Art Tuition Help Needed!

Drawing from life will teach you body proportions; keep doing that.  If you reckon you can sort some of the good from the not so good, try Youtube. Channels like "Draw It Too" will have you drawing DC and Marvel characters, "How to draw comics" uses more figures created by the channel host, and follow the rabbit hole from there.  I have a couple of decent books about drawing Manga - a general character design text by Peter Gray and a project book edited by the Ikari Studio (Ebay is a superb resource). There are some OK books about drawing Fantasy art but I've not found anything game-changing in that  field yet. And go from there. Study other artists' work and see how they develop characters over multiple panels or books (you can get comic book bundles off Ebay at sensible money). Then try to draw them from memory. Let us know how it goes

I did a photoshop course, led by someone, who normally teaches fantasy art, for gaming.  She said that she starts all her students with life drawing.  So I have to agree with Alan.  You will probably find that a local college or university offers part time courses.  Also there must be an organisation that offers adult part time courses.

Simon, I have been taking part in the life classes online from Newlyn School of Art. They are live streamed on Wednesday evenings, 7 - 9pm, and led by different artists. You draw from the model, guided by the artist in charge. They have been really good, giving new approaches to the subject, many that I haven't tried before. Caroline

I've been thinking about this, in my leisurely (i.e. slow) way.  Perhaps much depends on what you want to achieve.  One of our members used the Charles Bargue course for figure-drawing (come back, David, you ARE missed) and it did him good, I think.  Others are very resistant to courses, because unless they're REALLY good they will tend to teach one way, the tutor's way.   Some think that courses are too prescriptive; others (that'll be me, probably) just disagree with elements of the course and rebel against it - which I suppose is the same thing as "too prescriptive".  I think that if I were starting now, at 70, I'd realize I hadn't necessarily that much time left (who knows...?) and would follow a course.  Were I a lot younger, I think I'd do what I actually did - starting in my case with oil, then moving on to acrylic (though never abandoning oil) and then in my later years on to watercolour; I suppose most people start with watercolour and move on, but as it just happens, I didn't.  Thing is - I don't know if I might have become a famous artist if I'd followed a set course of instruction, but then that really didn't matter to me - it'd be very nice now, but I had other things to do, and I enjoyed most of them.  But I can follow my development - from that first Look and Learn article when I was around 16, to many, many years of reading books, hanging out with artists, working in an art shop, learning most importantly how to LOOK, rather than worrying too much about what other people did, and, most importantly, painting.  There are huge gaps in my knowledge and technical ability, but I wasn't looking for any kind of structured guidance - unstructured, sure; that suited me.  I am not about to go all Brexity-gammon on you here, nor yet parrot the University of Life nonsense, but: I suspect I learned more from this approach than I might have learned from an art-college education. Why?  Well - I went at my own pace.  I have seen marvellous work from art colleges and structured learning: better than mine, and I know it is.  I do not suggest we all dwell in the land of self-delusion.  But I wouldn't change my own particular journey - I have learned what I think would be very hard to teach; I've delved into technical information I just don't think colleges teach (so far as I know - and of course, I don't know everything).  And - in a rather difficult life, I have to say, without self-pity - it's been my greatest source of consolation, because it's made me think at a deeper level than I even comprehended at the time.  Where does all that ratiocination get us?  Blowed if I know, other than that there's more than one way to skin a cat (who wants to skin a cat.....?).  If you want rapid progress, a course will probably help, but it does depend on where you really want to go.  All I can say is that my stuff is, for better or for worse, my stuff - it's developed over around 55 years of trying.  I would never say that my way is the way to go - it hasn't exactly yielded quick results!   But I wouldn't change it, if I could go back. If you like - even broadly speaking - the path you're on, then I should keep pursuing it.  ("Like it"?  Are reasonably content with it, find it inspiring, enjoy it, find it leads you on to discover more.)  If you're deeply dissatisfied with it and feel starved of inspiration, example, practical help - take a course: Newlyn School of Art; Martin Kinnear's Norfolk School of Art; become a student of David Stead, enrol with the Open University - there are many options available if you search them out.  You just have to know where you are before you can really plan your next move - and that is the one lesson from the University of Life I can offer without reservation. 

Why don’t you research illustration artists, find a few whose style you like and ask them if they would be interested in distance tutoring you?  My local art college offers degrees in illustration and so there are tutors local to me, but I’m miles away from you.

I just discovered that John Skelcher is doing life drawing classes on Facebook following Charles Brague if anyone is interested.