Drawing Skills for 3D Artists

From David Gospodinovski:

I recently found your site while I was searching some online tutorials for drawing.

I have never drawn in my life, but I am interested in 3D modeling. I want to become a character artist, meaning I want to create 3D models and creatures, like in Avatar, Avengers, Harry Potter, etc.

Many people have told me to learn drawing, because it will help me.

How will these videos help me to become decent at drawing? Are these videos in real time, without time-lapse?

Dear David,

Thank you for your questions. You are not alone in wondering how drawing skills might affect your ability to visually express whatever you want to create. The short answer is “yes,” good drawing skills improve your ability in whatever creative projects you want to embark on. Let me explain.

Hand-drawing used to be an essential part of learning. Every educated person had to be able to draw; indeed, it was considered as important as one’s speaking ability. To express your ideas verbally, you learn to speak. Think of your parents. When you were young, they wanted you to talk and were so happy to hear your first words, but your learning didn’t stop there. You developed your speaking skills over many years. With time your facility with language evolved to the point that you can now speak freely on any subject imaginable.

Why should it be any different with drawing? After all, drawing is a silent language of expressing visually anything you want on a piece of paper or other medium. However, contemporary education has decided that drawing skills are not essential, thus limiting the expressive abilities of entire generations.

When it comes to making 3D characters, I agree with your peers that learning to draw will help with your digital creations. Here are just some of the many ways that an education in traditional drawing from the Drawing Academy will aid your digital art:

• Understanding of constructive drawing – working with planes of 3D objects.
• Learning to draw what you know instead of what you see – imagining 3D objects as if they are transparent and see-through.
• Understanding how to draw in perspective – this will help you with camera positioning and rendering in 3D software.
• Knowledge of human anatomy (the bones and muscles of the human body) – this will help you realistically construct characters in 3D.
• Rendering shades and textures in pencil – you can apply this knowledge to skins and textures in 3D modeling programs.
• Knowledge of golden proportions – this will help you to construct more beautiful objects and creatures.

Although the Drawing Academy has no 3D tutorials and is solely dedicated to classical methods of drawing, it provides the foundation every visual artist must have, skills that will enable you to depict anything you see, think or imagine.

In regard to the videos, rest assured that every Drawing Academy lesson provides detailed, step-by-step explanations in real time. We don’t do time-lapse, “watch me drawing” presentations; all our video lessons are real lessons you can learn from.

The Drawing Academy course is beginner-friendly, so even if you have had no prior formal art education, you will be able to follow along.

Please let me know if you have any questions, I will be happy to help.

Kind regards,

Vladimir London
Drawing Academy Founder and Tutor