Smashing Magazine

If you have enough talent, these tuts will just give you some help…

But If you don’t have any talent, they won;t help you a bit at all…

Tip for people who really want to get into drawing, and develop a style that is original, unique and accomplished: go to life drawing lessons, and go to them frequently – with an open mind and a willingness to put a lot of hours in.

awesome post.. thank you

These are amazing. Thanks for the great post

I see some negative as well as positive comments on the post. In learning to draw what helped me the most was a bit of guidance from an art teacher and LOTS of practice. My favorite way to draw is to just sit and observe and sketch the object in view and focus on what I’m seeing more than what I’m putting onto the paper. I believe it is important to focus on the contour of the object, the area it fills in space, etc. in the beginning and hold off on trying to create features.

What a coincidence, I just bought a sketch pad the other day with the intention to start drawing again. I’m sure these tuts will be of great use :]

Is there any chance of getting some Wacom tuts as well?

I have been drawing for over 25 years, and I quickly realized the best way to learn to draw is just do it. I think tutorials like these are useful after you have established your style and methods. You don’t want to compromise you unique style and how you see the world.

Great list SM, just what I needed right now.

To all you other artists commenting that this doesn’t help: You’re being ridiculous. You could say the same thing about every single photoshop tutorial on this site. I’m walking through drawing tutorials because I don’t know how to draw well. Once I learn how to appropriately render hair (or whatever) then I can start applying my own style.

In my opinion these tutorials are far from useless.

Tks!

I can’t wait to start my drawing lessons with a great instructor and these tuts just made me wanna draw even more. I have bookmarked to come back back over and over. Thanks

I worked at Universal Studios Orlando Fl, doing caricatures…. and i remember spending hours drawing, now in this digital era i gotta confess that i become very lazy. Now spending more than a couple hours doing something its too much…

I have to agree to Joshua, TheDude, lx and other…I don’t see ANY tutorial showing you how to draw from NATURE and not trace over a photo. Sorry, useless.

I see that smashing magazine becoming more and more selfish everyday. I was a huge fan of this site, but lately my visits drop to once in 2 weeks or so.
I do NOT have a blog or website but SM removed “link dropping” now i see that they also remved links from people names.
this is just pity. You ask people to comment but no link even not their very own websites lol
Yeah there will be lots of spammers but just spend some time to edit comments
is that so hard ?????????????????????????????????????????
i think thats the main reason that SMs traffic is going down every single day.
but to be honest you guys deserve this.
google for “linkluv” or “commentluv”

Interesting how you address the traffic comment, and not all the ones calling this a useless article. There is no way in hell a beginner would be able to get step 1 in any of those examples without first knowing the very basics.

interesting… i like it

They don’t really look like the kinds of things that teach you how to draw but rather copy someone else’s style or image.

A lot of good tuts, very Impressive and informative.

Nice post! very useful.

Wow awesome post!

Extremly nice!!!

Drawing isn’t tracing!
Traditional drawing is about volumes, light, movement.
Most of the “tutorials” shown here are like Photoshop’s pen tool used IRL… and that’s not drawing at all.
=’(

Nice collection, showing the best drawing tutorials on the net!

Hmmmm the best tutorial any artist can follow is to get out there and draw what they see, go to a life drawing class, or use a mirror. Develop their own style, not copy someone elses.

The above tutorials will teach you to be them, not yourself.

Thanks these look really useful, I do a bit of drawing and ullustration in my work as a webdesigner. If you have time I would advise anyone to do a life drawing class, at Uni I did a week of it and went from awful cartoon drawings to realistic sketches, really valuable!

Thank you, SM, for this and all your tutorials and tips that make the creative more accessible for everyone. For the artists that see no use in this collection of web articles, you should realize it’s not intended for you. Until I met my husband, who paints in oils, I thought a person was either born a da Vinci or should just give up any artistic aspirations. He’s helped change the way I “see” the world in ways that had never occurred to non-artistic me.

Saying “just draw what you see” doesn’t work for the rest of us that don’t naturally have your talent, your gift, your vision. Having someone break down the mechanics, step through the parts in an over-simplified way, gives me a greater appreciation that it requires hard work to harness even superior talent. Trying my hand at these tips and tricks teaches me to view other’s work by going beyond a simple gut reaction of “I like it” or “I don’t like it” and ask questions I never knew to ask before like, “why did they choose to shade with that particular technique?”

I don’t expect nor desire to draw a piece of art, but it gives me personal pleasure that I can now produce a drawing that looks like it was done by someone older than 12.

