50 Clever Tutorials and Techniques on Traditional Drawing

Traditional drawing is certainly way harder than digital and it is true that people are able to progress much faster digitally, but one should learn the traditional type of drawing and painting before starting digital drawing, since it often lays out the foundation for screen design.
This article contains a mixture of traditional drawing tutorials, drawing techniques and some methods for transforming and preparing your creations for screen design. Some are intermediate level and some are advanced tutorials that include general theory, useful tips, comic inspired art, sketch a pencil drawing, coloring processing, character sketching, shapes, proportional, perspective and much more. We hope that drawing tutorials and techniques in this post will be a great help to you.

Traditional Drawing Tutorials

Marilyn Portrait Tutorial
A truly fantastic drawing tutorial to learn how to draw a portrait of Marilyn Monroe with pencil. Each step of the portrait is perfectly well explained and commented. This tutorial is very detailed, and requires a lot of patience.

Portrait tutorial
This is a step by step tutorial on how to draw a realistic portrait. The artist assumes that you have a basic understanding of drawing and shading before attempting to draw a serious portrait. For this lesson he is drawing on 11″x14″ Fabriano Hotpressed Watercolor Paper. He is using Derwent Graphic Pencils ranging from 2H to 7B. For more information on any of the drawing tools that he mention in this tutorial, visit the drawing materials page.

More about Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Instruments used include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, various kinds of erasers, markers, styluses, and various metals (such as silverpoint). An artist who practices or works in drawing may be called a draftsman or draughtsman.^[1]
A small amount of material is released onto the two dimensional medium, leaving a visible mark. The most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas, and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or indeed almost anything. The medium has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of the simplest and most efficient means of communicating visual ideas.^[2] The wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing more common than other media.

Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes at MCA Chicago

Posted on August 29, 2013 by admin

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Exterior of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Image courtesy of Berny Tan.

Currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes, the very first museum retrospective to survey the work of the acclaimed comic book artist and graphic novelist. The Chicago-born, Oakland-based Clowes is responsible for such cult classics as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993), Ghost World (1997, and its 2001 film adaptation of the same name), David Boring (2000), and The Death-Ray (2011). An expanded version of a 2012 exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California, Modern Cartoonist presents more than 125 original illustrations and artifacts within thoughtfully designed exhibition spaces.

Installation shot of Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, August 2013. Image courtesy of Berny Tan.

Installation shot of Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, August 2013. Image courtesy of Berny Tan.

From deftly executed ink and Zipatone drawings to rich, saturated gouache paintings and rough graphite sketches, the works on display well validate Clowes’s abilities as a draftsman. One can imagine an excited Clowes fan devouring the pages upon pages of his illustrations on view in their bare, black-and-white form. For the rest of us, there is something to appreciate in both the meticulous lettering and literary content of each speech bubble. Single-page excerpts from Clowes’s most well-known comics are more than enough to bait the uninitiated into spending time with their bleak and often twisted narratives. In addition, two 20-foot-high monochromatic murals, featuring silhouettes of Clowes’s characters situated within urban Chicago, are pleasant, unexpected bookends to the exhibition’s drawings and publications.

Installation shot of Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, August 2013. Image courtesy of Berny Tan.

The exhibition is a joy to experience due not only to the immersive nature of Clowes’s work, but also to the exhibition design of Nicholas de Monchaux, who created a comfortable environment within which illustrations could be appreciated and comics perused. It would have been easy for de Monchaux to succumb to the seductively bright color palette of Clowes’s gouache paintings, or the muted yet diverse tones of his graphic novels. Instead, the designer opts for subtle shades of calming grays for the walls and fixtures. Ample seating is provided in the form of benches (lamps and tables included) and intimate spaces with upholstered seating where one might sit for hours on end reading Clowes’s graphic novels from cover to cover.

Daniel Clowes, Eightball 18 (cover), 1997. Gouache on white board, 24 3/4 x 22 1/2 x 1/2 inches. Collection of Daniel Clowes. Image courtesy of the artist and Oakland Museum of California.

Six decades after the inception of pop art and accompanying discussions of high-art-versus-low-art, today any debate about whether Clowes’s work belongs in a fine art museum should be rendered moot. However, questions regarding if and how we should compare Clowes and his peers to such artists as Roy Lichtenstein still remain, since we can expect both to continue inhabiting museums. Curator of the exhibition Susan Miller has commented on the similarities between Clowes’s style and the flatness of paintings by Alex Katz, as if to legitimize Clowes and the exhibition; the framing and display of Clowes’s illustrations lend a certain fine art regality to his oeuvre.

The issue here goes beyond the tired back-and-forth about whether a cartoonist should be viewed as a ‘fine artist.’ The museum setting inevitably transforms the way that someone might otherwise relate to comics and graphic novels, which require much more time than today’s average museum-goer would accord to an artwork. How does one relate to material that is as much literary as it is visual within an art exhibition? Is the viewer willing to spend hours—in an exhibition space designed with that in mind—not just admiring Clowes’s inking technique, but also the dark and dysfunctional narratives that jar with his deceptively simple aesthetic? How does the art museum do justice to the works’ literary aspects in addition to their aesthetic ones?

