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Educational ARTicles

There are a lot of good resources on the Internet for learning art! To aid you on your quest, we have gathered some free (and legal) articles / images / videos / books. They are mostly organized by artist, but are not listed within any particular order. Please use the search function in your browser if you are looking for something specific...

Monika Zagrobelna

On both her blog and her Envato Tuts page, Monika has a huge number of articles covering many different aspects of art. For example:

• I Want To Draw, But I Don't Know Where To Start
• I Want To Draw: Simple Exercises For Complete Beginners
• How To Learn To Draw
• How To Draw Animals
• How To Draw Textures

...and this is just a small sampling. One could seriously get an entire art school education from her articles alone! Even if you already have some skill in art, or are interested in mediums other than drawing, she shares a wealth of useful information.

Joumana Medlej

Joumana has a very helpful Human Anatomy Fundamentals Course based off of her book Drawing People. She also has a couple of excellent courses on Arabic Calligraphy and Geometric Design. Her tutorial diagrams are jam packed with a ton of useful info too. Definitely worth checking out.

Jeff Searle

Jeff runs an interesting blog (though it is not always about art!). His series of posts on drawing heads / doing portraits are real gems. To make them easier to peruse, here is all of them in order:

• Fear of Art
• Drawing Simple Heads
• Introduction To Drawing The Head
• The Human Skull
• Muscles of The Head & Neck
• Constructing The Head
• Drawing The Head From Different Angles
• The Divided Ball & Plane Method
• Proportions of The Human Head
• The Features
• Drawing The Eye
• Drawing The Nose
• Drawing The Ear
• Drawing The Mouth
• The Head In Profile
• Planes of The Head
• Lighting The Head
• Tone On The Head
• Drawing Hair
• Male & Female Differences
• The Head On The Neck & Shoulders
• Head Types
• Drawing Heads At Different Ages
• Drawing Heads: Ethnicity
• Facial Expression
• Planning A Portrait
• A Short Introduction To Light
• A Short Introduction To Colour
• Colour Relationships
• Portraits In Color
• Painting A Digital Portrait Step-By-Step

Darlene Nguyen

Darlene has a website, RapidFireArt, with a course on the basics of realistic drawing. If you want to get into photorealistic rendering, it is a great place to start.

Brian Duey

Like Darlene, Brian also has some excellent tutorials on photorealistic rendering.

Niklas Jansson

Niklas gives some good art advice, especially in regards to rendering color. [Note: The same website has tutorials by other artists as well.]

Seiichi Nakamura (中村成一)

Seiichi is a well-known artist in Japan who shares some interesting figure drawing material on his website. Two important caveats: There is some drawn nudity, and all of the posts are in Japanese! However, the images usually speak for themselves. If you are having a hard time navigating the home page, here is an English translation of the main tutorial links.

Kitajima

Like Seiichi's website above, Kitajima has a lot of helpful figure drawing material, such as photo references of various hand gestures from many different angles. It is a great place to get the fundamentals of artistic anatomy down. There is also a little bit of tutorial text that accompanies some of the images, but it is available in several languages (i.e.: Japanese, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Korean).

Josh Reed

Josh has many images on his website, each of which contains a helpful distillation of beginner art information. He has also recently started making YouTube videos! [Caution: Some of the images have a tiny bit of nudity (both photographic and drawn).]

Meg Wittwer

In addition to illustrating Paul Tillery IV's humorous Thundercluck book, Meg also wrote a fun and informative series of "Tutor Tuesday" articles. They are a nice starting point if you just got into drawing, and some of them might contain a few useful tips if you are already experienced. All of them are available in a download of PDFs categorized by subject as well.

Lorenzo Etherington

One half of the famous Etherington brother duo, Lorenzo has hundreds of art tips in his series "How To Think When You Draw". They are available on multiple websites, but in my opinion, are easiest to navigate on his deviantArt page. If you are interested in writing, his brother Robin also makes the fascinating "How To Think When You Write" series.

Gregory Manchess

Gregory has a series of blog posts called "10 Things..." that covers what he has learned throughout his illustrious career in oil painting. To make them easier to browse, here is a list of them in chronological order [Caution: There is some painted nudity here and there.]:

• ...To Remember About Training
• ...I Remember About Planning Paintings
• ...I Remember About Procrastinating
• ...I Remember About Portfolios
• ...I Remember About Tracing
• ...About Planning Pictures
• ...About Generating Paintings
• ...About Talent
• ...Applying Paint
• ...About Competitions
• ...About Adventure Painting
• ...About Painting In Oils
• ...Word List
• ...Painting Book Covers
• ...About Value
• ...Painting Like A Writer
• ...Knowing When To Stop
• ...Evaluate Your Painting
• ...Finding Your Audience
• ...Using Black
• ...What's In The Picture
• ...About Reps
• ...The Business of Illustration
• ...About Edges
• ...Painting Priorities
• ...Sketching the Model
• ...Failure
• ...Crumping
• ...Overlap
• ...Cropping
• ...Horror Portfolio
• ...Storytelling Pictures
• ...What You Cannot Know
• ...About Edges
• ...Visual Storytelling
• ...Painting Like A Writer
• ...Contrast
• ...Clever Colloquialisms
• ...The Little Book of Talent
• ...Brushwork
• ...Ideas
• ...Contrast
• ...Painting Portraits
• ...Color
• ...Mixing Color
• ...10 Days To A Breakout Painting
• ...10 Best

Salgood Sam

Max Douglas (who goes by Salgood Sam) is a fantastic comic book artist. His Dynamic Drawing blog has some very interesting articles that are worth reading.

