Drawing & practice

scourgewarper

Being once ok at drawing at school I neglected my skills when things like work, a job and adult life got in the way so I decided a few months back to try and sharpen my skills again as drawing skills often complement 3d skills. Basically I was wondering what people's opinions are on drawing from books or images on the internet etc. The number one piece of advice to improve your drawing ability seems to be 'draw from real life' which I do but invariably I often like to just sit down and 'copy' an image or character I find interesting, such as a cool frazetta barbarian or something. Is this as useful tho?

In essence it seems i'm still needing to judge forms and proportion of what i'm drawing even tho i'm 'copying' it visually, I rarely get it spot on so I guess it must be working some part of my visual brain, just wonder what people's thoughts are on this. Also, is there ANY benefit to drawing ability when tracing an image?

MoP

I would think that any form of drawing is going to be good.

Tracing is next to useless because a lot of the skill of good drawing comes from observation, if you're tracing then you're completely denying that.

In order to perfect form and proportion you must observe it a lot and try to replicate it on paper, without tracing. Use measuring aids if necessary, but try to become aware of natural measurements in a figure or composition (eg. "the legs in this pose are one leg-width apart at the knee").

monkeyboy_garth

Draw as often as you can from life, reference and from your head. I draw on the train to work every day and I really feel like it has helped a lot. So even if I can't squeeze it in at any other time, at least I have a good 45-60 mins of 'life drawing' everyday. It's all goooood!

EmAr

I enjoy doing 20 second gesture drawings from www.posemaniacs.com in my free time. It helps making fast and accurate observations of the whole. Spending your time with this stuff should be more helpful than tracing. If you draw from real people on the street, it's even better. If you have time why not join a drawing group btw? It's impossible for it not to help you with your skills.

scourgewarper

@Monkeyboy - that's a great idea, that's one benefit to travelling by train as well cos if you had to drive then obviously you can't draw (well, not well anyway) question is do you draw the person opposite!

scourgewarper

I just googled life drawings classes for bolton but didn't really find anything, I went uni here (and actually posed for a life drawing class a few years back!) but not sure if they still do it so will check it out, not heard of drawing groups before but yer anything like that would appeal to me, there's no-one in my life or around me into this stuff so it's quite hard to get motivated/discuss this kind of thing, thankfully places like this exist!

lefix

i agree that any practice is good. i also hear that taking a ref, grabbing an anatomy book and trying to indentify the muscles in the ref and draw them on top of the ref is also a good practice. not as tracing practice, more like a study. haven't tried it yet tho.

http://www.posemaniacs.com/pose/thirtysecond.html seems to be also good for practice. and i also like to draw some of the characters from this site every now and then: http://hel-looks.com/

monkeyboy_garth

Most people on the train are fairly distracted, reading, listening to music and staring out the window, so they don't really notice you drawing them. That's just the way the train is - I've never had any probs. I keep a sketchbook on conceptart.org here (shameless plug!) which is mostly train doodles. I usually pick someone a row or two back from my seat, that's a decent enough buffer on a crowded train I think.

Eric Chadwick

As others have said, the big benefit of drawing is teaching yourself to see. As I see it, the benefit of drawing from life (as opposed to from photos or art) is that my depth perception helps me learn to see better, because it increases my ability to translate forms between 3D (real life) and 2D (my page). I don't get this from studying photos or paintings (though I do anyhow, they have other benefits!). This is why I think a mix is good.

Nick Carver

I think one of the most important things to remember, whether you're drawing from life or from reference, is to analyse what you are drawing rather than just copying. In order to improve your visual vocabulary you have to work out what is happening and why that is the case (if that makes sense). One thing I've found very beneficial is to work from life/ a ref pic and then try to recreate the image from memory the next day. It really does show how good your understanding of a subject is and highlights where your weak points are.

slipsius

if you draw for 30minutes to an hour a day, as long as you arent tracing, you`ll improve. just takes practice.

joe gracey

I need to practice drawing from memory more. I can look at something and draw it pretty well, but if I don't have any reference in front of me I suck!

Joshua Stubbles

joe gracey wrote: »

I can look at something and draw it pretty well, but if I don't have any reference in front of me I suck!

Same here

Blaizer

joe gracey wrote: »

I need to practice drawing from memory more. I can look at something and draw it pretty well, but if I don't have any reference in front of me I suck!

