Basic Structure

Basic structure.
If you don't know the basic  structure of something it makes it next to impossible to draw and have it look accurate. So many of us are into comics, manga, cartooning but how many of us can actually draw a person, just a regular person, how many of us know the muscles in the body, the bone structures.. well enough to draw? Not many of us, and it's not something you normally think about.. your drawing the outside why should you need to know what's inside? Well honestly, if you know the bones in the body and how the sit it's a lot easier to draw a person, manga, comic, or cartoon that has correct proportion and anatomy. What if the reason the torso of all your characters look bad because you don't know how the rib cage looks in the body?

We all see hundreds of people every single day in our lives, you would think we know what a person looks like right? Not really. The same is true of a buildings, we pass hundreds everyday, we walk around them, in them but how well can we draw one? Well, most of us would start with a rectangle, add some boxes for windows... and when we are done, the truth of the matter is it looks pretty stupid. Why? not because we can't draw, not because you don't have talent but more because you don't actually KNOW what a building looks like, you draw what you think it looks like, not what it does. We can pass by something hundreds of times a day and still not know what it looks like well enough to draw a decent picture of it. The best thing you can do is to study what it looks like. Break it down, learn the parts and pieces that make it up, learn the basic structures and once you can get the general idea of that down things will become much easier.   You may still need reference, every artist needs reference from time to time, even the best. We can't always remember all of it! However if you know the basics everything will become a lot easier.