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Nsio β Mini tutorial: From Basics to Complexity
#basics #hands #methods #tips #tutorial #howtodraw
Published: 2016-05-09 21:20:27 +0000 UTC; Views: 84228; Favourites: 1962; Downloads: 1818
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Description
I felt it was necessary to draw this kind of mini tutorial just to give an idea how I work on drawings and why I can draw without references. I'll use hands as an example.I believe most people, me included, started with a thought "now I want to draw hands" or something like that. But why would you try drawing hands if you can't draw anything at all? Sure, you need to practice drawing hands, but you will just keep failing a looong time if you jump straight into it. You can look references and study anatomy, but in the end, you probably will just tire yourself. At least I would, which is why I chose a different route. To learn drawing hands, you don't practice hands. You start from basics (note that this is not step by step tutorial, so these aren't necessarily the steps you need for drawing a hand).
Skill jump 1
This is the most deceiving jump as it looks there is hardly any improvement. This is the biggest leap you will take. If you are a beginner, you will come to realize that drawing even a very basic cube is difficult. It's pretty much as simple as it can get and it's still hard. At the same time you may feel expert of drawing cubes after a while. But no, you need to keep drawing those cubes in order to reach mastery of perspective. Now, at this point you may not really need to know how to use one, two or three point perspective, it's just about understanding how a cube looks from different viewing angle
So when you can actually draw a fairly decent (not necessarily perfect cube) you can take the next jump
Skill jump 2
Surprise, it's about drawing even more cubes! This phase is about getting used to work in perspective and build up some mileage in drawing skills. Even if you can draw a nice cube once doesn't mean you can draw a nice cube next time. If you keep drawing a lot of cubes in one go, you will find that you will start to loose your grip and they end up looking just like the bad cube on the first jump. Perseverance and patience is the key here. Btw, this still has nothing to do with hands at all.
Skill jump 3
This isn't really any different from previous jump. It's just about combining some cubes to form chains. Now they actually start looking like fingers already. Draw these kind of chains from different angles and bend them in different ways.
Skill jump 4
This looks like a big jump, but it's just like the skill jump 2 really. Just more cubes next to each other. At this point you most likely need some references, namely your own hand. You also need to study things like symmetry, proportions, scales, etc (but for the simplicity I have opted those out, they have their own skill jumps). The big challenge is to compile a full hand so that it looks convincing even in its cube form
Skill jump 5
This can be difficult but you should also have a lot of experience about drawing by now. You ought to be able to draw just about anything by constructing it with cubes (although here is demonstrate only hands). Now you just observe and study and apply that knowledge on top of your cubes. In fact, if you have done your practice well, you may not need to draw the cubes anymore. The point is to visualize the cubes in your mind as imaginary guides. (It's never wrong to keep drawing the cubes, in fact, at difficult parts a drawn cube will make it easier to visualize how you need to draw the hand. Skipping cubes is just about saving some time).
If you understand how 3D forms work by now, you ought to know how to shade as well. A free skill yay!
Skill jump 6
At this point you will actually make those hands do something. This gets tricky only because you will need to know how hands interact with other objects. But if you have good memory, you may not need references at all. However, if you want to be correct with your drawings (like playing a distinct chord on a guitar) you have to study the subject. I'm satisfied if it resembles the real thing even remotely.
So what's the actual point of this method? The big idea is to make it easier to remember everything. You see, basically you only need to know how a cube behaves in perspective. Then you just draw more cubes next to each other. It's just about applying one memory of how a cube work. You can also use organic forms if you prefer, they behave just like cubes too. That will save a lot of processing power to things that really matter. When you draw this way, you don't need to go trough everything you have learned over and over again. You jump into creating art and you then paste your knowledge of skin texture, anatomy etc on these basic wireframe drawings. The good thing is that you will be able to start drawing much earlier than by spending all your time on tedious anatomy studies (which you will eventually need, but they become Β much more useful when you can already draw something).
Nsio of the Hermit Mystics
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Comments: 69
I think i am one of these people who stepped over these basics and could do somehow cool things, however beeing never 100% confident in what i was doing and not beeing able to prevent certain mistakes..
