Practice Practice Practice makes perfect...

#21

For myself, I tend to first get an overview of all aspects of what I’d need to learn–reading the intros to each chapter of a book, or doing some research on each discipline, and read up on how they relate to each other so I know why something plays an important role, or why I should become knowledgeable in one area first before moving on. So, if I were you, I’d read whatever chapters once first to get a feel for what’s involved and how they might relate to each other, and then proceed to dig deeper into one particular chapter that has been pointed out as the one that should be mastered first, or use your educated guess on what you’ve read and pick one thing that you think you need to know well–something that will give you the confidence to move forward.

I think in this particular case, as soon as you’re able to draw various primitive shapes from any angle accurately in perspective, you can start on the planes. You shouldn’t need to master everything about advanced perspective before moving on.

#22

I have sat in lots of different art classes, One thing I have heard from art teachers over and over is…

[b]"Draw what you see, not what you know"[/b]

I feel this is one of the biggest fallacies ever when it comes to drawing. What they should really be saying is...

“Draw what you know… Just make sure you really know it”

There are two sides to every skill, a physical side and a mental side. Practice only really improves the physical side, helping you to become stronger and more consistent.

Golf is a very physical skill... to achieve a good and consistent golf swing requires years of continuous practice, to reinforce that ideal movement.

Drawing on the other hand is nearly all mental, it's about knowledge and the way to improve your knowledge is by learning (probably reading).

An analogy might be if I asked you to accurately draw my house. You haven't seen my house, you don't know how many floors or windows it has, the likelihood of you managing to accurately draw it is close to zero (and practice won't help).

The same is true of drawing a face. If you don't know how to correctly proportion a face, or the underlying structure of muscles and bones which give it its shape, then how can you ever expect to draw a believable face? (practice? Reading about anatomy is faster).
#23

Well, I think they only say that when you’re drawing something that is in front of you. When drawing from observation you probably shouldn’t be drawing what you “know”. You can’t, for instance, draw an accurate portrait of somebody in front of you just having knowledge on human facial features (no knowledge will help you drawing a portrait of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man). The same goes with any other type of observational drawing/painting…

You should probably only draw what you know if you’re composing a painting out of nothing. Then you need some knowledge to work as a mold…

#24

Sorry but I disagree, trying to throw together some circus act of a drawing based purely on what you can see from where you are sitting, will always be inferior to actually knowing and understanding what you are looking at.

Caricature artists need to have a very good working knowledge of facial anatomy. Even though they will be drawing new faces, which they have never seen or drawn before. That knowledge of anatomy is what helps them break the persons face down quickly and achieve a good likeness first time.

Drawing what you see is not guaranteed to give you a good likeness, because people move around. Even cameras often fail to really capture the essence of a person and they draw what they see pixel perfect.

On top of that if you don't fully understand what you are looking at then you are much more likely to make a mistake through an error in judgement.

Even with perfect judgement you cannot always trust your eyes, there are optical illusions around to throw you off. Sometimes your vision is obscured and one thing looks like another. Things can look strange from certain angles, and important details regarding shape can be lost in shadows.

This is why I say that you should not just draw what you see. You should know what you are looking at, look at it from different angles, work out the shapes that it is composed of, look at the light sources and where they really are, how they are striking the object.

Then get back in you chair and look at your perspective of all these things. Know what you are looking at and then 'draw what you know'.
#25

Well, this is something I can agree with (if you do line drawings…)…

#26

The reason why they tell you to just draw what you see and not what you know is simply because they are trying to demystify drawing for people who feel like it’s some kind of supernatural skill. People who haven’t reached a certain level of competence in drawing will put that skill up on a pedestal and think you need to have some kind of special intuition in order to draw well, and they don’t understand that when dealing with depicting likeness in a realistic manner from a defined source (still life, life model, landscape, photo…etc), there’s actually a lot of visual calculation and measuring going on, and often it’s not about “artistic thinking” at all, but very mathematical and calculated. When you draw what you see, you will think along the lines of:

(These are just made-up examples, not rules.)

“The corners of the mouth ends at the center of the pupil if you draw a vertical line to measure.”

“The forehead on that profile is slanting at roughly 25 degrees”

“That spot of highlight is completely white, although the local color is actually purple”

“The distance between the inner elbow and the wrist on that girl is exactly the length of her hand.”

“The value of that cast shadow towards the edge is exactly the same as the value at the terminating spot of the object.”

When you break what you see down to “exactly” what you see, then you start to think with mathematical precision, which will lead to technically accurate likeness. It is possible to draw exactly what’s in front of you even if you never learned your foundations but have honed your ability to capture just what’s in front of you, but then you become just a human copy machine. No artistic interpretation, no creativity, just technical skill.

