#i later got really into stickfreeks youtube animated series Fairy Foxes which got me into drawing furries lol

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I feel like talking about how I first started learning how to draw babeyyy

SO like most people I technically started drawing when I was like 2 and someone gave me a crayon or some finger paints or something but I mean all kids will draw if you let 'em (which you should qwq), like at that age kids just draw a circle and like two lines and they say it's turtle and yer like fuck yeah kid that sure is a turtle and it's GREAT and a fun time for everyone involved

But I don't think I can really consider that like, actively pursuing experience and knowledge in drawing, and that's not a bad thing! When I was 2 I didn't have time to learn stuff like that I was too busy trying to figure out how conversations worked ahsgdhsbs

But yeah I drew a lot since I was a toddler, but didn't really actively try to learn how to draw until I was in like grade three and starting to finally gain sentience and self awareness as a human being qwq I think I woulda been like 8? 9? 7? I dunno orz

So my elementary school was pretty garbage in a lot of ways but there was one month in grade three that was really neat, once a week during lunch time some guy, I think he was an animator or an illustrator or something? Probably was a local dude, he came in the library to do some short tutorials for all these 7 year olds about how to draw and there was one specific lesson that stuck with me, and kinda shaped how I learned to draw agdhsgdhs

Trapezoids....... irregular trapezoids................... With these godly shapes, you can draw.... ANIMALS

SO like a horse like this?

Made outta irregular trapezoids, babes

So like you start with a fairly large one in the middle of yer page that's usually longer on one side than the other, I tend to make the left longer 'cause in right handed but it really just depends on which way you want yer horse to face:

Then you get another of these weird trapezoidal shapes and rotate it about 90 degrees, attaching it to the long side, maybe slant a little? Almost parallelogram-y lol

THATS A NECK BABY now it's head time, this trapezoid feels a lot more like a classic one than an irregular polygon

Legs......two long trapezoids that go thinner at the bottom:

It's ready.....the horse is here.....you just have to carve him out now

Reference photos come in handy here! The trapezoids are really just an introduction to construction shapes/guidelines (like how so many artists start drawing a head by drawing a circle) and simplified skeletons ahsgshs

I didn't draw the other legs as a kid 'cause ...I was 8 BUT here's some more legs

You can draw other animals too by changing the size of the trapezoids! I was best friends with a horse girl so that’s why my go-to tends to be horse jdksdds Here's a cat (shoulda made it’s torso slightly longer tho orz) and a dog and the trapezoids I used to make 'em

I started segmenting the legs into more trapezoids here, which is based off references of cats and dogs and their skeletons, if yer interested in drawing mammals I’d recommend looking into other mammal skeletons and comparing how they look with human skeletons! like how short our foot bones are compared to the same bones on dog (they walk on the equivalent of our toes lol), that kinda stuff is really fun to look into I think~ There's obviously flaws with this approach, you can only draw animals in the profile, and using polygonal shapes like irregular trapezoids can sometimes make things a little stiffer or inorganic looking than if you used softer, rounder guidelines like circles and bean shapes, but i do think it’s useful for how 1) its a pretty fast, easy way to get started on learning about construction shapes, 2) it can be useful for people who have trouble with curved shapes (such as: 8 year old me, 20 year old me, etc), and 3) you get to draw some fun aminals..,.. many artists focus on learning pure fundamentals when trying to teach someone who’s never drawn before, and while fundamentals are super important and useful, they can also be boring as ssHIET and that can often discourage interested parties qwq and i mean it might technically be Better to learn from life drawing instead of learning through how to draw anime books, or tracing sonic characters, or drawing animals made of trapezoids, but the latter options are way more fun, and having fun while drawing is, in my opinion, one of the most important things for a really beginner artist, you’ve got all this time once yer at a more intermediate skill level and you’ve got the motivation to practice fundamentals, as a beginner i think just figuring out what feels good and makes you wanna keep drawing is perfectly good~

SORRY I RAMBLED anyway i dunno maybe this thing i was taught in grade 3 by a local artist might be useful for someone? or maybe not hjkdssjzdsk either way it might explain a bit about why i draw the way i do qwq

#art #of course there are steps between these trapezoid animals and how i draw now #i later got really into stickfreeks youtube animated series Fairy Foxes which got me into drawing furries lol #(and their style is obviously influenced by sonic especially in the early episodes so in turn #despite never actually playing a sonic game until last year i was technically influenced by sonic hfkjdslfkl #a classic way to start drawing furries) #and then i watched FMA (2003 cause brotherhood wasnt out yet lol) and became the weeb i am now #and watched a bunch of mark crilley tutorials and started learning how to draw humans lol #and somewhere between that i think i got inspired by online artists who were inspired by tim burton and jhonen vasquez type styles? pointy #and my art has changed constantly and changes even now lol #i dunno man its all just fun~