Have you ever dreamt of one day maybe not completely sucking at drawing? Maybe you've even thought to yourself "hey, with practice, maybe I could even be an okay artist!" Maybe you're crazy like me, and think you'll be pro-grade some day!

Maybe...you want some help accomplishing your ridiculous, impossible, completely hopeless goals?

Then you've come to the right workshop workshop! Learn to draw as well as me in no time flat! You'll be creating works of art that'll impress your friends enough that they'll feel inclined to pretend to be impressed with you with just a week or two or practice! Could it really be so easy? Are all of your wildest dreams about to come true?! YOU BET YOUR ASS!

Here's how it works! Every Tuesday through Saturday, you guises come in here and tell me what you want to learn how to draw. Every Sunday-Monday, I pick one, draw it up, and include step by step illustrations and explanations as to how I worked my artsy magicks. Keep in mind that if you make a suggestion and I take it, I'll be expecting you to draw your own suggestion the following week, after I've given my little lesson on the subject you chose, so no smart-ass answers like "teach me how to draw the Mona Lisa," unless you want to embarrass the both of us. Which is cool with me, I guess.

So here's a timeline, for our slower members!

Week One:
Tues-Sat:
You guys make suggestions for the next thing I draw, while drawing the thing I taught you to draw last week. For this week, we'll be skipping the latter step, obviously.

Sun-Mon:
I choose one of your suggestions from the prior five days, and draw it up, showing you how to draw in the process with full-fucking-color illustrations, diagrams, graphs, pie-charts, and explanations in five different languages. Rejoice! You're slightly better at drawing. But get ready, now you need to get ready for week two!

Week Two:
Tues-Sat:
Draw what I just taught you to draw like two days ago. Make suggestions for this Sunday/Monday.
Sun-Mon: Once again, I choose a suggestion from a few days ago, and draw it for you guys, with all that step-by-step teaching crap!

And then, for week three, we rinse and repeat, until you guys give up and stop giving me suggestions. Lazy bastards. =D

Remember, even if your suggestion doesn't get picked, feel free to draw along anyway. If I see that you're trying hard (by drawing constantly), I'll be tons more likely to pick your suggestion for the following week.

So what do you guys think? Sounds fun, right? If it does, start suggesting things! Let's learn to draw together!

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/logolol.jpg?t=1231217343
Soon, even you'll be able to create astounding logos like the one seen above! Free "How to Effectively Use Jpg Artifacts in Your Work" lesson included this week only!

Let's draw together eh?

Well i'm at an all time low for drawing since after I draw something I love it for one day, next day its crap and I need to push myself more

Anywho, since im talking about drawing, it makes me want to share/inspire/scare so I'll show you some old junk

quick sketch of Yun and Yang from Street Fighter III (since im slightly-obsessive with playing it :think:)http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w13/Fimmu/yun_yang_scan.jpg

I challenge you to draw something.... old school and video-game related :P

Since I challenge the chef-side of you, I'll be prepared for your artistic-side challenge

A wolf eating a penguin! =)

How about a Visual Novel seen like...

http://gerrymon.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/clannad03.jpg
or
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Wikipe-tan_visual_novel_(Ren%27Py).png

I challenge you to draw something.... old school and video-game related

Since I challenge the chef-side of you, I'll be prepared for your artistic-side challenge
That sounds fun, actually. :3

A wolf eating a penguin! =)
Is that something you really want to learn how to draw? :heh:
Sounds fun, nonetheless.

How about a Visual Novel seen like...
That's probably a good five hours of work there, for an artist of my level. I'll consider it, anyway, but only if you promise to actually try your hardest copying the drawing afterward. It would be a good challenge. :)

Hmmm.. something I've always wanted to draw but never did/could, so I suggest you draw a phoenix (or firebird, pretty much the same thing) in full color. :D I'm ready to finally conquer my quest.

Alright, first week's drawing is finished! I really wanted to incorporate everybody's themes for this one, but I forgot all about justMANGO's somehow. Sorry jM! You'll be first up for next week. I'd suggest trying to draw this week's anyway, if you feel like learning a little about pixel art.

