Learn To Draw Cartoons

One of the most famous and favourite form of drawings would be cartoons. These are very fun to watch or read. If you want to learn to draw cartoons, here are the basic things you should know for you to be able to start out creating your own.

Choose Your Medium: Still Or Moving?

The medium that you would be using is very important. This would have an effect on the overall impact and look of your work. What is it that you want to do? Do you want to go for single cartoons or cartoon strips like the ones you get to see on the comic page of your newspaper or do you want to have a full scale movie? Picking one would affect how you start. However, for beginners, it would be best to save the movie later!

Who’s Your Main Character?

Pick out a main character. Is it a male or female? Is it human or an animal, or maybe a vegetable perhaps? What are its main features? Usually, cartoons have exaggerated features and roughly ignore other ones.

Start Off By Sketching

If you have seen a movie storyboard, you'll know that it’s just a rough outline and overview of what would be happening on a certain scene. It doesn’t have full blown details on it. If you want to draw a strip, it would be better for you to plan out what would be happening in each of your frames. Get the summary of what you want your final cartoon to look like.

Develop Your Main Character

Doing this would take some time. It's way better to at least draw something than be agonized over the exact placement of each line. Try to see early Mickey Mouse cartoons or even early episodes of the Simpsons. Try to compare these to the present and you’ll see that the characters have evolved over the years.

Add Some Drama: Use Emotions!

Don’t forget to add emotions to your main character. May it be a cheeky grin or raised eyebrows, whatever variation you put on his/her features can help in giving him/her more character, life and personality. Unless you intend your main character to be totally expressionless and still, it’s rewarding to give it emotions. If they are scared or angry, you could emphasize this using the next step.

Add Some Life: Use Color!

Assuming that you would be displaying strip on your Web site or you would be printing it off from your colored printer, it is best that you add color to your work. This would give people variety to look at. It also helps give more life to your cartoon. Remember, since cartoons are not always depicting reality, having a non-realistic colored character is all right, take the Pink Panther for instance.

Add Some Depth: Use Shading

Adding a few strokes of shading would go a long way for cartoons. Your readers’ minds would fill out the blanks. Thus, you do not really have to draw each strand of hair, if your character has a hairy leg. Just place enough strands and some hints. Their imagination would do its job and join the dots. In fact, this is extremely effective and would allow your readers to develop their imaginations.

Add Environment: Use A Background

Like shading, this doesn't require too much detail. Placing a pyramid shaped outline if your character is in Egypt would do fine. You do not have to draw the Sphinx, unless your storyline requires it.

Let Them Speak: Add Some Caption

The final touch in giving your character life is by letting is speak. It doesn’t matter if it’s an animal or human. They do speak. Decide whether you are going to put the lines on a speech bubble or simply below the cartoon box.

Learn To Draw Anime Characters

Anime art is one of most popular fads around the world nowadays. This kind of cartoons is loved by many and it has evolved tremendously as more fans become hooked up in drawing their own anime characters. If you are one of those that want to learn to draw anime characters, here are the basics of what you should know in order to start out.

What Is Your Character?

First, you should identify the character you are drawing. Who is he/she? Is he/she old, teenaged, or a child? Is your character good or bad? Getting to know the features of your character would generally be your guide in being able to draw him/her out of your imagination. Try to have a set of personality characteristics for your character so that you can have a basis.

The General Styles

There are main archetypes used in depicting characters in anime. These could serve as your basis but not your prison in creating your own character.

Cute characters are usually depicted with large eyes, round cheekbones, and closely set facial parts.  Evil characters are usually drawn more 'realistically'. They also have sharp protruding cheekbones and very small pupils. Their eyes more often than not appear to be shady.

Shoujo characters or those girly-girl characters usually have sharp chins and huge expressive eyes. They also have elegant nose bridges and slender bodies. Stupid characters have round heads and bodies. They also have less details and simplistic features. Their eyes are most often tiny, in some cases are just dots. If your character is a fighter, just like those in Dragon Ball Z, he/she would also have simplistic features but with exaggerated body proportions and a small head.

These are the basic prototypes in creating Anime characters. However, do not limit yourself with those stated above. Try to experiment and play around with the features. This is the only way you can make your character your own and not just some plain Anime looking character.

Hairstyle

The possible hairstyles that characters could have are endless. This is the beauty of Anime art. They could have wild, out of this world hairstyles and they would still look good. Generally, hair strands are drawn in clumps. All you have to do is draw grass like shaped clumps of hair just to give their hairdo some form and style. Bangs are common with these characters. The color you can use is not limited to black, blonde, brunette or auburn. In fact, most characters have wildly colored hair such as green, purple, pink and blue.

Eyes

The eyes are usually prominent with Anime characters. This is what differentiates one character from another. If you observe, there are a lot of white portions in their eye. This is so that it would have a reflective appearance. This also makes the eyes more lively and appealing. You can observe this especially with Shoujo characters or other female characters.

There is also no limit with the color used. Some characters even have pink, and purples eyes. Usually, eye color also compliments the hair color. You may see some blue haired characters with blue eyes and purple haired characters with pink eyes. Sky’s the limit in choosing eye colors.