Installation shot of Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, August 2013. Image courtesy of Berny Tan.

Installation shot of Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, August 2013. Image courtesy of Berny Tan.

An exhibition such as Modern Cartoonist, intentionally or not, raises questions about the role of the museum in today’s world and its responsibilities in terms of education, experimentation, and even entertainment. It provides a refreshingly accessible and engaging experience to an audience with a diverse set of approaches, creating conditions that challenge both museum-goers and comics enthusiasts alike to consider Clowes’s work in a new context.

–Berny Tan, Communications Intern

Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes runs through October 13 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611).

How to Draw a Human Eye on 5 steps

Edited by Maxwell K, Maluniu, ElizabethD, BR and 7 others

This will teach you how to draw realistic human eyes.

Edit Steps

1. 1
   Draw one big circular ball to make out the eye. This will form the eye socket. The top of this circle is where the eyebrow is and at the bottom is where the cheek bone sits. Add the lines.
   
   
2. 2
   Draw the eyeball floating in the centre of the socket.
   
   
3. 3
   You then need to work on the shape of the eye. Eyes are almond shaped, so bear this in mind as you sketch them. As a rule of thumb, the distance between the two eyes is the width of another eye.
   
   
4. 4
   Inside the iris, the color inside the center of the eye, draw the pupil which is the darkest bit of the eye. Fill most of it in black and leave a little white. With your pencil flat, use a bit of shading for the base.
   
   
5. 5
   Next, draw the top of the eyelid over the top of the almond. Add any detail you like, like eyelashes, etc.,
   
   

Draw famous faces

So you’re a budding artist, but you need a little help to get going? The good news is that we’re here to help you get your celeb drawing or sketched masterpiece done in no time.
Whether you want to know how to draw Justin Bieber, how to draw One Direction, how to draw Lady Gaga, how to draw Nicki Minaj, how to draw Rihanna or how to draw a number of other famous faces, we’re gonna help you!

Now you can draw quickly and accurately

We’ve done two important things to help you draw your favorite celebrities QUICKLY and ACCURATELY:

1. Grid Method: All images come with a ready-made grid to save you time and help you draw your portrait realistically.
2. Gray-scale Images to Help You Shade: All the photos on this site have been converted to black and white to make it easy for you to match the grays tones when you shade in your drawing.

 Find ready-made grid and gray-scale reference images now to make learning how to draw a portrait of favorite celebrity a quick and easy, step by step process.

History of Drawing: the textbook

History of Drawing is a textbook and reference book available free to anyone who loves drawings.


Use the navigator at the top of the page to jump between chapters.



Thomas Buser earned his doctorate in Art History from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1974. He taught courses in Baroque Art and the course History of Prints and Drawings at the University of Louisville until his retirement in 2005. He has published Religious Art in the Nineteenth Century in Europe and America (two volumes, 2002) and the textbook Experiencing Art Around Us (second edition, 2006).



As far as possible, the drawings have been reproduced throughout the book in the same scale: halfway across the page equals 20 centimeters (about eight inches), all the way across the page equals 40 centimeters (a little less than sixteen inches). Needless to say, drawings that are wider than 40 centimeters are out of scale.

Artists call weekend gathering the 'Drawing Frenzy,' invite parents to bring artistic children.

Parents that have kids with artistic flair might want to eat at the Crossroads Coffee House after 11 a.m. some Saturday or Sunday.  Like every weekend for several years, a local group of professional artists will be there. They call it the "Drawing Frenzy," a come one, come all draw-a-thon.
All artists, from children to adults are welcome.  They can ask questions, or talk about their favorite animated show, comic book or whatever inspires their art.  But there are a couple of rules.  Keep the conversation light … no politics.  Just stop in, pull up a sandwich and a pen, tablet, sculpture -- you get the idea.
One creator of the Drawing Frenzy and illustration mentor is Mike Sullivan, a talented local comic-book artist.
"It’s just a very nurturing environment for creativity and people are drawn to it… and we just feed off that,” Sullivan said.
Another local painter and comic artist that meets regularly at the coffee house is Darryl Woods. He tells young artists to draw something every day but make sure it’s something new: Don’t keep rehashing the same old thing.
Woods said he has seen the Drawing Frenzy bring the shy strokes of a budding artist to full bloom. As he tells the tale, just last week a young, shy visitor to the coffee house came in to share a few sketches.  She introduced herself as the daughter of a face painter.
“She had very low confidence in her ability to draw,” Woods said.  “She is an extraordinary artist.”
The gang at the Drawing Frenzy is certainly about encouragement, and that is the message they pass along to each and every person who has the courage to pull up a chair and share their doodles.
The Drawing Frenzy meets at the Crossroads Coffee House, 310 Southwest Blvd., Kansas City, Mo., 64108.  The artists meet from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday.
The artists include: Mike Sullivan, Ed Lavallee, Joe Hall, Damont Jordan, Beejay Hawn, Greg Gildersleeve, Taylor Castro, Buck Sommerkamp, Rob Nix and Mike Keener.