I found out, that i couldnt draw chains of cubes that look uniformly, what i take as hint that i certainly am beyond skill jump 4, maybe even lower. I think it is important to not only draw some random cubes or even chains, but you really have to draw something from which you can tell whether you did it right or not - like a circular chain of cubes. Otherwise you dont know if what you drew was exactly how you wanted it to be and believe that you wanted it exactly this way. So drawing chains where you can tell whether you did them right or not might be a method to tell for yourself which skill jumps you still have to do at these cubes.
Ill try that, thank you so much for these Tutorials, there are many others that really helped too!
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Hehe these stages can be really deceptive. Last time I was here I thought I was at stage 3 when I was really at stage 1... Then over the last 7 days I took a leap from 1 to 3 and am now in transition towards 4.
You see it's so easy to fool oneself into thinking you're X good because you can draw X. But anyone can easily draw a box, and with very little practice, from any angle. But not anyone can fully control the proportions and perspective of their box. They just draw lines they know will lead to a box and while they may know roughly the perspective it will be from, they don't know if the box will truly be the perfect cube they Imagined. But because they can draw it perfectly from one perspective it's easy to think βI can draw perfect cubes all day!β when really... They don't understand enough about the cube nor perspective to be truly capable of drawing a perfect view from any angle and of any distance...
This was me, a couple days ago. Once I fixed my cubes to end up almost exactly as planned in 3/4 perspective, other things I drew started falling in line as well. I've always been able to draw figures in poses, but if I tried to imagine a pose, it would end up severely distorted in all the wrong places.
Now? Now if I imagine a pose, it will at least be readable. It won't be anywhere near perfect, perspective is always a little bit off. Just a tiny bit (it shows, but it's hard to do anything about it. It's never far off, just a tiny bit. Maybe just enough so I can see it, even if others might not)
So much changes if you just get the basics right. But knowing whether or not you actually have the basics down? Knowing yourself?
That's where the real challenge lies
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Indeed. It's fascinating how the rest is just about applying the basics and adding new rules to them to create literally anything. It's efficient way to work because the same rules can be used anywhere rather than doing tedious practices to learn drawing everything one by one. This is about building a foundation which then allows infinite improvements
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Yes, a spiral of infinite improvements. I wonder why we even sign up for this knowing it never ends
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amazing , thank you N-sio for yours tips respect to drawing handsΒ Β
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this has given me the motivation i needed to get my ass back off my chair and start to work for my passion again for first time since i had my big breakdown.... thank you for this!
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What you have said is true. I have tried to learn anatomy from many references but in the end its not about the anatomy itself which is being a problem, In drawing hand with additional five fragile fingers, the hardest part is imagining the perspective of each finger when they are moving (this is a nightmare)
Your explanation seems really make sense, even if i have to work again backward i believe by following your trick i will be able to solve my problem in drawing hand
Thanks for your effort and your explanation Β
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As I said in the description:Β To learn drawing hands, you don't practice handsIt may sound counterintuitive and yes, you most likely need to backtrack a lot, but it's necessary for attaining proper understanding on how everything works. Basically you only need to see the effort once and then just apply it on everything else.
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Agreed.
I have started to do this method of learning and..... it really is as hard as i had imagined
However, doing this kind of training itself is amusing for me. From this exercise, i can understand how to draw box from certain angle and i'll be able to understand perfectly how perspective exactly work from that angle at some point, which is a massive progress for my perspective understanding
It seems this training will took a bit time before i understand this method perfectly or even apply it for drawing those damn fingers
Once again i'll say my gratitude for your effort and explanation, it really help me in improving my skill (especially in perspective understanding) Β
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Awesome tutorial, and I loved the explanation you wrote. This was really helpful!
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I would add skill7 to integrate the hand with the rest of body and other accessory.
