Online Art Courses for Free?

[Milia]

Does anyone here know of any sites, tutorials, etc, where I could begin learning how to draw and create art? The more I look at anime, anime-style artwork and yes, hentai too, the more I long to create the same beautiful pieces. And I would absolutely Love to bring my characters in my head to life and to create scenes, invoke emotion, and maybe one day, even create a manga, or a VN. Along with learning Japanese on the side... who knows where this could lead?

So! Long story short! Do any of you have any recommendations on where I should start? Maybe some free online courses I could try, useful books etc. Ultimately, I want to be able to draw in the anime style and create beautiful art and hentai like this:

Spoiler

Now I understand however that many people suggest learning to draw realistically, and "from life" first before attempting to draw something already stylized such as anime/manga style, otherwise you're severely limiting yourself and potentially learning to draw with bad habits.

Please know that at this point and time, art school is not an option for me, and I'd like to learn without going to an actual school if I can, besides, I enjoy being self-taught, but of course, I can't learn anything without some help.

Any help dear friends? Thank you!

More examples:

Spoiler

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P.S. Drawing hair, fur and anatomy looks like a nightmare...

Also, if you're an artist yourself, any advice and/or encouragement you could give me and others like me who feel like we aren't capable of creating such beauty? Something to keep us going with art, to help us to keep trying to improve our drawing, God knows we need it.

 

[XSI]

Re: Online Art Courses for Free?

From what I know of several artist friends, there are four things to remember when trying to make art:

1. Practice a lot. Just keep practicing and making more. Make something every day, or just any time you have some time
2. Have an artist or art teacher give you feedback and tips on how to improve based on the things you made during practice. Important because they can tell you techniques and tips that will speed up your learning, but it's not impossible if you don't have anyone who can give such in-depth views. It will just take some longer
3. Always keep hope- Even if your art doesn't look good, it will if you keep at it. Your art won't look as good as the art of people who made things for years until you've been practicing and making art for years. And the change is so gradual that you won't notice it unless you save your old stuff and go back to compare
4. Have fun. If you can have fun putting your creativity into art, you will find everything a lot easier. And you'll find it fun to do

As I don't do art myself, I cant give any specific tips or point you to guides, but I hope this helps
Good luck!

 

[Milia]

Re: Online Art Courses for Free?

Thanks for the advice XSI, really, I appreciate it. :3

 

[Yoshiiki]

Re: Online Art Courses for Free?

Adding more to the list.

Book: Drawing on the right side of brain.
Ignore whole pseudo-science and go only for exercises (or read it if you want ).
Mileage: Draw like 20-40 circles (future heads) on one page, then go to first one, try making a face. Go to second one and try doing same face but correcting errors you saw on first one and so on. Do similar for hands/foots, bodies, etc. Literally mileage grind. Do like 10-20 heads (sex joke kinda intended), next day hands or foots or bodies, just mix it anyway you want. At some point you will just start doing same thing with whole characters.

This is quite important, as it helps when you feel like you aren't improving: If you feel like you can draw something and it looks nice, then after some time same style now looks bad: It's actually good. Because your hand gets better at drawing, then eyes catch up. Hand gets better again: looks great, eyes catch up again - problems. It means you are getting better. It's improvement, so seeing more errors and problems is good.
Non-tech savvy person when faced with PC issues will have a hard time.
Tech savvy will diagnose error and repair it, because of knowledge where and what caused the problem.
Seeing a problem with your draw and knowing why, means you got better.
That's a one thing people forget and literally get discouraged by their own improvement.

Study anatomy, lots of anatomy (manga or not, same rules apply). Not only static poses, get a library of images of people doing stuff to see how body changes, how muscles act and such. Try understanding dynamics, because with 3-4 simple lines you can easily show that this character is punching. Even simple stickmans, when done properly can be very dynamic and express a lot.

That's the general of it, getting to that dreamed manga/anime style needs a little something.
Ever wondered why comic artists from Japan and Europe/US have different styles, yet you can more or less tell where it came from? It's the visual library, someone that spent more time reading west comic books, will tend to have that style. Same goes other way.

So if you want to aim specifically for that anime/manga look, try reading more manga rather than watching anime. Not only that, but try to also analyze each page, each draw. Visual library and knowledge of things are more of a need than simple gimmicks.

And last one: Sometimes sharing, even if you feel like it's bad, is still a great idea. You will get bombarded with tons of advice, try not drowning in those as it's impossible to get from zero to hero in one day. Take everything slowly and adjust to your own style. Sure, there are people who will give harsh words. But it's just that, an opinion, so don't forget: stick and stones...
Plus, we have great artists on this forum and from what I saw, they're nice and helpful people.

I know there is a ton of more things to add, but not everything at once. First, learn to walk, then run

 

[Byzantine2014]

Re: Online Art Courses for Free?

Can't really add more suggestions, but like Yoshikii said the artist section on here is pretty good, just posting there and asking for feedback should help quite a bit! (Once you get to the stage you feel you can, anyway ) Good luck eh!

 

[bukacain]

Re: Online Art Courses for Free?

There's a lot of good advice here!

I'll just add some places where I find great free art tutorials all the time:
YouTube and Pinterest!

Pinterest is great for finding those little infographics that tell you how to draw a certain thing. I think they usually are sourced from tumblr, so you could also just head there. : 3 Just go to Pinterest/tumblr and search "art tutorial."

Here's an artist I found from tumblr with a bunch of tutorials I like:

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YouTube just has a heckload of tutorials as well.

Speed drawing/time lapse videos can also be a great way to see how other artists do things, but that might be a few steps down the road once you get your basic drawing skills up a bit. Unless the artists is really breaking it down for you with a voice over, but not all of them do that.

Mark Crilley is probably the artist that springs to mind first from YouTube for tutorials. He does realistic and anime/manga stuff too.

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There are plenty more artists on YouTube to search for, though. Find your faves! It's funner to learn from people you like. : D


Also, this HOW TO DRAW ANYTHING post on deviantart has some pretty good tips in general on learning how to draw.

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As an extra thing, I don't know if you want to be digital or traditional (and I don't use this program because I've already bought Clip Studio Paint), but Krita is a great digital tool that's free and open source. If I was starting again today, I'd probably learn how to use this program. Better than GIMP in the free realm I think.

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Hope that was a little helpful~

No matter what- Just keep drawing! : D