1 free lessons

Introduction to Drawing

Course by Ryan Benjamin
1 / 5
Bundle discount Each additional course part in your cart adds 3% off all courses, up to 15% off.
Full course
You will be given unexpiring access to watch the videos online .
$60
Lessons
15 Lessons
Duration
4h 13m
Skill Level
All Skill levels
Views
6.3K
overview

Who Am I?

I'm a professional artist who started my career in comics in 1994 with Image Comics, which later branched off to become Wildstorm Comics. I continue to work in the comic book industry with companies such as Marvel, DC Comics, DarkHorse, Acclaim, and Valiant Comics.  


Top-Selling Comics I've Worked On

  • Brothers Bond
  • Wild Cats / Grifter
  • X-Men
  • Starwars
  • Spawn
  • Captain America
  • Iron Man
  • Grifter / Midnighter
  • Batman 
  • Batman Beyond (#1 in NY Times)
  • Wonder Woman
  • and many more

I have twenty-eight-plus years in the industry and have expanded into the video game industry. A variety of my work as an artist/designer in video games can be seen in DC Universe (DCUO), Marvel MOBA games, & MLB: The Show. My work in television shows/movies includes ThunderCats, Ultimate Spiderman, Little Man, Pacific Rim, and Mech X4. 


What You'll Learn

You'll learn the basic tools you need to get started drawing. None of this stuff requires expensive materials, or inherent talent.

These are the things I use every day in my work as a professional artist.

What To Expect

This isn't the definitive collection of everything you need to learn to draw. This is more of a sampler of the things I think are most fundamental to learning drawing. Treat this more like a book to refer to, rather than a replacement to an art education.

To get better, you're going to need to draw. This is here to help guide you on the process, or give you a refresher to some fundamentals.

Who is this for?

This is meant for beginners, and professionals alike. Whether you're just starting on your art journey, or just looking for a refresher I think this'll be useful to you. 

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Basic Primitive Shapes

Primitive shapes are the basic building blocks to drawing. Those include spheres, cubes, and cylinders. In this lesson, I explain how to draw them, and the basics of manipulating them to create more complex forms. 

If you're just beginning your art journey, or you're a seasoned pro this is always a good thing to brush up on. 


Chapter 2: Lighting

Being able to understand lighting, and how shadows work is one of the most important things to learn as an artist. In this lesson, I go through the fundamentals of how depict lighting an object and give some tips for rendering. 

Lighting can be intimidating, but with these tools you'll be able to understand how it works!

Chapter 3: Line Quality

Line quality is often an overlooked skill by beginners. This lesson is all about correct line quality technique and exercises to improve. 

This lesson includes an assignment with exercises for improving line quality. 


Chapter 4: Rendering

Rendering is the thing that makes our drawing pop. In this lesson, I go through combining your primitive shapes to create more complex organic ones, some more lighting tips, filling in your shapes to read as 3d on the page, and basic hatching techniques.

This lesson is two parts: 

Part 1 is creating blobs, then rendering them to read as anatomy.

Part 2 is using blobs to draw an arm from imagination.

This lesson includes an assignment with exercises on creating organic shapes.

Chapter 5: Advanced Primitive Shapes

The next step to basic primitive shapes is advanced primitives. These are the building blocks to creating complex anatomical shapes in your art. 

Any shape can be combined with another, this lesson is all about how to correctly go about doing that, and making all the pieces fit together as a whole. 


Chapter 6: Introduction to Inking

Inking is a method to make your drawings look finished and ready for print. 

This lesson tackles applying ink on top of your pencils to make it readable. I got over the materials I use, line weight, and hatching with ink. 

Chapter 7: The Human Core (Drawing People)

Drawing people is one of the most difficult things that artists have to learn. That's why it's essential to be able to break down the shapes in the figure into simple primitive shapes. 

This lesson takes all of the previous drawing lessons and combines them to create a figure.

The Human Core is a strategy for drawing people that uses the torso as the base. The advantage of this is that it's easy to determine how the head and each limb extrude off the body because the torso can be used as a reference for proportion and acts as a guide for anatomy. 

Chapter 8: Un-narrated Demonstrations

  1. Full Action Illustration (Part 1 free on Youtube)
  2. Single Character Illustration

  3. Ink Head Sketch

Along with this tutorial, you'll get a series of assignments to do along the way. 

What you will learn
1Primitive / Advanced Shapes
One of the most important drawing techniques is understanding how to draw primitive shapes. These are basic building blocks to drawing. When you understand primitives, you can draw anything.
2Line Quality
Line quality is the shape and feeling of your lines, and how they relate to the rest of the drawing. Line quality is often overlooked by beginners, in this course you'll learn how I draw lines and how I practice.
3Lighting
How to light your shapes to create the illusion of form.
4Rendering Techniques
Rendering is the depiction of different textures and materials to create the illusion of depth and form.
5Inking
Using ink to finish a drawing, and the work flow to get there.
6The Human Core
A strategy for drawing people, focusing on the torso as the base to draw everything from.
Premium Benefits
Exclusive Content
Only premium students get to watch the majority of instruction contained in this course. Little to no free content is provided.
Exclusive Video Lessons
Only premium students get to watch the whole course. Non-premium students may only be able to view select previews and videos, but cannot otherwise participate in the course.
Assignments
A variety of exercises to help you practice what you've learned. After you do the assignments, you can post them in the community for feedback and see what other students are posting.
Demonstrations
Watch video demos with educational commentary from the instructor. Most of us are visual learners (we’re artists!), so reading about it or hearing it explained is not enough. We have to see it!
Downloads
Includes content that the student can download to any personal device for offline viewing.
Money Back Guarantee
Contact support@proko.com within 30 days. We usually don't ask questions, but a request is subject to review if over 25% of content was downloaded. This is to protect our instructors from dishonest wardrobing and ensure a happy and thriving community.
F.A.Q.
Lessons
COMMENTS
Help!
Browse the FAQs or our more detailed Documentation. If you still need help or to contact us for any reason, drop us a line and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!