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Well, technically drawing the full body is completely separate process with its own skill jumps, so making the integration the next skill jump doesn't sound right. This process can be applied directly to full body drawing, it's just that there are a lot more cubes to work with
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Oh that way makes sense, in my experience, there is a great distance between know how and the said skill become effective. Perhaps you expanded that one in the other tutorial, I think there is a reworking factor in applying those techniques, most people would make a mistake during the execution, discover this mistake and correction is an important factor to advance in one's level. If one does not able to detect one's own mistake early on, error will accumulate and one keeps wondering why there is no progress. <-- I think this is the difficulty most people facing in their art development. This would require one to build a realistic perspective on one's own work, we need to constantly look back to our own work to see what is going on. Also it is another great skill to see pass the dizzying of a great work and discover its elemental form. I think coloring is even a more complex subject than drawing the shape, there are too many different ways to do it and none is explained well, there is a comprehensions part of knowing how things should look and there is a mechanical part of how to effectively cram all the diverse color element into an area.
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Exactly, and that's why the first skill jump is so deceptive. If you don't get it right, then the rest of the skill jumps will lack solid foundation. Many beginners, and even seasoned artists claim to have passed this step, but it's most likely just what they think. They will later find themselves stalling and wondering how to improve, when it's probably just the very first skill jump. The more experienced the artist is, the harder it's to accept such tiny detail, but one has to be honest to oneself.
Coloring is indeed a vast field to explore. That's why I have been mostly ignoring it to allocate more efforts on figuring out the concepts.
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I think there is a difference between poor implementation and not know what to do. There are three stage of learning a skill, in the beginning, one have to consciously apply the techniques learned, most people struggle because they aren't applying what they learned.<-- This is really easier said that done. The next stage is to monitor the quality of practice, this can take a while. The third stage is when one truly acquired the skill and become default to the artist. Art is many ways are similar to sport and cooking, there are not much to learn, there are lots to do.
Coloring is less oblivious than drawing in terms of right and wrong, in most cases the drawing can be correct or incorrect within or without its context, this cannot be said for coloring. Rather coloring is a varying degree of intensity, it has a vast more mode of expression than drawing. And this is what made coloring difficult to grasp, I often end up deciding between multiple valid result.
Seeing you as an expert on the subject, would you mind to check out some of my work? I feel Im getting into the bottle neck. There are things that aren't easy to see from my own perspective. I would love to have you critic(the recent ones), but its up to you. If you take commission, I can pay you to recreate my own work to see my flaws in detail.
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Yeah. A lot of things can be learned just by observation and self-analysis. Art schools force students to work a lot, but in the end it's still up to the students to see the effort of learning.
Just like with coloring, there are color choices that work better than others. Of course, it also depends what the artist want to convey with work. Understanding how colors work with each other is essential to achieve desirable results, such as chromatic aberration, which adds strong feel of depth when done right.
I had a quick look at your works. You are obviously better at drawing mechanical stuff than human figures. While technically you aren't doing bad (in fact, some of the works are actually really well executed), I would say that your works look somewhat dull. They are nice, but are lacking something that intrigues the mind. There are many possible reasons for that. For example:
It's super irritating that none of the elements you have drawn fall on any composition line (rule of thirds, golden section). In other words, while the elements themselves are drawn very well, they are misplaced on the canvas. There are some neat buildings yes, but why? What this drawing tries to convey? That white upside-down pyramid at the top looks like it ends at the canvas border. It looks like an icicle. On top of that, it's extremely aggressive and dominant element which acts as repulsive force. In other words, viewers will lose their interest in these kind of works quickly because it doesn't tell anything and is stressing to look at.
To make this work, you would need composition that allows the eye to roam naturally on the drawing and the elements should be placed in harmonious manner. Also, maybe having more of those pyramid templeships at the sky would make the one at the foreground more justified.
I'm not taking commissions, and my fixings would be just possible solutions which aren't necessarily faithful to your intentions. Besides, I can't say I could do significantly better than you even though I can point out the issues.
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That is some well thought opinion, I never got an detailed response on development from another artist. I agree with most things you pointed out, even I cannot see the problem yet. The composition I did not see the flaw myself but I think I will take your advice for granted in my future works. Because it is a mistake I cannot yet see(yet). I think I do felt the same when you pointed out its better to have more of these ships on the background, to provide a sense of depth and justify the view that is taken on the foreground.