As for the rest of you:
Furbob:
It's pixel art! Nothing more oldschool than pixel art! Also, the penguin is purple because he's some kind of prinny, maybe.
Whiplash:
It's a wolf who just killed a penguin. That's close enough, right? XD
Porsche:
I didn't really draw your theme in here, because I couldn't really fit it, and I wasn't sure you actually wanted to redraw it, since you never replied to the thread. If you planned on drawing a full galge scene, then sorry, I didn't know! X3
The title of this piece is "Bad End" though, in honor of your suggestion. =D
jM:
Sorry, sorry! I'll try yours out next week, either as an extra drawing, or as the main one, depending how lazy I am. :)

Anyway, on to the drawing! As an introduction, the whole thing was done with my mouse, because I didn't feel like installing my tablet drivers on my laptop. I used a shareware program called Graphics Gale to do the whole thing. I suggest you guys download it; it's the best pixel-art program I've found, and the basic version is free, with the full version being a super-cheap $20. :3

Okay, to start, let's get some sort of basic background going! Keep playing with the colors till they look right; without a solid foundation, the whole drawing will be hopeless. If your main colors are ugly, no amount of detail or shiny crap will save your drawing.
Try to pick decently subdued colors for your main background; colors look brighter and more obnoxious when they're spread over a large area.
*AN UGLY FOUNDATION LEADS TO AN UGLY FINISH - NO EXCEPTIONS!*
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/Wolf01.jpg?t=1231828791.jpg

Alright, nice. Not too ugly! The bright green is our foreground, btw, with the darker green being our background. We're basically looking over a cliff into a large valley below. Let's get some kind of crappy looking forest going back there. Basically, just put different colored dots everywhere, with them getting smaller and smaller as they get closer to the horizon.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/Wolf012.jpg?t=1231828858
K, nice. That sucked, right? The trees took me like five hours. Let's add some choppy grass to the top of our foreground, so it looks a little more like grass and a little less like a shitty green square. While we're at it, let's draw a bunch more trees and add some clouds. I forgot to save for a long time here, sorry guys. X3
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/Wolf03.jpg?t=1231828910
For the clouds, basically just pick a lighter, slightly less saturated shade of your sky as a base. Add white where the sun would hit them. There's not much to explain here; you just have to think in 3d for this part, and try imagining where light would hit your clouds. My clouds look a little too much like mountains, oops. Let's just say mine are mountains. Fuck it, right?

Skies aren't just one shade of blue. They get darker as they go up. Just gradually make your sky darker and less saturated as it gets higher. I used GG's "old school two-tone shading" tool for this. It takes two colors you choose and puts them near each other like a checkerboard, creating an effect like the one used in old videogames. It's pretty cool. It makes the lines between the different sky shades a little jagged looking, so they're not boring straight lines. It looks a bit better this way.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/Wolf04.jpg?t=1231828948

Alright, time to draw our two main subjects, the penguin and the wolf. Let's start with a quick sketch, just to get a vague idea of what they're gonna look like. Don't worry if your sketch looks like a pile of shit. Mine does too, see?
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/Wolf05.jpg?t=1231828982
How the fuck is that thing on the right a wolf? To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what wolves look like, and I finished this drawing around one in the morning, and it took me like four hours to finish, so I the last thing I wanted to do was spend another hour trying to get my wolf sketch to look anything like a wolf. So I just drew a big fucking mess over there and said "hey, I'll fix it later lol!" Soooo....sketches are important, but they don't have to be perfect. You can always resketch later, if your sketch proves to be so bad as to be useless.

Okay, so let's fill in our penguin!
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/Wolf052.jpg?t=1231829004
Nice. The main thing here is to make sure to place your shadows and highlights correctly. When choosing shadows, they should usually be darker and less saturated. When choosing highlights, they should usually be lighter and less saturated. A decent rule of thumb is to keep your midtones more saturated than your darks and lights. There are exceptions of course, so if something looks bad, feel free to break some rules. This color rule is only a guideline to help you find colors that look good. Never get locked into a certain way of thinking just because you once heard it on an art forum. That's even worse than following advice, hahah! Remember, the only thing worse than never following advice is ALWAYS following advice!

Now that we've finished up that penguin, let's get to our crazy-ass looking wolf.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/Wolf07.jpg?t=1231829025
Fill him in a bit, I guess. He looks a little better, right?

