female characters

**cfitzart** · June 16th, 2004, 12:45 AM

hi just thought id show some of the drawings i did from this great book 'techniques for drawing female manga characters' - the left side is the book, the right side is my copy. i did these using pencil to work out the shapes & then going over with pen.

**georgem** · June 16th, 2004, 02:15 AM

what did you learn from copying those pictures?

**cfitzart** · June 16th, 2004, 06:43 PM

just general increase in skills i guess...the main thing when copying i find is to look at shapes rather than what it is - say when drawing a face, you copy the shapes in the face, rather than think of it as a face. one way to practice doing this is to try drawing from an upside down picture, it should be no harder to draw from an upside down picture if all you're doing is copying shapes.

**Scubasteve** · June 25th, 2004, 01:06 PM

I have mixed feelings about these Manga drawing books. A friend of mine has several of them and draws exactly what he sees in them just as you have done. I don't see how this helps you as an artist. I think you would be better served by drawing from real life then from these books. These books teach you to draw stylized characters in specific poses, but don't teach the basic fundementals of drawing. If you have to draw something not in the book you won't be able to, because you wont know how. I guess my feelings aren't so mixed. I don't like these books...

**dns2k** · June 27th, 2004, 03:59 PM

all i would look at is line weights considering the simple nature of some manga styles that seems to be what is played up more. other than that good job.

-dns

**Corvus Corax** · June 27th, 2004, 04:01 PM

I use to copy manga all the time, to do the same thing you where doing, which is working on shapes, although I limited the amount of time on each copy to only 10 minutes. Drawing for more than that amount of time on a copy of a picture wouldn't help me much in the manner of practice.
At lease i don't think it would help me much...
You never know

**cfitzart** · June 27th, 2004, 05:38 PM

thanks scuba icey dns corvus for your comments
scubasteve i have done life drawing classes before, i guess its best to have a variety of lessons.. you should at least try out the books just as you should do some life drawing i suppose. i try not to spend too much time copying others work for practice though corv. sorry not sure what you mean about line weights dns? thanx icey but its not really my style is it

anyone else have drawings you've copied from another work. maybe this could be a thread to post them if there isnt one already. ill rename the subject to 'copied & copy' or something like that if anyones interested.. & you have to include both pictures - the copied one & the copy so we can see the differences