My work is dull I sometimes felt that way as well. I think this may have to do I mainly experienced in descriptive art but not in expressive art. I cannot say I will practice and get better because art is only my hobby, not my career, what I can do is do some more homework for my new works, and try to get things right one step at a time.
I understand your thought on fixing, it makes perfect sense, that having another artist to "fix" my work would not result in correcting my flaw, because each artist's intention and method are different, the only one that can fix me is myself.
Im glad that we have some interest in common, I did not intend to get a magic formula from an experienced artist, but to seek an objective measure from someone whom know what they are doing. I had many attempts trying to have a conversation with serious artist, and you are the first to reply with this much thought. That is deeply appreciated.
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You're most welcome. Great artist don't either have the time, or they just don't want to get involved because then it will take their time. And in most occasions, they don't get anything from it. They surely get a lot of such requests, because even I get them frequently.
"I cannot say I will practice and get better because art is only my hobby, not my career"
This is one reason I would rather not help people out, because it takes a lot of effort and time to write up things and the recipient likely won't even get it or follow it. So I won't even get that little satisfaction of seeing improvements. Sometimes it feels like people are just trying to find easy ways to skip the learning part. I still write up quite a lot to help out people regardless, especially when I have confirmed that the person is willing to see some effort in their replies (like you have here).
I though understand that it's not reasonable to expect people to be dedicated at learning to draw. I know that because I'm actually very lazy myself. I wanted to learn to draw quickly and easily, which is why I focused on very specific fields and concepts. I also do a lot of practices so that I can live with the issues without needing to address them right away (you may call it an excuse for not wanting to see the effort 
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That I figured sometimes ago, most professional artist do not have the time to chat with armatures, they arenβt using DA as a social platform, rather an advertising platform. Maybe they do have the desire to communicate on a deeper level but the number of willing participant and the abundant of immateriality prevent this from happening on any personal or meaningful level.
Im sorry I should express myself better, I mean I cannot guarantee the level of dedication professionals did. However, I intend to do my best to keep it up according to my own schedule. Even art is only a hobby to me it is still takes priority, Im willing to give up leisure activities such as gaming and movie for time to work on art. Of course there isnβt a magic formula to art just as there isnβt one for sport.
For now, I think your tutorial covers most of my concerns at the moment, there are many things that makes perfect sense that I wish I knew earlier. My latest work already incorporated your method in constructing the body and posture, it was amazing I can do this half the time it used to take. The true value of tutorial isnβt much of knowhow, but introduce a way to reason the problem. It is not meant to be fallowed but referenced. So far yours was the only one I found useful, there at too many cringe worthy tutorials on DA, I mean form people that should not make tutorials.
I think the reason we love to do art is quite complex, sure we all love to have recognition and phrase, but its more than the superficial. I felt there is something I want to share; you must felt that too.
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I found it to be the easiest to draw the left or right sides of the blocks in series first, then add the indications for the other sides. I wonder if that is normal, or if it will change with practice.
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If it works for you, then it's perfectly fine. For me it varies which face I draw first and I guess I do it just for trying out if either will make it easier to visualize the orientation.
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Do you recommend the use of rulers to do sketches or would you rather advise not to use aids? I'm torn between "cheating" to get to some higher results faster, or learning to go without.
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Well, ruler is a tool to be used, so it's not wrong to use it. With perspective, you actually should use it.
When it comes to digital drawing, there are some aids that are good to use when you already can draw pretty well and you want to make the process more efficient. For example, while you can rotate a misaligned body part digitally, it's good to try drawing it right first.
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I see, allright. I'll go and try mixing thigns up, then!
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The jump from Skill lvl 5 to lvl 6 looks too high but I'll try all the steps.
Thanks for this tutorial!
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This was quite helpful. Thanks for sharing!
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A friend of mine linked me to this new tutorial! I didn't realize you had it at first, because you haven't yet added it to your tutorial folder yet. I didn't notice it until now! 
