Most of my drawing skills have come from YouTube tutorials and copying from art books (not specifics, just details and lessons I think is the best way to describe it). Thanks to this education I have seen so many videos that I would consider “okay”, bad, and some were just highly useful and inspirational. Just so important to alter how I draw and how I look at a piece of paper when I am drawing.
For a playlist to just go through and learn to draw with the videos that helped me, take a look at this YouTube link and watch forever (or however long the playlist is at the moment that you check it out).
YouTube Channels
moderndayjames – often fantasy drawing instruction, breaking down cloth and perspective in short bits. Hit premium instructional videos are also worth it if you are willing to throw a couple dollars towards him.
Proko – tons of anatomy drawing videos which are realllyyyy good and easy to get through. His series on drawing hands is one that I would highly recommend going through.
James Gurney – excellent water color videos, sometimes it helps to see a master fantasy painter doing their studies in real life with gouache. A lot to learn just about colors from this guy, and plein-air and painting setups when you are on the go.
Marco Bucci – ten minutes to a better painting is a very good series, going over quick tidbits that’ll make your paintings better.
Scott Robertson – master teacher, just seeing his sketchbook flip through’s make me want to think differently about sketching with pens and markers. If you want to see the best example of what drawing each day does check out Scott Robertson’s flip through and chat with Chris Ayers of the “Daily Zoo”.
Drawing Tutorials Online – it is exactly what it says. High quality drawing tutorials, but what is actually the huge inspiration for me is the video playlist he has which is flip-throughs of his college students sketchbooks.
Art Books I like
How to Draw by Scott Robertson – just wow, this guy knows how to teach perspective. I mentioned his youtube channel in the other tab, but this book is excellent and I would highly recommend it. The exercises within it really build your skill level up.
Bridgmans Drawing from Life – a classic for a reason, I know it can be a good learning tool but I think it is a much stronger tool if you have google nearby so you can look up more detailed pictures of muscle, so that your working off more than the sketches in the book as reference. This book focuses on drawing the body and getting the proportions burned into your skull.
Rebus by James Jean – sometimes I get too stiff in my drawings, so I look at some james jean art and try to grab at the curves he has perfected in his lines. Just google search his work or follow his instagram and you may like what he does. His book isn’t so much instructional but inspirational.
The Art of Ian Miller – Miller is one of my major influences, it is clear by what I started drawing with (technical pens) and what I started drawing in fantasy (towers and castles). This is more of an example of what I do, I keep my influences within reach. That way if I need to remind myself of what gets me really jazzed for my lines I can flip a book open or look up to a paper pinned above my desk and get back at it.
Any of Kim Jung Gi’s Sketchbooks – these books are just bound pages of people at various different angles as drawn by artist legend Kim Jung Gi. If I need a quick angle, he is likely to have drawn a sketch in pen. If I need to think outside the box, I just flip through this book and try to blend the feeling I get from looking at his stuff with the lessons I have already learned and use when drawing.
Other Websites
If it didn’t fit so much into the other tabs here is everything else, it involves more youtube channels and some unrelated but also sometimes related websites that I frequent:
Mateusz Urbanowicz – I love his watercolor painting videos, and I am really wanting his Tokyo Storefront watercolor artbook that he put together (a lot of his videos have him working on those works).
Art Cafe – artist interviews on YouTube that are really good and often times have artists showing off their technique while discussing their art careers and techniques.
Art Station – just a ton of high quality artists posting on one site that you can look across. Often good for some inspiration or to see what other people in games and visual digital art like to do.
The Art Assignment – fun art videos about art movements and specific art locations. Its pretty good and quite a bit of fun. Its kinda where I started getting into and learning about some art movements and conceptual art.
Parka Blogs – website that shows video reviews of art books and full blog post write-ups for each. Honestly, just flipping through the blog posts is a good way to get introduced to a weird variety of art books that I normally wouldn’t stumble across such as Illustrated Musings by Eddie Chau, which looks nice.
Pinterest – while alot of people are not a fan of posting their own work to Pinterest, I can say that I am a fan of just going down rabbit holes for art and style inspiration for projects. Again, stumbling across things I just normally would not find if I went to a library or just asked for artist suggestions. And with the help of a reverse google image search I can find attribution if it is online. Here is my profile in case you want to check out the boards that I have set up for inspiration.
Life Drawing – photoshow website that can provide life drawing pictures to work with and help with learning some anatomy and poses.
The biggest thing for me is having enough inspiration within a glance or a moments notice that I can use them to learn styles and details and tidbits. They can influence me in a direction towards whatever I want to learn more about.
