Expert: Akire - 2/15/2007

Question
Hello Akire, I've loved to draw since I was small, but lately I thought I may want to improve my drawing. Sadly I'm not smart enough to understand the story of Satomi Ikezawa's Othello but I loved and admired the pictures. On page about 138 there was a drawing I looked at of a girl who stood on a train. I admired line quality Screws in the vent on the top of the train and the pebbles next to the rails were drawn. I've always had trouble with sizes. Do you know of anything that can help me if I plan to draw sizes right? thanks

J

Answer
Well J, that's more of an art question but you're in luck because I love art. As for your question, proportioning is a very difficult task when it comes to drawing. Whether it's anatomy or just trying to draw the right size height of a tree it is all different. The thing is that many artist be it cartoon or abstract or otherwise, don't really follow some kind of strict rule system of proportions because everyone has his or her own style. The best thing I can recommend to you are art books and tutorials or just practice practice practice.

If art books are your thing, especially manga style then check out some how to draw manga books for some excellent examples and tips.

If you like tutorials, I don't have a specific place I got to but just googling manga proportion tutorial or something might get you somewhere. The best place I like to go for some great step by step picture by picture art tutorials are on deviantart.com where tons of artists make their own tutorials. You could also go to that art community to draw and have people see your art or look at other people's art and comment and ask for some good constructive criticism. Even if you don't find a tutorial right away, that is definitely the site to go to for not only good tutorials but to meet many artists and learn from each other.

Lastly there is practice. Whether you use books or tutorials it all depends on practice. Practice makes perfect may be a cliche as old as cliches go, but it's right. Your style of art and getting anything as close to perfect as possible takes time and practice and there is always room for improvement.

So well that's all the knowledge that I have on the matter but I hope that helped, if it didn't let me know and I'll do my best to look into it more but otherwise that's all I can tell you. I hope you find what you're looking for.

~akire