How did you learn?

[Gloomer]

Hello,
I'm creating this thread simply so all of you artists can share how did you learn to draw, but more specifically how to draw digital art on the computer. Did you follow courses or learned by yourself? How much time did it take? Just share whatever you want. I'm really into arts now and i just wanted to start from somewhere for digital art!

[Falchion]

Three notes and revelation. I looked through a few tutorials before everything snapped into place for me.

[Suovi]

Well, I've always been quite a self-learner with everything. I usually learn things by myself first and then take classes if needed and still want to do so and have time. But I have never taken any classes on digital art. My first touch with digital art was when I was about 12 years old an joined into an chat RPG where they played a wolf fantasy game and it was a common practice that people drew their own characters and characters for the other people as well, most of them by computer. So I started to do so as well.

I first started with a trial version of Photoshop CS2 and used mouse as I didn't have a tablet that time. I got my first tablet about three years ago when my dad bought me Wacom Intuos 3 although I had saved the money myself as well. But back in the old days I used the CS2 trial and when it ended, I changed into GIMP. I practiced by myself and looked up some tutorials from deviantART, most of them made by Sadir89 who is still one of my favourite artists.

Nowadays I haven't taken a look at so many tutorials as I'm too lazy to read the texts of them. I just look at the pictures and think by myself how I could end up in the same results. So I'm pretty much self-taught in this thing as well, among the other things. I've always liked to learn by practicing and failing and trying again and then succeeding. It has been the most rewarding thing for me to learn that way, but there's a lot of different learners.

[Lumisade]

Started drawing in 2008 november. Bought a wacom tablet 2 months later. I learnt photoshop all on my own. It took me about a year. Of course I still don't master it 100% but well enough! Basically I just googled everything I didn't know, I didn't really follow any tutorials because I was too stupid to look for them...I started with the very basic stuff like "what is the purpose of layers", "How to download different brushes", "How to add texure", "what is a crop-tool" (haha I'm not native english speaker) .

As for drawing...I could only draw stick figures back then, so I started with human head propotions etc.
Only recently I have found this wonderful site and learnt the importance of drawing from life etc. However, in a way I'm glad that when I started drawing I had to struggle with it alone . I had nobody to help me when I had art related problems, noone who could have given me tips and advice. I learnt by making mistakes Well ofcourse, everyone does..but still. NOW I HAVE YOU GUYS! And I go to art school. I learn something new almost every day. And I really enjoy that.

Seriously though...conceptart.org is awesome.

[childMARS]

I believe everything is basically self-teaching.. It is not like someone spoonfeeds you how to do so in art, you must still figure it out yourself.
I never took art class and I hardly understand tutorial, but it was helpful to look at real reference and compare them to cartoons, which are merely simplified version of realism.

[Disciplette]

I looked at tuts and kind of just clicked around. After I became and art major and had to do things for class the teachers would help out. I also asked help from my classmates and did even more clicking around.

[Two Listen]

I looked at as many other artist's paintings I could find, and worked backwards in my head from their outcomes. There are downsides to this - I wouldn't recommend trying to teach yourself anatomy through other people's paintings, as you may just wind up learning their mistakes, but it's a good way to analyze technique and broaden your horizons.

[Nonobot]

Well so far its just be persistence, Ill find something I like (another artists work or something from life) and than try to aply it to how I draw, as what I like changes alot so does the things that influence me.
However, big leaps in my drawing have came from simply understanding how to use Photoshop, (layering, pen tool ext..). More when I was younger, tutorials helped alot.
nd every now and again I get a " Duh! Its so obvious now " moment, which is usualy from looking at my own work and comparing to others/life.
But persistence seems to be the key, if youre not sticking with it youll be doing something else instead of learning! Than youll come back and be like " why arnt I good yet, arughh ". Thats just me maybe.

[Suncut]

I think I started by seeing the photoshop tutorials by nykolai in deviantart, so I downloaded trial of photoshop, frustrated myself with a mouse for like a day and then went out and bought a tablet. I did still lifes and some photocopy excercises and got the hang of the mechanic pretty fast. Of course I still couldn't really draw back then, so everything from imagination looked like crap.

I picked up some different techniques for blending from different tutorials, furiae tutorials was one of them at least. Don't really use them tho, since I don't like a super smooth finish. Started using the pastel or chalk or whatever brush after watching one of the environment downloads from here. I'm way too lazy to actually experiment myself, so I just concentrate on painting as well as I can and implementing the techniques I know. I never really tried replicating what someone else does digitally, just didn't occur to me for some reason. And I learned to paint with oils, which made everything I make digitally infinately better.