Learning Art

A large part of gamedev is art, much more than I realized initially. At first I thought it was a lot of programming, being a programmer I started gamedev from a programming point of view. Little did I realize that half of the amount of time I was doing gamedev I was going to be working on art and the other half was programming (there’s also a third half for music, but we’ll get into that later). Out of the three my weakest area was art and most games are very art heavy so I looked into learning pixel art which seemed like the natural progression for the next games I’d be working on and there was a quote from a pixel art book that read something like this:

In order to learn pixel art you must first learn art. This book cannot teach you art.

So I researched “how to learn art” and it pointed to “learn how to draw.” So I started researching how do I learn how to draw and I found a couple of books. After spending a few hours on each book the best one emerged out of the bunch and I decided to complete it because it seemed to have the best learning curve. Easy to get started, step by step instructions, and the only requirements were the ability to draw stick figures, perfect. The book mentioned multiple tools and pencils and if pencil drawing was my endgame I definitely would have taken the advice, but before investing in any of those I wanted to see if the ability to draw could even be acquired by someone like me, who possessed no natural drawing ability, so to speak. So I started with a simple number 2 pencil that was lying around the house, and an old sketchpad that my daughter was no longer using.

This was an example of my natural drawing ability if I was concentrating super hard and using a straight edge for some of the lines while reading a different book about animation:

The book is called Drawing for the Absolute Beginner and I highly, highly recommend it. I also recommend the paperback copy.

This book took me from not being able to draw at all, to being confident enough to start sharing my drawings with others to being able to design logos, characters, and to replicate images that I see in nature, on a piece of paper with a pencil.

Here are some examples of drawings that the book taught me:

First lesson:

Mid lesson:

Creature drawings:

Cat:

Cow:

Swan:

Wolf:

Later lesson:

Final Lesson:

After using this book I started looking into what art style I wanted for the next game and I decided on Kawaii characters. So I started working on this book How to Draw Cute Kawaii in Simple Steps. Now you might look at some of the drawings and want to start out with this book, but remember I couldn’t draw at all. I highly highly recommend starting out with [Drawing for the Absolute Beginner]()https://bookshop.org/a/114194/9781581807899 and then going the next book, I would not have been able to start drawing if I had done it a different way.

The first Kawaii drawing:

After that you can specialize in whichever type of art you’d like. I went for pixel art and now I have the confidence and ability to re-read the first pixel art book. The next post will be documenting learning pixel art.

Most of what I draw is digital now, while I continue to hone my pencil and paper drawing skills. Every so often I’ll feel the need to draw something physically because I’m afraid my skills will disappear because I spent so many years without the ability to draw. But it’s the same as many sayings, “practice makes perfect,” “if you don’t use it you lose it,” etc.