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Okay, I'll just draft this out here, the idea came to me recently and I'll likely add to this.

Now, there's probably a couple ways to do this. I'll add more as I (or you) think of them.
If anyone out there has any good drawing tips, feel free to add them.

1) Method for Rapidly Improving Drawing Abillity.

Figured this one out when I noticed that it's possible to buy pre-collated printer paper. By that I mean, clean, white printer paper with no lines in them, that have been already been 3-hole punched. 500 pages of this stuff, to be exact. For about $5. I have 2000 sheets of blank white paper sitting next to my keyboard. It's roughly a foot high.

Now, the thing is, most "Artist Sketchbooks" with fancy 50lb+ paper and etc - yeah, those aren't cheap. You'd be lucky to find a "100 Page Artist Quality Sketchbook" for less than $10, and I've seen the stuff sold for over $20. For professional work, where you're getting paid über money? Sure, go crazy with the ultra-fancy paper. But for sketching? Learning? Do you seriously need to spend that kind of money on *paper*?

*swigs Jolt from flat of many cans of Jolt*

ANYWAY, on to my technique, which benefits hugely from vast quantites of cheap paper.

FIRST: Download random image collections. Landscapes, People, Manga, Sports, Anime, Ciities, Movie Posters, Disney, Furniture, Real Estate, Famous People, Cover Girls, Weather, whatever, it doesn't matter. Just make sure to get a lot of images, with a lot of variety. images.google.com, for example, or something like this, just get as many as you can. I only have about 6500 images so far, but I've got about a dozen torrents going.

SECOND: Okay, got your 500 sheets of blank white (and most importantly, cheap) paper? I've got mine in a 3 ring binder, which is probably around the upper limit of sanity. Open up to the first page of a stack of 500 to start, which will be about *checks* three or more inches higher than your desk. Might want to sit on a cushion for this. A cushion that is on top of a couple phonebooks that are on your chair that you sit on.

THIRD: Pencil. You can use a regular wooden type if you have an electric sharpener. Something that sharpens fast. Better yet, get a mechanical pencil. I use one that allows for a 0.9mm lead. Nicer lines, not as brittle as the more common 0.5mm, way better for shading. But whatever, it's just lines. Anything more than 0.5 seconds spent sharpening the pencil, or getting new lead, is wasting time. Well, that's an exageration. Point being, you don't want to be wasting time dicking around with a pencil.

THING WHAT MAKES IT WORK: Now, open up all those images in an image viewing program (and here's the key) that allows you to view the images as an automatic RANDOMIZED slideshow *that allows you to set the amount of time between images* that will change to the next image AUTOMATICALLY without you touching the keyboard or the mouse. This is crucial.

Get your paper in front of you, maybe some music tunes, glass of water, a pencil (with sharpener if wooden, with extra lead if mechanical). Set the slideshow timer to 60 seconds (one minute). Or 30 seconds. Or 10 seconds. Or 5 minutes (300 seconds). Whatever.

Now, draw. DRAW LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER DRAWN BEFORE. Don't worry about it looking 'perfect'. STOP. I see you there. Erasor? NO. PUT IT DOWN. Better yet. THROW THE ERASOR. Anywhere, just get it away from your hands. You're not good enough to erase.

Just draw. Comfortably, freely. Draw the image on the screen. Zone out. Just do it. Don't worry about anything else. Just capture it. As much of it as you can. Don't hurry, don't be quick and jerky and intentionally 'fast'. Don't be slow either. Don't take your time. Be comfortable. Just get it down onto the page.

THEN THE NEXT IMAGE. Automatically. After 10 seconds or 60 seconds or 10 minutes, whatever you set the slideshow to, the next image is on the screen. Without regrets, immediatly and without hesitation flip to the next page of blank white paper. Draw. Anything. Don't worry about starting, don't worry about 'rules' or 'it doesn't look right' or 'artists block' or any of that nonesense. Put the tip of the pencil on the page. Move your arm. That's it. Keep doing it. There. You've already forgotten about the previous image. That's perfect. It doesn't matter anymore. Its served its purpose. You're drawing this image now. All of it. Comfortably. Just moving your arm, your hand, your wrist, fingers, shoulder, body.

Next image, flip the page. Draw, comfortably, fully, unconciously. All of it. It doesn't matter where you start, or how. Start with a line, or shading, anything. Just mark the page, anywhere.

Next image.

Do this for an hour.

Take a break. Get a drink of water. Get a new pencil if you need one.

Then again. Next image.

Draw.

If you've actually tried this, I'm curious to know how this worked for you. Please post results from your experiments. How many hours have you done this, and how have you noticed your skills develop as a result?

This method sounds very frantic and wasteful of paper. Though interesting, and I'd give it a go if I had a huge stack of blank paper and a bunch of images and image randomnator like you said.

Gonna start it tommorow, and I'll keep people updated.

About being frantic and wasteful, what I'm trying to emphasize is the opposite of that. Inexpensive paper in vast quantity for low price, rather than being wasted, is used for the purpose of improving the skill of drawing, rather than, for example "4th Quarterly Report number 523" will would never be read anyway, and less wasteful than $20 for 100 pages that you're too afraid to draw on for fear of 'wasting' them.

Secondly, if you're being frantic when you're drawing as I suggest, you're doing it wrong. One of the *key* things here is to be relaxed, comfortable, having fun. Get away from the worry that you'll 'waste' the paper. It's not being wasted. It's being used, to better use than most paper ever is.

Anyway, as I said, I'll start this tommorow, hopefully I won't totally burn out what's left of my mind.

(Just kidding. I actually did read it.)

It sounds like a good idea and I think it'll work! Practise makes perfect

When I was a kid my Mum always impressed on me how much paper cost so not to waste it, it took me quite a few years to work out that that was baloney, lol.

