How to Start a Drawing in Photoshop?

How to Start a Drawing in Photoshop?

You have a brilliant idea in your head, you can see exactly what you want to accomplish, you have this feeling you know how to do it, but... how do you start? 

It's the biggest challenge, because the first line is a base for another line, and another, and another. Draw it wrong and everything will be ruined... or will it? This is the hardest part.

Artists use various methods that align the best with their personal style of work. There's no single correct way of starting a drawing. But if you're a beginner, chances are you know only one or two methods, and you keep using them even when they don't seem to work for you.

In this article, I will show you five popular methods of starting a creature/character drawing. I'll present you with their pros and cons, so that you can decide which is the best for you. However, don't look at the pro-cons ratio only—not all of them may be important for you!

Tracing - This is the certainly the most popular method among real beginners. Whenever I read stories of professional artists, they always admit this is how they started. Basically, tracing is about drawing over a picture to copy its lines, partially or completely. In result you get a drawing with clean lines and perfect proportions.

Imaginative Tracing - This is the method that beginners may consider the only honest one. You may or may not use a reference for this; in the end, it all boils down to imagining the lines.

Structural Drawing - When you start seriously learning how to draw, you are told that the final lines are a result  of guidelines, a kind of inner skeleton of a drawing.

Gesture Drawing - Every live creature has a certain rhythm manifested in every pose of their body. This rhythm can be sketched very quickly and easily, but you can't finish a picture using only this method. 

Visual Stimulation - This is aimed mainly at digital artists, unless you have a light table or some other means to simulate layers. It's the most simple method possible, and also the most basic one. You don't even need an idea to start!