Oh, wow, @Anubhav Saini! I’m sorry that your friend’s attitude didn’t match what you wanted… it really sucks. Oddly enough, I’ve been suffering my whole life with something similar: my birthday is on December 31st, and, many times, I’ve had to put up with friends and even some family members not showing up because they’d have other appointments for New Year’s Eve. When I was younger, it was pretty common for me to celebrate on a different date, often several days before or after my actual birthday. On the bright side, I think it’s awesome that you chose to transform your inevitably bad feelings into fuel to make art!

@Liandro @Steve Lenze @David Finch @Kristian Nee

@Liandro @Steve Lenze

I really love your style

I feel you should make the shadows darker and make the light areas more lighter this would pop up the drawing

Hi. When practising line drawings from people and photos and likeliness is the aim, it is worth while, even as just a warming up, to use a transparent paper and trace the photo. It will give your hand time to get used to the lines. From that drawing you can make a bigger drawing. It is not far off, but you know the people and should be able to tell if you caught it or not. Usually it helps to darken the pupils, even in a line drawing. A good other option is to take this photo of your drawing and make it transparent and put it on top of the original to see where it is off. It is very important for you and anyone as an artist to learn to see where the drawing is off. You can flip both upside down and compare lines and shapes, more than just the face. With likeliness and so, comparing to the original photo is important. Use rulers to measure a direction. I feel that the eye you can barely see, sits too high in your drawing. In the photo the brows are not horizontal but the face is slightly tilted. That also makes the total right line of the face slightly diagonal with the chin a bit more to the right… Your bottom lip protrudes more… small things that you could correct when going over and keep on looking at the original. Technically, none of these alone would take away likeliness. The line under the eye is way too strong as is the line from the nose to the mustache. They are in the light in the photo and should be soft lines to hint at a shade. The headcover is more pointy in your drawing and larger….I usually try to do the game of finding yourself the 7 or 10 differences and then decide if they are essential to change.

Hey, @Anubhav Saini, thanks for reaching out! I’ll share with you my personal thoughts on this matter. They’re not necessarily the “right” or “only” way by any means, of course. They’re just how I currently believe things could be effective in terms of study. Before focusing on specific areas, I’d say there’s a broader range of base fundamentals we need to cover in order to get a solid foundation for comic art / illustration: 1) FUNDAMENTALS OF DRAWING AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION . Line . Shape and negative spaces . Spatial relationships (proportions / angles) . Value . Edge . Form . Perspective . Light and shadow . Texture . Composition . Shape design 2) THE HUMAN FIGURE . Gesture . Structure . Anatomy 3) DESIGN . General principles of design (contrast, balance, harmony, rhythm…) . Character design . Environment design . Prop design . Visual storytelling . Thumbnailing and creative exploration — After that, we could then focus on more specific areas or expand our artistic repertoire. These could be some of the possibilities: COMICS . Comics language/vocabulary . Cartooning . Sequential storytelling . Script writing / Script breakdown . Panel layout techniques . Specific drawing techniques for comics (line weight, high-contrast shading, texture stylization…) . Lettering . Clean-up / Inking COLOR . Color theory . Color harmonies REALISTIC PAINTING . Painting-specific techniques (brushwork, mixing paint, color blending…) . Properties of light . Light and color . Atmosphere . Lighting phenomenons (refraction, sub-surface scattering, translucency, reflectivity…) . Matte textures (wood, rock, fabric...) . Special surfaces (hair/fur, water, skin…) ART MATERIALS . Pencils . Watercolor . Gouache . Markers . Mixed-media . Digital painting PERSONAL STYLE . History of art / design / illustration / animation . Using reference and moodboards . Doing master studies . Selecting “art parents” . Sketchbook practices . Exploring what you wanna communicate with your art — And, of course, there could also be different subjects or categories we might wanna explore other than these ones I’ve mentioned (these are just what I’ve got off the top of my mind right now - and I hope I didn't miss anything important). I understand that all this might sound a bit overwhelming when put like that, as a sort of “loose curriculum” with so many different topics. But I’d say you don’t necessarily need to strictly follow such a list in order to develop yourself as an artist. There is no universal “formula” as to how your art skills should be cultivated. Since I’m sharing my personal point of view on this question, maybe I should also share a bit of my history: I’ve been drawing all my life, but I didn’t go to art school, so my training as an artist has been totally dependable on my constant will to freely practice and study on my own through online courses and books. And, just like me, there are many other artists out there with a similar history - perhaps you! If you are indeed anything alike, I believe the most useful skills you might wanna seek to grow for yourself in the long run are self-knowledge and self-awareness - that way, you can gradually learn how to “mentor yourself” and figure out how to direct your art journey as you wish. One strategy that has worked well for me is a cycle mix of: a) Following my intuition about what I wanna do with my art + b) Taking courses + c) Regularly doing some introspective analysis to assess my needs and decide my next steps. For example: back a few years, I already had some drawing background and I was very eager to study character design, so I took a course on it. Then, as I was doing character design exercises, I noticed gaps in my drawing fundamentals, so I decided to take an in-depth course on perspective after I was done with character design course. Meanwhile, I realized I also needed more knowledge on anatomy, so, as soon as I was done with the perspective course, I took Stan’s anatomy course here at Proko. At the same time, I also wanted to learn more about lighting, so I started a course on that topic too; but, halfway through, I felt it was becoming a bit too much for the cartoony kind of art I wanted to make, so I let go of that for a while and started doing personal creative projects to develop more of my own “voice” and put together a portfolio. After a few years, I figured it could be useful to study caricature; then, get a review on composition; then, back to personal projects; and so on. Finding what we need to focus on at each moment is not always easy, but as a regular exercise, I believe it’s totally worth our while because it grants us autonomy over our journey. As far as art is concerned, I believe each artist is often the best person to know what to focus on and what to do with their art. It’s good to keep in mind that, as you evolve as an artist (and as a person), your opinions, perceptions and strategies can change over time. Make sure to diligently follow all the way through the endeavors you start, but also be open to change your course whenever you truly feel it will be best for what you want. Hope this can answer your question and help clarify some of your doubts. If you’d like to discuss anything else on this matter, feel free to let me know. Best of luck!

@Steve Lenze @Liandro @moderndayjames

I think the problem is that you are not being precise about your shapes, and the perspective that they are in. This is the most important thing that you need to know to draw comics, especially because they are drawn with line only. You need to really slow down and think about the shapes and their perspective. I did a sketch of one of your drawings to show you what I noticed.

@Steve Lenze @Liandro @moderndayjames

The biggest thing I notice is that your anatomy drawing doesn't relate to your gesture and structural drawings at all. The reason for this is because you are doing the gesture drawing separate from the other drawings that come after it. Your anatomy doesn't relate to your structural drawing for the same reason, It's completely separate from each other. You need to build off the previous drawing so that you carry all the gesture and structure into your anatomy drawing. I did a quick sketch to show you what I mean :)

@Liandro @Steve Lenze @Stan Prokopenko