But the timing is perfect because I've been trying to draw hands for a few weeks now and finding the right structure. Coming back to boxes though feels like I'm practicing all of the "prerequisites" in your learning order chart. My sense of perception is improving in how I'm drawing lines and being more accurate (or nitpicky! XD). Proportions, basic techniques; even if I'm not practicing actual anatomy, I feel I can see how practice these basic geometric shapes helps you in more areas than it might seem. I guess it's just hard to realize that at first, because you first think "I'm just drawing a box" ^^.
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Hmm pretty cool, maybe I'll try repeating this. I think my current skill level is around 3, with some effort I could squeeze into 4. I really want to get to that level 5, but in good time (I'd be happy to be at level 4 right now, then work my way up to 5 and 6 when the time comes)
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I guess that I have to just follow the step for one time... It's not really a good idea to try and retry without work on basis....
It's difficult something to just work on something that looks "easy" XD
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I'm loving your tutorials, and how you are arranging / presenting them.
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Does this cube-method work with other shapes as well? Say, If i wanted to improve my necks. Then a cylinder (or two) might work better, no?
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See thisΒ www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ufz7β¦
You can apply this to basically anything. Nsio's above method explains the jumps between skill levels (e.g. when you master 1 thing, try mastering level 2, when level 2 is got, get to level 3, and so on) but that video I feel kinda breaks down what you should do in-between jumps to actually master each level before you move on. (Or if you want, stop thinking in levels to begin with, and just "better than last time" instead)
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Yeah, the principles are the same with any form so it doesn't really matter how you go about it. The reason why cubes are so useful is that the orientation of the faces is easy to read. With spherical objects it's more difficult to visualize the orientation, but it can be easier to work with some areas (like cylinder as a neck)
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Ok, nice. I'll probably give this method a try now. Thx.
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Oh helpful, your methods are often long winded so I don't try them because I'm plain lazy, but I might end up trying this one.Β
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this tut seems like its crafted for me
Thank you, O Nsio! I have used this technique in my 3d art for over 4 years now, and it does help in distorting the perspective of the reference image to fit the twisted nature of the paper angle. But using it to draw without references is a thing of its own! Off to practice! Thanx again
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Because everyone is agreeing with you, I'll play devil's advocate (as it was). Maybe to learn a little more if I can:
Wouldn't drawing cubes be the thing that is boring and tiring? I tried that a while back and got major frustrated drawing them every day because there was only so much I could think of to do with them, leading me to use real life references for how to position the cube, leading me to further frustration when I realized I'm just back to "copying what I see". Just this time with abstraction.
You're the pro, not me, but I feel my brain would get tired and learn little from drawing cubes or spheres, or lines over and over, because there is no significance to them. When I draw that chair across the room I'm learning what makes it "that chair", where when I draw cubes randomly I'm just doodling randomly.
"This phase is about getting used to work in perspective and build up some mileage in drawing skills." You keep mentioning mileage, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to learn any of theseΒ fundamentals like perspectiveΒ out of no where with the simple act of drawing shapes. Like understanding theΒ anatomyΒ of the hand, etc.
Not to mention how do I learn to correct perspective mistakes if I don't understand perspective, etc. Maybe as a warm up, but not touching observational drawing, or the fundimentals, while doing this seems like would be the source of boredom and tedium.
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What Nsio is talking about, to draw the cubes in a more creative manner, and seeing what you can do with the cubes is all fine and good. But perhaps the root of the problem is your focus on the results rather than the process. I believe that to really get all there is to get out of drawing, you need to enjoy the process of drawing (even drawing badly) more than you enjoy (or desire) good results. Drawing is a mind game, play to win.
If you draw for the sake of drawing, the enjoyment of going through a drawing, you can't lose anymore. 
