[edible snowman]

this is something i've been thinking about a lot lately. obviously becoming a good artist involves a lot of practice. but it's seems to me that you will get better faster if you practice more effectively. what exactly is the best order to go in if you want to learn to paint? the cube thread craig mullins started looks like it goes over where it would be a good idea to start off. but there's so many things to learn its hard to decide which one deserves more priority, especially when you don't know very much yet. if i had a teacher that at all knew what they were talking about i would ask them, but i don't so i'm putting it here.

[ November 11, 2001: Message edited by: edible snowman ]

[edible snowman]

alright, this is pretty much what i've been thinking. start of by drawing everything a lot, to learn how things are put together. their form. figure drawing, portraits, perspective drawing etc. Then start painting these in black and white to learn about value. then work on a transition to color, which is where it starts to get a little fuzzy. plus there are probably plenty of steps in between. this is probably kind of lame, but i've had no useful instruction from anyone, except things i have been able to learn from this site.

[Ahcri]

This is how I first got started in drawing, I'm talking about 8 years ago: In the first lessons, the teacher asked me to copy some complete drawings (with shades and everything) into my sketchbook, just to get familiar with pencil and the idea of shading. And then after I have become a human photocopying machine, I moved on to still life. In the beginning he put up some basic geomatric models, then some fruit, then something more advanced like a wine bottle and cloths. After I mastered that, he took me out to draw from the scenary. And that's when I started out to use colour.

The steps has to be small, but the most important thing is that, when you practice, always draw based on the real.

[edible snowman]

yeah, i've learned its very important to start from reference. i wasted way too many years not doing that, and i'm probably suffering now because of it. i'm trying not to fall into the trap of just straight copying(i can do that reasonably though), because if you don't understand what you're doing then you can't apply it to other things later. thanks for the help.