So I agree that the saying of “Draw what you see and not what you know” mostly apply to situations where you are doing an exact likeness of a source in front of you. While it’s great that you hone your ability to do that, you should also apply the foundation knowledge you have learned and make creative decisions, such as composition (there is no viewfinder in nature, you have to frame the imagery yourself), what details to focus on and what details to leave out, emphasis on specific colors for artistic effect, simplifying of details (you never draw every single strand of hair–you do an approximation of clumps, strands, layers…etc), deployment of creative brushwork, and so on. But before you get all Picasso on the world, you really should first become proficient at simply drawing what you see. Once you ace that, you can go and get crazy. Not that there’s anything wrong with artists who can’t draw likeness or any kind of decent representational work, and only do abstract or highly stylized work, but knowing the general interests of the cgtalk members, it’s safe to assume most have interests beyond abstract and very stylized works.

And if you want to be able to draw any kind of representational imagery out of your head at all, then you absolutely must be able to draw what you know. Learning the foundations is the most effective way to get you there.

#27

I understand why they say it, and that there is a need to break peoples assumptions about what things look like and get them to look harder.

But I think the statement actually makes drawing seem harder and more mystical, like you are somehow supposed to use your hand like some kind of pantograph to trace what your eye is seeing.

It also doesn't directly teach the person 'how to draw'... it's just a vague clue about how to observe. "draw what you see and not what you know" roughly translates to...

[b]"What you think you know is wrong... now work it out yourself"[/b]

If you go into a science lesson then you expect to learn some science. You don't expect the teacher to say...

[b]"The world is not flat... good luck!"[/b]

I don't think these kind of lessons are helpful to people like Ranc0r who want to improve their drawing, but don't want to spend 10 years working it out themselves like those of us that started as children.

Ranc0r... since you seem determined to improve your drawing (and have even started a thread on concept art about it) let me give you a little bit of advice, which I think will help you.

Your drawing skills aren't as bad as you think. What I believe is really letting you down at the moment is 'laying out' or planning.

Drawing a picture is like building a house. You can't just rush into it and start laying bricks, because soon you will find that the roof won't fit, the walls aren't straight and you forgot to leave room for the pluming. Just like a house, a drawing needs to be planned out first so you know where everything is going to go, how big it is, what shape it is and how it will fit.

Planning is probably one of the most important and most overlooked aspects of drawing. I dread to think how many times I have seen pictures where the artist has obviously spent hours doing loads of beautiful shading and details. But the picture is spoiled because one of the eyes is wonky, or one arm is longer than the other. Why waste all that time shading a picture, that was flawed from the start? Better to spend your time planning and making sure everything is spot on, before you put in all that hard work.

Next time you think about taking part in the daily sketch Ranc0r (I believe the time limit is normally 30 mins). Spend the first 15-20 mins not drawing, just laying out, drawing faint lines and boxes, planning curves, and shadows, marking in where everything is going to go so that it all looks perfect (not just okay, actually perfect). You should have more than enough time left over to define and finish things, any you should notice a big improvement in the quality of your proportions and perspective.

#28

Thanks to all who have commented on this post, especially ‘Lunatique’ I am also a complete beginner who would like to get into the 3D world. I have come to realise that I need to build a good foundation of drawing to understand the shapes of things.

I have been feeling a little lost on how to get started on this journey and found this post very interesting, many thanks

#29

woah! very inspiring thread!!
especially Lunatique…i didnt have any art background and basically m doing my computer engineering…but i am so much into arts,i keep drawing in my class…and my note book is my sketchbook :stuck_out_tongue: …but i always thought tht just but drawing a lot i would master drawing…now i had to change my opinion.
i just downloaded andrew’s ebook on anatomy and ll research on that…
if someone could rate me…do look at my resent work.

(Image removed by moderator to keep this thread less cluttered.)

maybe this is not the proper thread for posting image…forgive me.

#30

I removed the image to keep this thread more streamlined. Can you go ahead and post your image in a separate thread by itself so we can help you in that thread? Thanks. :slight_smile:

#31

Hmm, there was a question about tutorials here.

I am also self-teaching artist and I think that if you have no formal training tutorials are VERY important. Of course you can find a lot of them from basic color theory to simple WIPs. I can say that sometimes reading one tutorial may be an equivalent to hours of praciticing. But you have to get into the core of what it says, not copy steps. If you are self-taught then you have to be most strickt teacher for yourself and try hard. As i was said, learning is not only practice it’s analysing and thinking.

On the other hand too much tutorials may do some harm too. I’ve realized recently that one of my problems with colors in digital painting is that I subconciously trying to adjust to some techniques I read about even though they are not what I feel comfortable with or want to use.

When you master the basics enough and start experimenting you may have situations, when you suddently realize you improved fast over a short period of time, even though before you seemed not to improve at all. It’s because you’ve learned how to learn and improve faster. But then you’ll realize how much there is to learn and…

Well, as it was said, it’s pretty much about the drive. From what I can see from other forum, many artists have the time when they feel terrible about their work and want to quit/throw everything out the window. The more effort you put in it the more it is likely to happen. Lot of people DO quit when it happens first time. But the drive is what keeps you getting back to it, no matter the problems.

