(Part 2) Best products from r/FurryArtSchool

Get the largest Wacom model you can find for the price and don't be afraid to look for used ones, because in your price range you will be forced to resign to small models and people tend to upgrade from them after a while, so such investment isn't particularly wise. Avoid anything with touch interface, it's widely regarded as useless, go for non-touch versions and save some money.

The closest competitors to Wacom are Monoprice tablets, but they have all sorts of driver and build quality issues. Huion is another leading competitor, offering a particularly attractive Huion H610PRO tablet for a very affordable price. That would definitely be a good alternative to Wacom products, but make damn well sure to test it before paying or at least make sure you have a very good return policy. I had to return mine, because it couldn't draw straight diagonal lines and it's not exactly an uncommon issue. But if you get a working model, for the price it can't be beat.

All non-Wacom products tend to have severe compatibility issues with Windows 10, so keep that in mind if you're running that.

Well, first thing would be using a scanner not based on SCSI ports, or using a cellphone from the early 2000s to take the picture. >3

There really isn't much to say beyond the tired "learn anatomy" line. You've got to look into things like Gray's Anatomy, or the Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist, or apps like Mara3D (iOS and Android available). Alternatively, go outside with a sketchbook and just... Draw people. Sitting on the bus for a while? Try to draw someone across from you. Waiting forever at a checkout in a food store? Draw the person in front of you (get their basic form sketched out quickly and then use them as a reference to fill out that form). Draw classmates over lunch, or colleagues at work, which ever is applicable. The more real things you draw, the better you'll get at drawing imaginary things.

The important thing though is to keep drawing. Filling sketchbooks with bad drawings will only help you improve. Just start from the inside out. You'll find that, like building, having a solid foundation to build a character on will make drawing easier. Make a simple stick figure skeleton with the correct proportions, learn your muscle groups, and the rest of the drawing falls into place.

Well that mostly comes from practice, you do something enough (like sketching furries) and it becomes almost second nature to do it right on the first time.

You'll find the more you draw and the more you get used to your own style then you'll sketch a lot quicker and with a lot less lines. You don't need to actively try to draw with less lines, you'll just find yourself doing it after some time.

I know a lot of artists that paint and just draw a big blob as their first sketch and kinda chisel it down into a beautiful form and it leaves me so confused! But keep working and trying new things and your artwork will do wonders.

Also if you like drawing dragons then I'd recommend this book. I have a copy and when I wanted to draw some nice and unique dragons it really helped.

Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is an excellent book on composition, which is a hard subject to find instructional material for.

Gurney's Color and Light is my favorite book on color theory, and it has a fair bit on rendering realistic lighting. It does a very good job of explaining how to use the concepts it presents.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0010JEJPC/ref=redir_mdp_mobile This is the machine I use and have seen other artists using at cons. It is cheap, and I have had one break on me in the past after multiple heavy con usages, but it is super portable and the sheets are sold in stores which is nice for last minute emergencies. It works well for what you pay for it, and is the least expensive option by far that I've seen.

This is the version of a drawing tablet that I use

https://www.amazon.com/Turcom-TS-6610-Computer-Sensitive-Resolution/dp/B00A40GPM8

It's a bit cheaper than the lower models of Wacom tablets and a bit bigger I think. So far it works really well for me. The pen also uses a battery but I havent had to change it in over a year and I think it adds a nice weight to the stylus.

I'd suggest this tablet as a first tablet to someone if they don't want to completely go all out for a wacom tablet because it does work pretty well and has a larger drawing area than some of the smaller stuff.

I picked up that particular book (I assume it's this one ). And I agree, it's really, really dumbed down. If you just google "how to draw anthros" or "anthro line art" you'll find plenty of free blogs and the like with just as much information as the book. It's not that the book is bad, it's just not worth what I paid for it.

/u/jackiebird has some great suggestions, but I'd also like to add Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. It's not specific to anthro drawing, but gives a LOT of good concepts to build a foundation. It focuses primarily on how to get into the proper mindset for drawing and it really helped me get started (even though I still have a lot of practice ahead). It's targeted specifically at beginners.

Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators- by Mike Mattesi

Probably my favorite drawing book ever. Focusing on force and motion rather than stiff posing.

Picture This: How Pictures Work- by Molly Bang

Not really a drawing book per se, but a great book about layout and constructing an image all told with simple shapes and colors.

Figure Drawing for alls it's Worth is pretty much my bible. I'm also pretty fond of Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth. I've learned quite a bit from opening either book to a random page a just drawing what I see.

Looks pretty good!

In the future, I'd suggest that you try to think structurally, building up basic forms before you try to solidify your contours. A professor I had in school used to repeat to us, "Earn your edges." What that means is that you should understand the forms that are in your image, and then define your contours based on those. What's a sphere? A cube? A cylinder? A combination of any of those? A distortion of those? Where is the cheekbone? The eye sockets? What can you break the shape of the bridge of the nose down to?

Obviously, you're not really going to know any of that just by default! That's when you bring in reference as you need it! Whenever you attempt to draw something, look references up for it. If you're drawing an ocelot, try looking at photos of them from various angles. See if you can discern what forms make up their heads. If you're not squeamish, you might even consider finding pictures of their skulls to really understand the underlying structure. Draw them as close to the references as you can! Start your sketch lightly and decide "This is a cube. I can take this cube and remove chunks to make the head shape. Here's a wedge shape. It fits here." After you've got this lightly drawn in, move on to darker pencils and start refining your edges. You can use those forms you defined to start deciding where light will go and how it'll behave on your drawing!

If you haven't already, I suggest you pick up copies of George Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy and Louise Gordon's How to Draw The Human Figure: An Anatomical Approach. Both of these books are chock full of information about breaking things down into simpler shapes and understanding what goes on under the skin of a figure, which is very applicable to anthro art!

Not necessarily accessible online, but here's an excellent book for drawing north American mammals:
http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Wildlife-J-C-Amberlyn/dp/0823023796

And you might as well label me "weird": taxidermy catalogs. You can get a feel for the musculature of the species you are trying to depict.

Other than that, browse DA or FA.

A light box is the best way. Or you can hold the paper backwards against a light source.

Like this:

Tracing Light Box, AGPtek® 17"(A4 Size) LED Artcraft Tracing Light Pad Light Box For Artists,Drawing, Sketching, Animation https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YA9GP0G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_90H4xb02H60X8

I would say, if you really want to make fast progress, yes, art classes would help you tremendously! But of course, you could also very much manage on your own via resources like books (Artistic Anatomy helped me a bunch with male torsos)and online tutorials. The problem with that is that, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out what you’re doing wrong when you don’t have someone who knows art more than you to tell you what to fix.

I can also recommend one artist on YouTube who is both an online art teacher and does extremely in-depth tutorials; I learned so much from her it’s honestly ridiculous. She’s not a furry artist in the slightest; however, she specializes in character design and portraiture so a lot of concepts she’s taught in her videos I have applied to my own furry drawings. She, (Instebrak) does do online private tutoring though I’ve never participated.

The Art of Animal Drawing:... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486274268?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf
This is a book on drawing motion and emotion of non human characters and its also pretty useful to have and study. It will teach you to make an artistic goal for an image.

Too true, so many tutorials and guides seem to focus too heavily on the technical skills and not enough on the proper artistic mindset. As someone to whom art did not come naturally, this book and its early chapters focusing on getting in the proper mindset of an artist has been more valuable than most anything else I've seen. I'd love to see more of that, not just here but in tutorials in general.

I use the wacom cth-480 ($60-80) and i love the thing, but I hear artisul tablets are good as well. Their pens, like wacom's, don't need to be charged either which gives them the capability to have an eraser side and damn do they look pretty (they cost about $70) and its actually about half an inch wider than my 480 and double the pressure sensitivity. damn, I might buy one actually

Link to artisul tab

Link to CTH-480

https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

http://www.welcometopixelton.com/downloads/Animation%20by%20Preston%20Blair.pdf