James Gurney

James Gurney (who is probably most well-known for writing and illustrating the Dinotopia series) runs a blog with all sorts of things (e.g.: inspiring pieces of art, demonstrations of techniques, general art advice, and some personal journal-type entries).

Andrew Loomis

Many thanks to nekobusses for reminding me of Andrew Loomis' many useful books. These are classic texts on nearly every aspect of illustration. [Please note that there is a small amount of nudity, particularly within Figure Drawing For All It's Worth.] If you would like physical copies, they have been republished by Titan Books. If you like the "Golden Era" illustrators like Andrew Loomis, you might also enjoy The Famous Artist Course from the 1960's.

Pedro Medeiros

Pedro wrote The Pixel Grimoire, a really good introduction to pixel art. He has also done a ton of one image tutorials on concepts related to pixel art that are really fun to look at.

ArtyFactory

ArtyFactory is a website with a lot of lessons on appreciation of different styles of art and basic demonstrations of different media.

Handprint

Handprint is a website with a ton of detailed material on watercolor, color theory, perspective, and a few other topics. Intriguing!

ArtGraphica

ArtGraphica is a beautiful website with lessons for a variety of different mediums.

DeviantArt Galleries

DeviantArt is filled with tutorials by many highly-skilled artists. Here is a selection of a few gallaries [Caution: There may be some nudity here and there. However, you also probably won't be able to see it unless you specify that you are 18+.]...

• betsyillustration
Betsy Luntao has written some of the most useful material on perspective that I have ever seen. If you want to know how to apply perspective rather than just theorize about it, then read her tutorials and download her free book. [If you are adamant on spending money to learn perspective, then get Marshall Vandruff's $12 video set and/or Robbie Lee's $20 book Perspective Made Easy.]

• Nsio
Nsio has broken down drawing into a science. He makes a lot of interesting observations and shares helpful advice on how to develop your skill.

• DerSketchie
DerSketchie gives tutorials (mostly on human anatomy) that are concise and pleasing to look at.

• Nova-MadArt
Nova really gets into human anatomy (muscles especially).

• AquaSixio
AquaSixio covers various aspects of color and light (in reference to digital art).

• JohnoftheNorth
JohnoftheNorth provides some useful art tips (mainly about rendering and color theory).

• funkymonkey1945
Funkymonkey1945 has a huge number of interesting images within his gallery (e.g.: simplified anatomy breakdowns, step-by-step portraits, etc.). However, keep in mind that it can be a little hard to navigate because there are a ton of images, some repeat, and a few share the same titles even though they are different.

...There are similar collections of tutorials on Tumblr as well (e.g.: Lena's Drawing 101)

YouTube Channels

• Painting Tube
This website acts like a directory for art videos!

• Adjag2
• AKIHITO YOSHITOMI
• Alma Luna
• Alpay Efe
• Alphonso Dunn
• Andrew Tischler
• Archipel
• Art by Galen
• Art of Wei
• Becca Hillburn
• Brushes and Bunnies
• Chommang_drawing
• Cosmic Spectrum Art
• Dan Beardshaw
• Dan Nelson
• David Chelsea
• Dearing Wang
• DoKiDoKi Drawing
• dP Art Drawing
• dr. Draw
• Draw like a Sir
• Emoco Ch. / えもこ
• ergojosh
• Ethan Becker
• Fine Art Academy
• Fine Art-Tips
• Forrest Imel
• FZDSCHOOL
• HadesPsd
• hide channel
• Istebrak
• Jack Montmeat
• John Muir Laws
• Josh Art
• kelogsloops
• Kirsty Partridge Art
• 空罐王
• Krenz's Artwork
• Kuzomari
• Kyle Hefty
• Love2DrawManga
• Love Life Drawing
• Manga Materials [Personal Notes]
• Marc Brunet
• Marco Bucci
• Mark Crilley
• Mei Yu
• Midlife Artist
• Miss Jisu
• Mithrilda
• moderndayjames
• おてだま/ OTEDAMA ART
• PeterHanStyle
• PhipsArt
• Pixel Overload
• Proko
• Reagan Doodles
• Richard Smitheman
• Roberto Osti
• Salem Shanouha
• Sanjog Sinnarkar
• Sara Tepes
• 高原さと/ Sato Takahara
• SchaeferArt
• Sinix Design
• Sketch A Day
• SLEW
• S. Michael Hampton
• STEVE HUSTON Draws from fife
• Stephen Travers Art
• Sycra
• Terry Moore Art
• The Drawing Database

Academic / Technical Papers

• Jocelyn Ireson-Paine - Semantics of Line Drawings [The same author has some other fascinating articles as well, like Improving Visual Memory and Drawing as Translation]
• Tilke Judd, Frédo Durand, Edward Adelson - Apparent Ridges for Line Drawings
• Stephen L. Talbott - Seeing in Perspective [Chapter 22 of the book The Future Does Not Compute]
• The Art of Binocular Perspective [WIPO Magazine - December 2011]
• Asmaa Saeed Alqahtani, Lamya Foaud Daghestani, Lamiaa Fattouh Ibrahim - Techniques used to Improve Spatial Visualization Skills of Students in Engineering Graphics Course: A Survey
• David Briggs - The Dimensions of Color