[digitalism]

When you guys draw, lets say a person, do you draw it from head, or do you use reference? I keep thinking that using reference is cheating, same as copying and doesn't make you a good artist.

[AKIRA_x]

what ever gets the job done....who cares.

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Whos ya dady!!

[gseegert]

I smell a troll

[DuKEZ]

Not more of this reference is cheating junk.. again

First off define reference.... okay for all those who just looked in the dictionary (a reference), does that mean you just cheated?

For me, everything you do in life is out of reference.

It seems when people hear reference on this board, they just think it means looking at a picture on a peice paper and copying the image, but then whats that differenct from looking at a live environment or model and painting them. Are those figure drawing classes cheating cause they are using live models to refernce to? Are you cheating if you paint a tree thats outside your window? Or the computer thats sitting right in front of to you (:P Francis)

Drawing out of your head, you "refer" back to your memory on how objects or things look like=reference, Painting a Live model (using that person as reference),..etc

Reading these boards and trying to learn how to draw better=reference. So are you cheating now?

bah :P

[Nex]

>I keep thinking that using reference is >cheating, same as copying and doesn't make >you a good artist.

This has been discussed a lot here already..

How can you ever know how to place all the right little shadows and highlights when you never really closely looked at something for reference?

As far as I am concerned there is no such thing as "cheating", as long as you don't pretend to draw normally when you trace or similar things.
I mean there is no great book of "Whats allowed in art and what not" out there.

P.S. All the great old artists (Da Vinci, Rembrandt, ...) used reference so do you think they all cheated?

Leonardo da Vinci even used a glass plate to trace sometimes.



[This message has been edited by Nex (edited September 01, 2000).]

[Rinaldo]

It's only cheating if you say you did from your head You will probably find that both are esential in becomeing good at drawing. to learn how to draw from memory you need to study. Drawing from referance is not all that easy either (some people see it as a push over and thus cheating). I use ref to focus on my rendering skills. It alows me to ignore a lot of stuff and tells me that my problems are in the rendering as oppposed to the initial drawing, and it can be a lot of fun . You will have trouble drawing a character design and a whole bunch of other stuff from ref tho. it depends what you want to draw for.

[Plop]

Dough Chiang used african hair pins as a reference for his spaceships. Is that cheating too? Did the space ships from the star wars remind you of hairpins?

I dont think anyone ever comes up with ideas, your ideas are reflections of the world around you, through you. Reference is just another way to collect the necessary items to reflect on.

There is a guy who drew the posters and package art for quake3 (visor painting) i totally forgot his name, on his site he had an interview where he was asked whats the most important thing for an artist to do to become really good. He said go ahead and travel everywhere you can so you have more experiences to reflect on, and bigger library for your ideas.

[This message has been edited by Plop (edited September 01, 2000).]