Well, let's fix him up some more, then, finishing our picture so we can get to fucking bed and wake up for work tomorrow. XD
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/011208WolfFinished.png?t=1231829048
Basically, we just shaved some off his head, because it was all bulky and ridiculous looking. Then we shaded him in a bit. Now, here we used a darkish shade of blue, instead of a gray. You may be wondering why this is - after all, gray is dark white, and our wolf is white, not blue, right? The reason for this is that we shouldn't think of shadows when we're drawing. We should only think of the light hitting our objects. Now, what are the light sources we need to pay attention to in our scene? The sun, obviously.....andddddddd.....the sky! Even though we don't usually think of things this way, for us to see an object, it has to be throwing light at us. We can see the sky. The sky is huge, and it is blue. The sun is on the left, and is much brighter than the sky, so our wolf is bathed in the white light of the sun on the left. On the right, his white fur is only getting hit by the blue light from the sky, so his right side appears blue. Remember, every object in your scene is a light source, and never think in shadows; only consider where the light in your scene is coming from, and the darker parts will come naturally.
And there we go! Pretty good, right? =D

If you spent the time to draw this whole scene, congratulations on finishing. For reference, this drawing took me about four hours to complete, because I totally suck at using a mouse, and I haven't drawn in awhile. If you take longer than me, that's fine. If you finish faster, either you should be helping me teach, or you're not trying hard enough. =P

Thanks to anyone who participates; I hope we can all improve our skills together. ^_^
And if anyone has any questions, feel free to let me know. I might even draw you some diagrams and such, if I'm not too busy.

Kay, time for me to sleep! Stupid work tomorrow!

Wow, that was surprisingly good! =D

Well, I didn't draw this on the computer...fuck that. Anywho, I sketched it up, and heres what I drew up. I dunno, I decided to actually draw mountains, but I'm not sure if I made them too big. Do you think I should keep them like this, or make them small like your cloud mountains are? I plan on colouring this after I get any last input (like on the mountains or whatever). And, I know the beak looks all fucked up, but I think it'll clear up once I colour it orange. I'll probably colour it all tomorrow =p Sorry about the shitty quality of my scanner...

http://i432.photobucket.com/albums/qq43/GeckosGoMoo/Wolf/img007-1.jpg

http://i432.photobucket.com/albums/qq43/GeckosGoMoo/Wolf/img009.jpg

http://i432.photobucket.com/albums/qq43/GeckosGoMoo/Wolf/img010.jpg

Wow, that was surprisingly good! =D
What's the "surprisingly" for?! XD
Nah, just kidding. Thanks, Gotank! =)

Well, I didn't draw this on the computer...fuck that. Anywho, I sketched it up, and heres what I drew up.
That's fine, but for future reference, I've found that spriting is a great art exercise. It forces you to be precise in your color choices. If you can make a good pixel-art painting, any real painting you make will be much better for it. So I'd suggest at least doing small pixel drawings (say, just the penguin, instead of a whole scene) once in awhile at least, because it really is good practice.

Well, I didn't draw this on the computer...fuck that. Anywho, I sketched it up, and heres what I drew up.
They look too big to me. Remember, your pixel sized specks near the horizon are trees. I'd say the mountains should be around half as tall, to keep things in proportion. Also, the way they are, they take up a big piece of your skyline; for me, it makes the composition of the piece seem a little top heavy. A good rule to remember for composition is the Rule of Thirds. Basically, if you cut your picture into thirds going down your picture, and then cut them the same way across, you should consider placing your important subjects either on the points where those lines intersect, or on the lines themselves. Intersection points suggest very important subjects, while lines suggest points of interest. Here's a wiki article, that explains it much better than I could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds
Remember what I said in my last post, though; it's only a guideline to help you make your picture look better. If your picture looks better when you're breaking some rules, make sure to break them. =D
Your penguin doesn't look too bad, except he looks a bit out of perspective. Sadly, I don't really know any perspective rules, so I have no idea how to help you on that. The wolf looks good, except his bottom lip should be tucked in, instead of out, if you're following normal dog anatomy. Which I guess you don't, since the rest of our wolves aren't. XD

Anyway, looking good Whip. Can't wait to see it finished up. ^_^

Ah, and feel free to suggest next week's theme, everybody!
I think I might do two this week, since I missed jM's theme this time around. Feel free to resuggest your old theme, or give me a new one, if that's better for you, jM.
Everybody else, suggest away. The earlier you suggest something, the more obligated I feel to do it.

Edit: Got sick of programming, so I spent a few minutes making this guy, instead.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/011409FinishedLittleGuy.png?t=1231976652
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/jimthegreat1012/FinishedGuy22.png?t=1231995498
He's some kind of school boy? With a red scarf? lol. I wanted to animate him, but I'm using the free version of Graphics Gale, which doesn't let you save gifs, and I didn't feel like moving all the layers into photshop and crap just to animate his scarf. Plus, I need to get back to programming...