Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → Art help.

It depends on the kind of art. If you mean digital, I can't help you outside of tips in Microsoft Paint, but I'm good at sketching, especially anime (strangely.)

Yeah, pencil/pen art.

Okay, so what do you need to know?

how to draw people.

Okay, there is some stuff to do.

1. Could you please show us what you can actually do. That is, draw that stickman you talked about. And perhaps then try and draw a person the best you can do.
It is easier when we know what we are dealing with.

2. Have you practiced anything, looked up reference or art books to improve or at least try and learn from the - masters? If so, what have you used?
If not, we need to work on that.

3. What is your motivation?
Every artist needs motivation to learn, otherwise they just end up being those idiots that cannot take a critique, even if their art looks like, well, not like art. It doesn't have to be much, but it is going to help us find out how to help you improve, and it will help you realise what is driving you forth. And probably help you move when you are stuck.

But first some art, if you please.

I'd say the first thing is to find a picture of a person. If your doing just the face, start out with one looking directly at you, or with the head slightly turned. If you are doing a full view person, start with someone standing up. It starts to get really hard when someone is sitting or kneeling.

Start by drawing guiding lines, sorta like this:

Then you start filling in the outline of the person, still looking at the reference. It will look something like this, except less cartoony and stretched out:

The next thing is to add in the deatails, usually starting with the biggest thing like clothes, and moving to the smaller things like the features on the face. Erase the guidelines too, and if you need to, add smaller guidelines to the face so you know where the features go.

The last thing is to shade.

Is that good, or do you need more specifics?

I never used any of those, really. At least not like that, and really not as the first thing. If you need all that, you haven't gotten proportions and anatomy down already, and while it might be a good guide to some, knowing the relative length of each feature might make more sense than a bunch of lines. Especially when you are learning, and not just trying to become better at figure drawing.
I stick to the failsafe method of "That looks really wrong, I need to fix it!", since the human brain is coded to feel odd about wrong proportions in the first place.

@Cjhall: He did state he could only draw stick men (in my thread none the less, but it has been stated), so you might be taking some huge step for someone that probably can't keep a human arm in proportion to itself.
Hence the "Draw stickman, draw human as good as you can" thing. Then we can figure out how much he is aware of proportions and joint movement and go from there.

Okay thanks Cenere. That is good to know too.

I agree with the seeing the artwork thing too.

The lines used to help me a little when I first started out, and that's why I suggested it, but the "That looks really wrong, I need to fix it!" helps me alot now, especially when I sketch people's faces.