help others instead of labeling straight away :)
How would you go about using this book as basis for exercises? Sorry if my question sounds a bit weird- I've read the first 3 chapters and I felt that while it does explain things clearly, I'm still only an observer and will probably forget that information sooner or later because there is no exercise segments to digest the content. Or maybe there is and I just haven't noticed it because of the way the book is presented (fig and explanations).
Have you seen my video on studying through this book and How to Draw? I agree that they could be clearer about applying the knowledge. I really like how Perspective Made Easy presents it.
@@sketch-habit I think I have a major grasp of the fundamentals already. I just need a mentor that will push me to finish portfolio pieces and improve my design intuitions.
@@jephtisomosot9267 Oh, I see. From that list I suggested, I was thinking of something like Even's Domestika or Alexandria Neonaki's Schoolism course. If you want something that is live with direct contact with the instructor I'd suggest follow the courses featured at Brainstorm School, Concept Design Academy or Warrior Art Camp. It depends also on the style you are shooting for.
Really oike your take on it! Just not the spiral part. Ive spent a year almost on brainstorm and i started working on a how to design gumroad back then, and showed it to Joon specifically(when he was smoking in the parking lot) because i knew he was one of the goats of that, and he told me in the beginning he also tried thinking very analytically that way but just advised me not to focus on it much that it would come naturally with time. So for the rendition of the spiral i might have a better design for you, think of it as a Fractal and a Neuron(kind of like obsidian the note taking app) every part is connected to another to varying deggress and if you change 1% here you might get a butterfly effect at the other end
Great insight, thanks for sharing! I agree that it’s all connected. What I tried to convey with the spiral is that your learning should revolve around application of concepts, techniques, and your aesthetic sensibilities into something new, either a design, story moment or your own artistic expression. Does it sound better like this?
Given what you commented on other videos, I think your seeing capabilities are beyond this book tbh. If you want to deep dive into observation, I’d recommend Bargue. Have you seen my video on it?
@@sketch-habit I think you are right, i`m not a beginner anymore, BUT, it`s nice to be reassured i don`t have any holes in my basics. I disregarded this book just because of the left/right side of the brainstuff that has been a myth every since the field of neurology came into being. But i think this instructor might have done a play words, her dictatic explanation is very artsy and philosophical which i find very similar to DRAW TO LIFE, and seriously, reading draw to life i was so impressed about how much i thought like that instructor! He goes beyond the technical and know how to "FEEL"! I didn`t feel like an outsider anymore it's rare to find that level or nerdiness and philosophy in artist nowadays with this "wokeness/cancel" culture. I told you in another comment i tried to do a how to design gumroad before, and i'm actually thinking of writing a book on the subject. I think of it as the spiritual sucessor for HOW TO DRAW/HOW TO RENDER, the how to design book might never come to fruition because as scott said before, it's fucking hard to teach Design. Specially in a book. And that, is a challenge i would love to tackle! I've done some vlogs before, but i fucking hate editing. So i'm just gonna blog in substack from now on, and i don't discard doing a video in the future about what i write about. And hopefully if my adhd let's me, i'll compile all the ideas i have into a book in the near future about how design is encompassed in everything! I leave you with a thought from Richard Feynman, it more less goes like this; "Ask a Human about chemistry biology math, all these fields are draw so that we can discuss them, so that it becomes tangible to our understanding, but if you ask NATURE about them, there is no line draw, it's all one thing." Learning about fractals is one of the single most important things that made me think of the world with a different perspective, and i see that our school system does not teach us this very critical knowledge, for critical thinking skills. So most of us are hampered by our lines of thinking, and consequentely can't really grasp design.
@@sketch-habit Example of how this book can help me articulate design process. 1. and 2. Contour and negative space, can be said to be silhouette design, where you start with black. 3. relationships (my favorite type of designing and painting, Craig Mullins does it like this too) you draw volumes and try to see in between the lines like that really good Proko video where Tim Gula teaches you an automatic drawing techniche. 4. Is 2-3 values B&w sketching like the naughty dog guys Nick Gindroux/ Eytan zana and the likes. 5. i would say is the one i'm most puzzled by because my brain just not work that way, it's KJG just spitting out drawing left and right (which i think its the least effective for designing). I work very much like Picasso "i only know what i'm going to draw after i put the first line in the piece of paper" Theres also, how different types of brain functions that i want to explore in how it affects designing etc... Visual/Spatial/Verbal brains and it's alot, theres alot of neurology/philosophy/psychology involved
Thank you so much! i know better then i knew before watching this video. i like how you are not adding any useless info and waste time of your viewers. i am looking forward to build my art foundation, learn fundamentals etc and found your channel i hope i can find what i am looking for. a right guide. especially in RU-vid its heard to understand where to go and what not, and also those online courses..... its not clear which is good to take or not so thats why i am still in youtube. thank you for your amazing content!
