Monday, October 15, 2007

Lingering questions in my head + big traditional dump

Can all the illustrators and good drawers out there explain to me how life drawing helps you illustrate better? What are you thinking when you draw people, animals and objects? Are you analyzing? Do you memorize how to draw them so when you illustrate you can draw from your head? How does limiting the time you spend on an art piece (life drawing) help you improve? Do you not think that working from photographs, which allows you time to analyze all you want, help more? And if you are working from reference when you illustrate anyway, what continues to motivate your going to workshops and drawing naked/clothed people, with a pen?

Help me...

Anyway... so here is my dump.

In-class painting.

Jennifer. 10 minutes (?).

Terry. 10-15 minutes...
Note: These are Terry too!
Here is Gintah! And Emerson! And Mike!

8 comments:

Mike Stanislavsky said...

the heads are so good, feshin style rocks.. i used to have the same exact questions in my head back when i used to care about my work, here is what works for me, quick studies with simple line to remember the shapes and the movement, try to visualise in your mind the pose use describtive words to remember things. train your memory and trust your heart and senses. like me you worry too much, this is not good. try and be a kid again , dont second guess yourself

Gintah Tran said...

Woo it's me! At least you didn't draw the crazy face hehe.

I found that drawing from life definitely made me a more confident, and thus efficient drawer. Photos always offered me a chance to be lazier and less committed to the marks I was making, since I knew I had as much time as I wanted.

With drawing from life, I subconsciously began analyzing and pinpointing what was necessary in a drawing, and what wasn't. Over time I got faster and faster at this.

Konstantin Pogorelov said...

I think a lot of pros use photo reference. Its great if you can get it. But only from life the amount of nuance you see is infinite. After a workshop try drawing some random big shapes and then drawing things into them; youll see what i mean.

Ken said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anh Lu said...

Oh my!!!! great work Carmen, meant to ask you if you've got a blog, now I see =) I love these studies, See! the figure painting turned out well.

this is ann! Car+men =P cya around

Helen Chen said...

these are great! I love the painting, I can't wait to take that class.

Unknown said...

I like vampire Terry haha, as for your questions and by the way if you ask 10 different artists these questions you will get 10 different answers and they may all be right, because everyone develops in their own unique way and there is really no wrong way or right way other than it is wrong not to draw and it is right to draw a lot. What I'm thinking about as I draw or paint from life is trying to add to my mental library of understanding the way things look. As anyone starts to draw more and more you will start to notice a certain "way" that you draw say eyes or mouths and drawing from life or reference basically builds on what you already have in your head so that basically you can draw things better and with more versatility. As for drawing from life vs reference, if nothing else drawing from life makes you analyze faster which makes it to where you can draw more in less time, which means you will eventually learn more in less time, there is also MUCH more information to be gathered when drawing from life. You can't properly analyze form from a photo because there is no form in a photo, it's flat. That's not quite an analysis when you draw from photos, it's more copying values and extrapolating the form that from experience you know is there. And last but not least in this mini art book of a comment is basically reiterating what Mike said, just keep drawing, draw from your head, draw from photos and draw from life. Just keep doing them all regardless of how crappy you think it is and you will find all the answers yourself. Rant over

Jelter said...

the sick and twisted thing is that if you stop drawing for a year, you might get way better than if you didn't, but you'd never know because you don't want to risk it! in fact how do we even know our drawings exist unless we're looking at them? usually you think they'll be different before you start them, AND you remember them as being different from how they really turned out. the point is: if you think too much, your head will explode, and then you really cant draw, so just draw.