So all you artists, cut Smashing Magazine some slack for occasionally neglecting you in favor of teaching the rest of us less-gifted in ways to greater appreciate your efforts.

Tschai said exactly what I was about to post. I think these would be great for me to study, but a LOT of designers have no artistic ability at all. Just like a lot of artists have no design ability. Good thing I’ve always been good at both.

Here is another tutorial about drawing in PS. Hope it can help……..
http://faisal11vcv.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/make-vampiric-hand-for-webpage/
and,
http://faisal11vcv.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/vector-graphics-with-photoshop/

nice article. Keep them coming.

really love that one! Eventhough I always visit to SM whenever I am on linem Idon’t used to comment about sth. But This is one really have to say “Oh really thanks to you”.

If you want to learn how to draw the human body then this site is a must see Structure of Man

You can find on this website two tutorials (in french) :
portrait : http://tutoriel.graphit-art.com/portrait/
clothes : http://tutoriel.graphit-art.com/vetements/

great tutorial its awesome thanks dude .. keep them coming

Hi guys,

good list of aides for all level of artists. i’ve been looking for such a list an compiling some of my own. i’ve had to go to about, squidoo, and anything basically found from page 1 of google to well after page 20 onwards. i’ve even had to be very precise with my search queries from drawing to how to draw hand, mouth, portaits, clothes, fashion poses, etc. you guys even have some links from deviant art (had to go there to find some lessons as well as some perzonalized stock photos). i haven’t read all of the comments but from a quick skim i saw some comments mentioning that it would be helpful if smashing had a beginner section for non artists…which i agree, but i bet that if i search this site i can find something like that, which is more suitable for people posing that option. i’m not a novice, but before i start a project i like to research and work on my fundies because although i can draw lifelike, i always have to practise, and there are just some things that i can fake draw and get away with but i don’t draw well. :) i think you guys covered a lot of fundamentals as well as some tutorials that just jump right in assuming that people can do this or that. it doesn’t hurt anyone to try. i’ll be working on one a couple of the hair tutorials because people have all different kind of techniques and shortcuts on how to do hair, as well as the eye tutorials, and i want to have some go to’s in my head.

thanks again. i’ve checked out a lot of the articles on this website (the one’s that interest me) and believe it or not i’ve always reached out to the websites of interest and have become a devoted follower of some of the artists.

I agree with lx and others. Most of these aren’t about proper drawing, but merely skin-deep guides on how to apply pencil to paper and create something pretty. The second one (portait of dark-haired female), is really bad: No one with proper drawing skills would draw something from top-to-bottom like that!

Shame … Art by recipes … This Century Way of Life.

These tutorials are very helpful, especially for continuing development. The idea isn’t to copy the style of the artist but to analyze techniques and give them a try yourself. They’re there to inspire. If you’re looking for basic fundamentals, find a copy of Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and do the exercises.

And don’t fool yourself into the idea that you need talent or some god given gifts to become an artist when all you need is interest. Interest enough to put in the long hours to figure out how it’s done, to patiently learn a craft and master it.

Well gee, sure would be nice if the “artists” that are ranting and kicking their feet in the air about the lack of basics being taught here would actually POINT US to somewhere where these basics are being taught. So show us a tutorial where your basics are taught then… or otherwise just accept that a lot of people who make fantastic portraits and still lifes do so by slapping a grid on a photograph and calling it a day :) Either deliver, or keep it to yourself next time.

Definitely a mixed bag of links. Some good gems hidden among them. I’ll second the notion that Andrew Loomis is the best out there in teaching and he’s impossible to find. I printed out a version of his Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth and constantly refer back to it. Best place to find his books are as torrents. I’d say go buy them, but they all cost at least $100 each on Amazon due to their collector item status.
For those interested in figure drawing, Glen Vilppu’s DVD’s are the best out there. Also, I’d check out the Conceptart.org forums for some of the best art on the interwebs.

I just wrote a tutorial on how to draw gnarled, complex trees for anyone interested.

Of course, the real trick is never set the pencil down and in five short years you’re a master (or at the very least partially competent)

Hi everyone,

I do agree with some comments, NOT all.
You are not BORN An ARTIST, you develop
your skills that YOU HAVE LEARNED over
time!!!!!!!

My EMPHASIS here is to let the viewer know,
that although you should definitely be practising
your drawing skill everyday that you get the chance,
there are TECHNIQUES to drawing that make the
drawing more APPEALING.

These techniques are posted above by Smashing
Magazine for anyone interested in learning those
TECHNIQUES!!!!

So STOP YOUR USELESS BANTER and get on
with your life, PLEASE.

Best Regards to Smashing Magazine