Then, try to improve your photographic memory. Look at something, close your eyes and try to remember it ^^. It's a good training.

I draw all the days, but i always need to warm up like some minutes :S. The brain is another muscle!

practice and more practice, all is reduced to that.

scourgewarper

I've heard a lot about developing a 'visual vocabulary' and it makes sense, if you truly understand where every muscle inserts and overlaps, how it deforms when it extends and contracts etc then it'll be a lot easier to visualize this as you draw, looking at a model kneeling etc and thinking ok, in that position this muscle will bulge, it's attached to the bone here so that's how it will look from this angle etc.

I suppose it just takes time to really absorb all this knowledge considering how complex the body is, best get started on those vilppu dvd's!

bounchfx

Blaizer wrote: »

Then, try to improve your photographic memory. Look at something, close your eyes and try to remember it ^^. It's a good training.

is improving your own/creating your own sense of 'photographic memory' even possible beyond what you're capable of already?

Neavah

I have/had a difficult time drawing things that weren't right in front of me aswell.

Everyones hating on tracing but thats what I did to improve my drawing, and it worked great!

I took pics online of people (naked:P) and started in photoshop drawing the line of action over them, then then rough perspective lines, then construction/porportion lines etc. then blocking out the primitve shapes. etc. etc.
The more I did, the better I got, so I started hiding the layer with refence for more and more steps.

With in days I could confortably draw people without refenence. I'm still not great - but the improvement from doing this trumped months of life drawing calsses and anything else I tried.

rolfness

MoP wrote: »

"the legs in this pose are one leg-width apart at the knee").

perv..

Mezz

Neavah wrote: »

I have/had a difficult time drawing things that weren't right in front of me aswell.

Everyones hating on tracing but thats what I did to improve my drawing, and it worked great!

I took pics online of people (naked:P) and started in photoshop drawing the line of action over them, then then rough perspective lines, then construction/porportion lines etc. then blocking out the primitve shapes. etc. etc.
The more I did, the better I got, so I started hiding the layer with refence for more and more steps.

With in days I could confortably draw people without refenence. I'm still not great - but the improvement from doing this trumped months of life drawing calsses and anything else I tried.

We're hating on tracing cause what you're doing is not tracing :P Tracing means following the lines. By noting and drawing things like the line of action, some perspective, and porportion, you're actively thinking about what you're doing and learning from it. Tracing is just mindless tracing

IMO, the best way to learn to draw people better is life drawing, but any sorta drawing where you're thinking about what you're seeing and practicing will help you get better. From my experience, both working from pictures and whatnot, and then from life drawing from a model, there's a huge difference in what you can see and learn from actaully having someone in front of you.

However, yes, if life drawing is not an option, just draw whatever you can get your eyes on :P Improvement will come as long as you keep up with pencil on paper (or tablet on computer, pen on sketchpad, etc...)

Joshua Stubbles

When it comes to drawing, I really need to let go. I want it to look kick ass right from the start, so I constantly erase, redo and end up blocking my mind off from doing anything. Draw a line, "nope, looks like shit", erase, rinse/repeat. A perfectionist mindset is a fucking curse and I need to let that die.

scourgewarper

That's another great exercise, drawing contour lines over objects and imagining how the surface flows/how it looks from that perspective and intersects etc.

@vassago: I'm the same, starting a drawing can be so painful for me cos i've a tendency to want it to be perfect right from the start. Also it can be frustrating when you draw a part of your model perfectly but its just slightly out of proportion to the rest of the drawing, but I guess that's why you really have to concentrate on sketching out the major forms lightly, just like 3d you have to really block the model out well and get the base right before honing the detail. I guess it just takes practice and self discipline.

carlo_c

monkeyboy_garth wrote: »

Most people on the train are fairly distracted, reading, listening to music and staring out the window, so they don't really notice you drawing them. That's just the way the train is - I've never had any probs. I keep a sketchbook on conceptart.org here (shameless plug!) which is mostly train doodles. I usually pick someone a row or two back from my seat, that's a decent enough buffer on a crowded train I think.

Wow your sketchbook is awesome! Really like your train sketches, seems like a good way to fit in drawing every day.

As for drawing, I just joined a life drawing class so that every week I know I'm doing some focused drawings from life.

Maybe find some like-minded people and meet up in a cafe every weekend to covertly draw people. I'm pretty sure I've read of a few people on here who do some sort of sketch meet already.