/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4962767
Here's a particularly egregious example I just whipped up in paint with a mouse, apologies for the poor quality.

Symbol drawing is when you draw the idea of an object rather than what it looks like. It mainly stems from cartoons/anime or comics/manga. The original artist has understood proper anatomy and has skewed and distorted it to create a unique art style. This can be to aid in expressiveness (Big eyes are an obvious example) or to communicate subtext (People who are huge/tiny). The issue comes from when non-artists try to copy the skewed versions that they've learnt instead of learning what it ACTUALLY looks like. Hence the name, symbol. It's a hard habit to break, and the only advice I can really give is to forget everything you think you know about drawing.

In my example here, I didn't construct anything, nor plan or think about where things go. There was no planning on where the features went, nor how the head would connect to the body. All of the features are cartoonish and simplified versions. The issue with symbol drawing is when you think you know how to draw, when you don't. Break down the face into segments, and break the segments down into shapes. Once you understand the fundamentals you can distort them to create stylized work.

tl;dr, forget everything you think you know. Anyone else feel free to reply to this post if you think I'm talking shit or are wrong about anything - I'm still learning too.