Mileage isn't just mileage, this is true mileageΒ www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ufz7β¦ (mindlessly drawing does not give you any mileage (at best muscle memory, probably just bad muscle memory), attentive drawing is what gives you mileage)
If you think you don't understand perspective and that bothers you... Why don't you focus on learning perspective then? It's what I'm doing right now, I understand most of the basic concepts of perspective, now it's just a matter of guesswork until it "feels" right to me. You can see just from a piece of my latest practice how this is going cestarian.deviantart.com/art/T⦠see how it starts somewhat of a mess, i start noting whats wrong (this is what I should pay attention to), decide to shift my focus on perspective, try drawing in perspective, it failed miserably, ok, then I tried again, I drew slower, paid more attention to the concept of perspective I know (such as closer objects look larger, above horizon you are looking underneath, below horizon you are looking on top of) and voila, second attempt is much better. Sure, I lucked out a bit, but then I tried again, and got an almost acceptable result, and then I keep doing this for hours and hours on end until it all looks right, and then I have my sweet sweet mileage and finally know what the hell I'm doing
Btw if you read the description of that practice I linked, you can see a little cheat I used to kickstart me into drawing the same~ish things over and over again when A: I'm bad at it (so it's hard to start) and B: It's boring to draw the same shit over and over again. I use sugar and snacking addiction in my favor, and reward myself not after I draw, but while I draw. The cravings for sugar make me go "oh what the hell, guess I'll draw some more".
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Thank you! I really do need to keep in mind "I love to draw, I love to create something out of nothing." I have been trying to push harder on this idea a lot lately. Like drawing fan art even though I'm not confident, writing/drawing comic scripts even though I'm not a great doodler, etc. It's very satisfying seeing my jokes on a page, even if it's so messy that no one but me gets it.
Now I just need to move that attitude into my "studies to get better". Maybe I'm making my own toxic environment for myself by always looking at my favorite manga artists and thinking "wow I can be there some day" then turning around and just seeing the big void of distance. Instead I should focus on the now more, and more on how what I can do now will make me feel as studious and ambitious as those artists rather than feeling as skilled.
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I know that feel so well, to each his own, but for me I never stop looking at better artists thinking "Wow, I can be there some day" (Because I know I can, and I know you can too), but I also (trade secret 
Just thinking about it reminds me of the first drawing tutorial I saw. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0dH4P⦠(there's a part 2 too)
But well, do what works for you, I've found that bringing practices down to my level helps (like with the Bogsys cestarian.deviantart.com/art/T⦠(this is me practicing figure drawing, perspective, volume and well, drawing the basic shapes) right now I noticed that my control over the basic shapes is not as good as I want it to be, so I'm thinking about downsizing even further and going back to just drawing boxes and cylinders till I get good) You gotta start at your lowest denominators, and work your way up from there from bad to good (or acceptable) then find another lowest denomintor and repeat, until you can't find a drawing skill/subskill that you're not acceptably good at. I started with gesture the other day, I didn't even understand gesture. Then, I understood gesture, got acceptably good with it in a very short span of time, moved on to what I just linked, I need a bit more practice, but I'm no longer unacceptably bad with perspective, and with just a little practice and experimentation I can take it to new heights... And so on. First master the easiest things then master the hard things, use the learning curve to your advantage (80% of your skill comes from only 20% of your practice, but when your skill level is at 80%, progress slows exruciatingly much and you need the other 80% of your future practice to go from "good" to "master")
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Haha, that's good! No one should take everything I say (or any other artist says) for granted. This will be a long comment
Your way of thinking (or your chosen viewpoint for the sake of this discussion) represents typical human mind. You're right, drawing just cubes over and over is boring and it would be more enjoyable to learn drawing things such as boobs right away. In this tutorial I'm basically saying that you should draw cubes over and over again. But that's not a binding rule. This is why it becomes so difficult to teach art, because nothing I say can be taken literally. I should tell you everything I know and you should be able to absorb everything I say the way I intended to fully understand the reason why you should draw cubes. But this is the reality: I don't have the time to explain everything, in fact, I don't know everything yet (or I don't know how to explain it) and even if I did, you (or anyone else) wouldn't grasp it all in one go anyway. So I'm forced to use an example and certain viewpoint to the matter (like you are taking devil's advocate point of view here to present your arguments).
The thing is that people jump right into drawing thing X without understanding how to draw at all. They will face at least three types of barriers: 1)lack of knowledge and understanding about the subject (like hands), 2)lack of actual drawing skills and techniques and 3)lack of understanding how to tackle with these two issues. Now, the first barrier is really difficult to work with if you don't have a solid foundation first, so it's for the best to skip for the time being (people don't have the means to work with this problem efficiently, neither did I). HOWEVER, it's fine to try tackling this barrier every now and then (you need to challenge yourself/see where you are currently standing), but it's more like a long term goal: you aim to beat the first barrier, but it's not beneficial to spend too much efforts on it at first. I'll elaborate a bit later.
