Question about drawing realistically?

Is someone being able to teach themselves how to draw realistically a rare thing? (As in, without art instruction from books or teachers and the like). Someone said this to me, just wanted to see what you think
Question about drawing realistically?
Yes you can teach yourself how to draw without an instructor or books, that's how I learned. But that is the long way. Obviously the best way is to watch someone draw (that knows how to draw and practice yourself. Also a good practic is to get some trace paper and start outlining a realistic picture you like that will get you used to line control. after you get that down scratch the trace paper and start drawing figure from pictures using your eye (determining angles and length and such) But the key to realist drawing more than anything is shading, shading, shading! Strong lines are rarely used in realistic drawings. its usually darked or highlighted colors that defines the shapes of things and shading is always done in the direction of the shape of the object. for example a ball should never be shaded from straight left to right . But shade in the of a ball. (be the ball! Feel the ball!).That may sound cryptic, but you just have to learn from expierence.
Question about drawing realistically?
There is no substitute for practicing drawing from real life. Drawing from photographic references is almost as good, but that only allows the artist to practice a single angle and lighting situation. It is so much easier to capture a subject's contours, shading and texture when the artist can walk around and see what a shape looks like from an alternate angle.





Plus, I always advise people to practice sketching a variety of subjects, no matter what their preferences and styles may be. Nothing exists in a vacuum. (except I suppose, a space ship) Everything is connected to everything else. An arm attatches to the body in a certain way and the joints will only move in a limited range. Clothes will hang, drape, fold and wrinkle just so, and EVERYTHING reacts to gravity in the SAME DIRECTION. Objects occupy space and air is displaced by these objects. A shiny surface, no matter what color will reflect the world around it, and pick up some of that world's color. A tree is not a blob of greenery on top of a brown stick. It is made of amorphous masses of greenery, growing at the end of twigs which form from branches which sprout from a trunk which, in turn, grows from soil, which supports weight and so on.





The more the artist practices this, the more he observes. The more he observes, the more he understands the interrelation among ALL the objects in the world. The better the artist understands this, the more realistic his work can appear.





And, remember, translating the three dimensional world onto a two dimesional media is to create an "illusion" of reality. To master this illusion, one must practice.
Reply:I don't think so, because I think most people who learn to draw attempt realistic art first. And of course many of them succeed but some just go a different route. But anyway, I personally tried to draw realistically without any instruction until I got to college, and I did get far. It was all due to observation, and let me tell you I am no genius nor am I a great artist either. But if you were to ask me to draw something realistically, yeah I could do it. Maybe I wouldn't be 100% great but I could do it somewhat decent.





Now if you are talking about being an absolute expert, then yeah that is rare.





Also I think it is best if people learn realistic style because that brings other styles out in a better way. For example, most of the classic masters who did different styles that aren't realistic were masters at doing realistic art first, but they 'improved' or changed what they knew about the real world and added more abstract or more expression to it.





Even if you see comic book and manga art, the best artists need to know how things work in real life first, because if you just start learning cartoons first it really doesn't work as well.
Reply:Duh, there is something called using reference. as in looking at things then drawing them. That is how artists in the old days did it.





Though no matter studying books and take classes and make you better then you would get alone.