{"id":1087,"date":"2024-03-04T07:08:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T07:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2024-03-04T14:32:25","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T14:32:25","slug":"learning-to-draw-people-challenge-interlude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/04\/learning-to-draw-people-challenge-interlude\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Draw People Challenge \u2013 Interlude"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\r\n<i>This was written March 04, 2024 as part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/2024-learning-to-draw-people-challenge\/\">2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge<\/a><\/i>\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\r\nYesterday, while I was walking around, I suddenly started thinking about all the things encompassed in a drawing, and what lays ahead of me in terms of learning to draw. Once I got to a cafe, I decided to take out my tablet and write some of those elements. I figured it might be a good idea to get a notion of what&#8217;s ahead and what I&#8217;ll eventually want to focus on. Here&#8217;s roughly what I noted, divided into sections, in no particular order. Note that this is not an exhaustive list and that is specifically related to drawing characters:\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>Head\/Face:\r\n    <ul>\r\n      \t<li>Basic with accurate proportions and positions<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Different Angles<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Hair<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Eyes<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Ears<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Mouth<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Nose<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Varieties (E.g.: different styles of hair, nose, mouth, eyes, ears, shapes, weight, etc..)<\/li>\r\n    <\/ul>\r\n  <\/li>\r\n  <li>Body:\r\n    <ul>\r\n      \t<li>Basic with accurate proportions and positions<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Different angles<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Hands<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Feet<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Different poses<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Varieties (different sizes\/ages, weight, muscularity, etc..)<\/li>\r\n    <\/ul>\r\n  <\/li>\r\n  <li>Misc:\r\n    <ul>\r\n      \t<li>Clothing and accessories<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Shading<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Coloring<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Motion<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Depth<\/li>\r\n      \t<li>Interactions with other people, objects or environment<\/li>\r\n    <\/ul>\r\n  <\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\r\nSo, taking a quick glance at this, it immediately feels daunting and overwhelming (At least to me). But that&#8217;s exactly the point of this post. While it&#8217;s useful to gauge these items to get a sense of what to work on, it&#8217;s important to not get bogged down by the details, and fall down a rabbit hole, or have your motivation wane. I could just focus on how long it could possibly take me to go through all of this, and whether it&#8217;s even worth it. But ultimately, my skills are still at their infancy, and getting good at a skill (let alone mastering it) requires a lot of time and effort. Thus, it&#8217;s important to take it one step at a time. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/6CLKI9dG25Y\">Here<\/a> is a related Youtube short that I think illustrates how to approach this well. (Note that it&#8217;s related to game development)\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\r\nMoreover, while there are a lot of elements on this list, a lot of which include many different aspects (further branching out), it&#8217;s important to note that working on some of those will help build fundamentals that in turn help improve others. A lot of these are connected and interrelated. For example, working on different angles will help get a better understanding of 3d positioning and depth, which in turn should help with a few other elements on this list, such as poses. Moreover, working on more &#8220;global&#8221; elements, I get to practice smaller elements. For instance, while working on a head portrait, I already get some practice on the hair, ears and eyes. Similarly, while working on a full-body portrait, I get some practice on the hands, feet and even the head and its elements. However, I think having deep-dives are still valuable to better understand these element and improve these different aspects.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\r\nOn that note, learning something is never easy, and usually requires a lot of time and effort. Yet, I think it still tends to be rewarding. I know for a fact I&#8217;m currently enjoying seeing my progress and am relatively proud of it, even if I definitely struggle from time to time. Don&#8217;t let yourself get overwhelmed by all the steps needed, just immediately start somewhere. There is no point waiting for the perfect time, since it&#8217;ll never come (I&#8217;ve been patiently &#8220;preparing&#8221; this kind of challenge and recording of the process for years, and I regret not just starting right away). Also, continuous practice goes a long way. If there&#8217;s something you&#8217;ve been meaning to try your hand at for a while, I urge you to just step away from the computer, take a deep breath, and take the first steps towards it. Feel free to share here afterwards!\r\n<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\r\nAnd have a nice one everyone!\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\r\n<i>This post is followed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/04\/learning-to-draw-people-challenge-day-13-2024-03-03\/\">Learning to Draw People Challenge \u2013 Day 13 (2024\/03\/03)<\/a><\/i>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was written March 04, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge Yesterday, while I was walking around, I suddenly started thinking about all the things encompassed in a drawing, and what lays ahead of me in terms of learning to draw. Once I got to a cafe, I decided to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/04\/learning-to-draw-people-challenge-interlude\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Learning to Draw People Challenge \u2013 Interlude<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drawing","category-skill-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1216,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/1216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}