EDIT: For random image viewer, just use the Windows XP 'My Pictures' screensaver

I don't have an hour to do that. :o
At least....an hour that doesn't involve me being distracted whatsoever. I'm always doing something, even such a simple thing as talking. Heh.

Perhaps I'll try one day. Perhaps. :o

I've always found the idea of having "my own style" to be a horribly limiting threat to my ability to create art. If I have drawing skills, I should be able to draw in *any* style, Disney, Anime, Penny Arcade, Avatar, Gainax, Romantic realism, Victorian realism, whatever. If I'm comfortable enough with my drawing skills and ability to slack off on my practicing, at that point I should be able to draw in any and every style.

Having my own style would seem to indicate that I'm trapped by it, that I'm unable or not good enough to draw any other way. I'd much rather be good enough to be able to draw in any style I choose, which is another goal of this exercise. Going from drawing manga one moment to a disney screenshot the next, for example, from that to 16 century landscape to porn to Optimus Prime to drawing Homer Simpson, and then a tree - that does things to the brain, horrible, wonderful, ticklish things.

As to the flexibility of this exercise, it's also useful for learning other drawing skills. For example, drawing in tones only, that is, shading, no tracing at all. Or using only primary shapes to capture the image (circles triangles squares etc), or using only colored pencil, pastel etc, or even repeatedly drawing the same image a couple dozen times, in different ways. Pretty much anything you can think of, any aspect of drawing you want to improve (shading, persepective, color, etc) can be improved by this sort of noncommital repetition.

And as others have mentioned, and from my own experience, when trying to improve drawing ability, trying to be 'perfect' every time can be horribly stressful and limiting. Valuable, certainly, but only as a single learning tool among many. Much more valuable, I believe, is to focus on improving 'technical skills' at this point, rather than every single drawing I try to make. Hence the need here for a vast quantity of inexpensive printer paper, so I'm not trapped by the thought that "I mustn't waste paper" - that's a relic of my Grandmother's Depression-era words, and threatens my potential to improve. Paper is only wasted if it isn't used.

Big part of this is to get past that psychological barrier of dissapointment at "I suck at drawing look at this crap I mean what is this" which stops a lot of people right at page one. This exercise I'm wanting to use to break out of that, draw comfortably and freely, focusing on different skills, uniting them, without stress or worry or self-judgement. Trying to build confidence.

Of course, selecting a single image and working on that to perfection is extremely valuable in itself, but I've noticed from doing this sort of repetition exercise, is that when I sit down to make a 'perfect' image, my ability to do so is much easier, and it's much less stressful. Not only can I do it better, but I can do it faster, or more accuratly, with more confidence. If I screw up, it's only lines on paper, and paper is just about the least expensive thing in the world. If I screw up, sometimes more important than erasing, is to cast a keen discerning eye at where I messed up, and why, specifically and exactly - is it a lack of ability on my part? did I get lazy? overconfident? - and then draw the image again, instead of trying to correct it, keeping the 'messed up' one for future reference, so I can look back on it with the second image and compare the two, to be able to say "here, in this previous one, is where I messed up, here, in this second attempt, is where I corrected that, improved, and changed my approach, but I still messed up here and here and here" and then, if I choose to, a third attempt. Or a new image if I'm getting stressed out.

Heh, sorry if this is long and ranty, but I've only recently started to draw, and by that I mean in depth and with commited purpose, a couple weeks ago, and seeing myself actually improve for once is terribly exciting, like learning how to drive for the first time, or jumping out of a helicopter into a forest fire, or into the deep end of a pool when you're ten years old, or your first fight when you realise fighting isn't so bad after all, or public speaking when you realize hey this is kinda fun.

Also, by playing around with drawing times, I've found that 3 minutes per image is much more comfortable. Make the effort to make at least one line per second, if you find yourself getting trapped by observation paralysis, the dreaded "omg where do I start oh no."

You mention you're improving, would there be any chance you could show an example of how you've improved so far? (unless you're too embarassed).

I have a little theory about how I want to approach this; I want to develop my own style as I feel that what I do now pinches bits from art I've seen. To achieve this change I'm going to try your technique with photos as the subject matter, I'll try and make some time in two weeks after my next deadline (I'm sat next to about a 6' stack of blank paper so I think I can spare it, lol).

That's an interesting way to practice. I did that when I first started drawing these... creatures.

After I had the creatures designs down, I just drew them... then threw in backgrounds that I drew out in my mind.

...

But that's just me... seems to work really well.

(I guess its not too fair, since I was drawing anime 7 years before).

edit: I think you may be right about creating your own style, but if you don't, how can others recognize your work? I mean, when I see art done by D.C. simpson for other people, I can easily tell it was made by him 'cause the style is so similar.

I have no art style of my own so meh....I'm Happy with what i have.

Anyway, Lovely find Mista_B!

<bump> Any news on the progress of this project?

<bump> Any news on the progress of this project?

Ah, conveniently enough, there is! Just scanned a couple random pages. Method doesn't really give much time for shading, so they're mostly outlines. On some of these pages, the plants one for example, instead of going to a new page I just kinda filled it out.















(With these images, I'm kinda half-thinking it should be moved to 'Fanworks', but since I sadly lack mod-powerz, I'll leave that judgement up to someone else. )

They all look good, but at this point, you should start trying to sketch these things out, then lining them with a darker lines (straighter lines too).

Heh, I have about 1000 sketches like these. While inking them would be nice, I have no plans to until I decide to learn how to ink stuff. Till then, I'll just continue like this until I'm satisfied with my ability.

I would do this (time permitting) if it wasn't for the waste of paper. Well, I don't see why I have to draw only one picture per paper. If I were to do this I'd have at least 20 on one sheet.