#32

ya sometimes tuts may confuse us…but it shows some new aproach which we never thought of.Its for us to decide what suits our needs…maybe we should make our own style some day :).I am finding Tuts here very helpful…as i am new to photoshop painting.

And no matter how bad my drawing goes,i preserve them in a large file with a large label “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL”:wise:they are never meant to be in my thrash can :slight_smile:

i started a new thread,
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=177&t=674294

cheers!

#33

I’m agree with lunatique when he said practice smart.
In my little experience, I prefer practice when I want or I need, you know when you enjoy it, and not to practice all time just to practice and do only bad things. If I see i’m not very concentrate, i stop and i come back later or another day.
I see that like music, i play drums so need to practice a lot for independant, coordination, endurance, rythm, speed, etc… In drum it’s better to not training if you don’t want or if you haven’t motivation. Because when you play with this bad feeling, your playing become bad, you quickly take on bad habits, and therefore we must go back and correct it.
In my opinion, I see drawing or anything like that, but sometimes I need to put a kick in my but* and not to fall in the laziness.
Very good thread here :slight_smile:

#34

Practice is not only a solution while practicing we also have to store in our mind.While reading the tutorials also .We just look and practice it and we don’t save in our mind .So i feel pratice and storing in mind is muc neccessary .ANd one thing while practicing we have to concentrate in our work .orelse it will be putting water in the sand.
:buttrock:

#35

Well, carefully observing the world is also part of the practice. Each day you can learn something new. Seeing interesting object, person, lightning, try to analyze and rememer it. Sometimes 15 minutes of carefully studying something may have better effects than 5 hours worth of drawing wihtout the analyze, repeating the same mistakes.

#36

This is a great thread! Thank you for the helpful advice, Lunatique, and for pointing out MindCandyMan’s thread. It is encouraging to see how much he has improved.

Unfortunately, I have not enjoyed drawing in years, since I took some classes and my understanding of art exceeded my ability to create it. It is very painful for me to produce what I know to be rubbish, yet it is far more painful for me to not create. I am hoping that once I move from conscious incompetence to conscious competence, my enjoyment in art can be refound.

I have produced many drawings, including copies of the masters, without seeing much improvement. I believe it is because I am reasonably good at copying what I see, while I was not being mindful enough as to why the masters drew as they did. Thank you for pointing that out, Lunatique, you may have saved me from another fruitless period of spinning my wheels!

I am trying to practice my drawing regularly, and those that I don’t delete I shall post in my anatomy sketchbook thread. I am very grateful for any comments, crits, recommendations! :slight_smile:

#37

what to say…thank you for this thread, it gave me the right motivation and strenght to start my “improvement thread”:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5426006#post5426006

Thank you Rob for your words…you are the first person who made me thought that MAYBE I needed some organisation in my work…that MAYBE I was practising in the wrong way…lol!!

Thank you so much for sharing all this thoughts!!!
:slight_smile:

#38

well…
i did not read all of the above posts. and i would not comment much about learning different tools and all, because sooner or later i will learn them all (regardless of the fact that other people learned them much sooner than me) . i will concentrate on the work that i want to produce or do. what i have in my mind or imagination. thinking this way or all the time thinking about the character(for example) i want to model or paint. i`ll automatically always be thinking about how i will do it(tools or process). it makes the process easier because may be i knew the process or tools to do that task but i was not implementing it because i thought i would not be able to do so.
so when i see other people work so beautifully done and such freedom of design and concept i see in their work. it makes my hand and mind go crazy and i feel free and powerful(not to mention the greatest help by the description that other users give on how they did the particular image or model, it sometimes opens up possibilities and gives you hint about how you can use something in YOUR IMAGE, that YOU want to do).
so instead of searching and seeing every tutorial i see out there.
i concentrate on searching for the particular problem i am having on the current image that i am working on( for example today!, i am searching help on how to make realistic cloth material, BECAUSE these days i am working on a model and the next thing THAT I DO NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT AND WANT HELP ON! is cloth shader development).
so if you are not improving in painting, try to figure out or ask other painters that what is the first problem you have. is it your hand?, not going along your brain?. i mean straight lines and all. is it the sense of light?. prospective?. you name it!
so according to me!. this is how it goes.
this is all my personal experience as a junior and i thought may be it will help you too.
regards!
Azeem

#39

Thanks you for making such a nice thread. It unlocked my head. I’m still wondering about this: How do I know if I practice the right way? Does my drawing have to show some kind of improvement or is it okay even if it looks worse somehow?

#40

I think it’ll be pretty obvious that you are improving because simply by reading about foundation theories, you’ve already gain more advanced understanding that brings the overall view of your path into sharper focus and detail. Gaining additional knowledge can only be beneficial, and how you incorporate that knowledge into your practice sessions will determine how fast you improve. Either way, as long as you are being smart and practical about the way you learn, you can only get better, not worse.