Practicing fundamentals- Drawing or painting??
polycounter lvl 10
Continous practice of the fundamentals to refresh and strengthen your basics is something I am currently undertaking in my free time. Which is the most important -drawing or painting? especially for building muscle memory of how things should look. I also feel painting is important too as to grasp light, color and shading in 2d.
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I guess the best way to analyse what you should be doing, would be to critically asses your current work and look at where you are weakest. This is the surest way I know, to show you what you should be doing.
So I am drawing skeleton, muscles, et.c at the moment. Will move on to animals at some point.
I feel this will enable me build a visual library/ muscle memory faster rather than sculpting the subject matter instead.
As for building a visual library, unless you draw for a living/everyday, it's unlikely you'll manage to build up a reliable visual/muscle memory. Even then, the majority of artists collect reference for the subject they want to draw. I work within film, and I see top senior artists refer to reference for everything that they do, the art is how you interpret the ref and what you choose to use or omit. Long story short, practice practice practice, get the basics down so you can handle simple things like proportion and construction (I say simple, but it isn't). Beyond that, gather ref, and use it when you create your designs.
A final point, drawing from ref for learning is one of the best ways to improve your art, but I think another vital element to the process is to critically engage with the subject. For instance, if you are drawing the hips, use reference to get everything in place, but on the side try and figure out the object in 3d space - I think if you can work through drawing the hips from different perspectives you will build a strong understanding of the subject.