The second barrier (to learn the skill of making art) is inevitable if you want to become an artist. You have to tackle this barrier, but you don't need to make it your priority. In fact you can imagine it as water: you can drown into it or you can surf on it. In other words, the actual drawing skill will develop almost on its own while you focus on the third barrier.
With my tutorials, I'm trying to explain how to beat the third barrier, because when you start to understand how things work, everything else will come naturally to you. I base my understanding on perspective, because it's so useful. So what's the difference between hands and cubes? Cube is probably the simplest form which clearly shows the perspective. You will determine the perspective by analyzing the orientation of the faces. They point in six directions on three axes that form 3D space. I won't go into detail how perspective works, but this is where everything starts, because the exactly the same rules apply on everything else (cubes are just easy to read). So the greatest obstacle at this point is understanding how perspective works (and in this tutorial I assume that you will learn how perspective works after X period of time), if you start drawing hands with cubes, you don't actually need to spend much efforts on tackling with the first barrier. Also, as long as you get the lines somewhat straight and in place, you don't need to worry about the second barrier that much either. You can start drawing immediately.
Now, of course you need to do some rudimentary studies and observations about the subjects you want to draw even at this point. However, that doesn't mean tackling a whole anatomy book. You can start arranging cubes together and discover "hey, these start to look like fingers". With the simple forms, you can actually try drawing hands, even though you really don't know how to draw them. You actually start achieving something and that's what you need to boost your motivation and confidence. As time goes on (and as a result of further analyzes and studies) you will begin to understand the key elements of hands. By the time you do, you actually start to understand everything else as well. Feet for example aren't much different from hands and the torso can be constructed with cubes as well. When you go on, you passively work on the first and second barriers, freeing a lot of brain capacity for focusing only on the third barrier. This is why this method is so beneficial: the more you focus on the basics, the less intimidating everything else will become. Also, jumping from human figure drawing to animals or vehicles is just a matter of arranging cubes in different way (and doing rudimentary studies about the said subjects while you keep practicing the basics.
I still agree with you that this can be rather boring and you can't ignore real life references. But the more I draw, the more I'm drawn back to the basics. So it's not wrong to start from the complexity, but to fully exploit it, you will find yourself returning to the basics over and over again. It doesn't have to be boring though. I guess it depends on the person, but I personally am really curious about perspective and basic forms, just because I now know how much I can save efforts from tedious studies and practices. I haven't spend much time on anatomy studies but I can draw somewhat believable human figures regardless. I've done the studies while while reading manga or while doing something else, slowly building up my visual memory. And I believe that this method is actually very logical as it's based on very simple concepts. Perspective is difficult, I agree, but at the same time it's very simple. When you understand how it works, you will get what I mean. For now you just have to believe or ignore what I say
So this became a really long comment and I'm not sure if I really answered all you questions, but I hope you get the point. If you don't, it's fine too. You're free to form your own opinions and to figure out how to tackle with drawing, but if you just get over perspective and follow this kind of progression, I can tell you that even cubes get very interesting after that!
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What an awesome comment and tutorial! thank you so much, Nsio! :3. The timing is even better because I've been trying different ways of practicing my hands. Instead, I think I'm gonna go back to cubes and draw lots of them
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Thanks for the long reply! I think I get what you are saying. I'll just have to be more creative with my cubes! Maybe I was feeling frustrated because I was ready for the "draw them in chains" step but continued to draw individual boxes.Β
Also before you posted I had went ahead and tried to tackle some of the ideas you got me thinking into, and even made some paper meche cubes of dif proportions to "check" my drawings - maybe I need to push refining and keep this "daily jog" as a crucial part of my "workout".
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You're welcome! As the person below says, drawing cubes isn't the only way, but since I base my whole understanding on perspective, I can't really explain the benefits of other methods
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