Clothing

Most Anime characters are in school uniforms or traditional Japanese costumes. However, there are also characters wearing Western style of clothing. It basically depend on the overall theme of the story.

Learn To Draw A Flame

Fire is one of the most beautiful subjects that artists of all medium can have. Being able to draw it with as much proximity, beauty and delicateness as with the real form is considered to be quite a challenge and achievement for many artists. In fact, a lot of people say that once you learn to draw a flame, you are somewhat equipped to draw furthermore complicated subjects.

What most aspiring artists do not know is that drawing a flame could be simple. It just takes much precise observation compared to drawing still life objects like chairs or tables. So, here are the basics of what you should know in order to start drawing a flame.

Get Some Inspiration

Fire is one element of nature that is both magical and whimsical. It could really be addicting and relaxing by just staring at it; so if you want to draw it, then there’s no better way to start but by getting some inspiration. No, you do not have to burn the whole house and watch as the flames go up. A mere match or lighter would do. Light up the match and look at the flame for some time. Try to keep the image in your head, just like a movie that keeps on playing back.

Get Shaped Up!

You should first decide what shape you would want your flame to be. At this point, try not to delve too much on the details of your subject or other complicated elements. Just think about the shape. Start exercising your imagination and visualize a shape.

Generally, most aspiring artists that want to master drawing this kind of subject start out by making use of the “S” shape. Thus, the term “S-shaped flame”. This is a favourite for beginners since it is one of the easiest to draw. If you decide on using this shape, then it would be your drawing’s outer shell.

How About The Internal Structure?

Next, you should think about the internal structure of your drawing. As soon as you have your chosen shape and you have drawn it on your paper, think about what you want to place inside. Visualize a design that you would want to place within your shape. There is basically no limit in choosing a design and there are different variations available for you to play and experiment with.

For instance, you can draw a smaller version of your outer shell’s shape. So, if you have a S-shape for an outer shell, then you can place a smaller S-shape inside. You can place only one or even a number of smaller S-shaped flames with different sizes and shapes inside. It is all basically up to you.

Add Some Color

Although flames can be drawn in both black and white, and color, opting for the first one would require mastery of shading. For beginners coloring is recommended. Doing this would give life to your drawing. So, add some color to your flame. Recall what the flame looked like when you lit up the match or when you lit up the lighter. If possible try to light a fire again, just to see the actual colors.

Observe closely. See the difference of the inside portion of the flame with the outside. If you look closely, you would see that the tip is colored blue, in most cases. The core also has this color. However, as you go farther out from the core, you would observe that hues of yellow, orange and red have appeared.

Use your imagination and try to blend these said colors in your drawing. Arrange them as how your model flame looked like.

Learn To Corel Draw

One of the most powerful media software used for pictures is Corel Draw. This program has been existing for years now and has been used by a lot of digital imaging masters to create their digital masterpieces or edit their pictures. If you want to learn to Corel Draw, here are the basics that you should know about the program.

What Can You Do With The Program?

What most people do not know is that you can do a lot of things in Corel Draw. In fact, once you learn it, you’ll be on your way to mastering a lot of techniques that involve pictures in general.

Illustrations

When you learn this program, you can now have the skill to draw digitally. The computer would now be your playground in creating original images. It may take some time for you to adjust, especially if you are used to drawing by your hand. However, there is no need to worry. In fact, you should be excited and happy since this program actually has a lot of features and allows you to have a lot of other opportunities to have for your image.

The program has the ability to deliver perceptive vector illustration tools which meet today’s demands of different design professionals along with aspiring graphic artists. With this, you can get fast results. Whether you are just making a company logo or industriously working on a big project that has a very demanding production schedule. You can create logos; create your own digital painting and many more!

If you are not comfortable with the idea of drawing by the use of pre-fixed shaping tools, you can always get a pen-tablet. In this way, you could still feel as if you are drawing using normal pencil on a piece of paper. This would also give you more control, especially if you want your image to have a really unique rendering that literally has your personal touch.

Photo Editing

If you are an aspiring photographer or simply someone who loves taking precious moments with his/her camera, you are going to love the photo editing feature of this program. Yes, if you get to learn Corel, you can have the ability to edit your photos in the most professional manner. You can create new images with your existing photos. You can even make a digital album, if you want to.

If you want to do minor image enhancements such as balance, contrast, hue, saturation and levels adjustments, you can do so. Resizing of pictures is also possible with Corel. You can also convert your images from one file format to another just by using the program.

These are just some of the things that you can do with Corel Draw.

Where To Learn

Using the program is quite easy. It is user friendly and provides adequate help, if ever you have a question. However, you can only be exposed to the basics if you decide to keep on forever relying to the ‘Help’ function. This is why you also have all the creative freedom to learn techniques and tips from digital imaging masters that provide Corel Draw workshops.

If you do not have the money or time to attend different workshops, do not lose hope. You can still learn more about the program via the Internet. There are a lot of Web sites out there that provide free tutorials. All you have to do is search.