[Pigeon]

I have a series of questions on how artists' rendering skills develop.

We can draw simple forms like boxes, set up still-lifes, draw our friends, and our furniture, even go to figure drawing sessions. We can develop mad rendering skillz, but what's the next step? How do you go from drawing things that you see around you, to incorporating it in your art? Exactly how does it translate? How far do artists go in finding and creating references for a specific piece?

My problem has never been drawing from life, but drawing from my head. At what level do the life-drawing skills apply themselves to drawing from the imagination? Or is it best to work from both ends? Practice drawing from life, and also practice drawing from the imagination? It can be as frustrating creating crappy work from your imagination as it is to have trouble translating a still-life.

Any thoughts?

Dean

[faB]

In Loomis's book on 'drawing the head & hands', there is a section which I remembered where he says, roughly : 'if you are concerned about likeness then by all means, use all the tools at your disposal to create the best likeness possible, however if you want to be able to construct the human head in any possible setting you choose, based on a solid construction method, then read on...'

If I take the time to do it, I can draw very well from life, but I always sucked at drawing people out of my mind.

Just in the last few days I have slightly improved at drawing heads and this is I believe simply because I used construction.

I think perspective and construction are the basics you need to create imaginary spaces and persons. However when we draw for fun, as we usually always do until we hit the art school, we never really take the time to study a solid method.

There is no apparent construction or plan when you draw something from life, you learn to see the 'artist' way by drawing shapes and negative spaces for example, so if we take this to the extreme it's pretty much turning ourselves into a camera isn't it ?

Following this idea, when we turn into camera mode, trying to draw something as accurately as possible in proportions and shading for example, we learn to see in '2d' and we draw in '2d'.

If you want to draw imaginary places & people I think this doesnt work, instead we need to visualise and construct in 3d. This is pretty much like using 3d software.. ever tried modelling a head ? I tried.. let me tell you it was revealing.. although I KNOW what a head looks like I had a very rough time trying to model one in 3d, and I was fairly confortable with the polygon tools.

Study anatomy, study the skeleton, the skull, the proportions and construction methods, until you can draw a person in any perspective from your mind.

That's how I understand it so far.

[atomicmonkey]

When you draw from life... a person for example... you add a little section to your brain library.

Draw a couple figures in different poses from your head. Then go out and take a weeks worth of life drawing sessions with models. Now come back and draw some more poses from your head. They'll most likely look better than the first ones.

If you're really interested, you should pick up the book 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards. She explains how many of us who draw from our heads incorporate certain symbols we have used all our lives in drawing (for example, when drawing faces, you give all the eyes you draw a certain shape - a familiar shape). By drawing from life, you begin to realize that these symbols can't exist in everything you draw, and you begin to incorporate how things really look into your drawings.

Hope that helped. Pick up the book though, it's really good.

[ZippZopp]

Pigeon, this has been on my mind for so long and i can't figure it out.. i think i'm pretty good at drawing from life or reference material, but i can't draw from my head very well at all. so i don't really know how to go about learning to draw from my head, because it is pretty frustrating to work from reference or life and draw pretty well and then go to draw from my head and have terrible results....