How to Draw
Part 1: What is Drawing?
This is how I've come to understand the act of drawing. It’s best to first set
the semantics (the specific meaning of the words) straight, so there are no
crossed purposes.
By 'drawing' I mean loosely the act of making visually representative marks
on a surface.
Anyone can draw. Anyone can attempt to recreate what they see in front of them
- or a scene they imagine - by making marks on a piece of paper. If you hear
someone say "I can't draw", slap them for me. As long as they have a
moving part to which a pencil can be taped, they can draw.
However, "attempt" is the operative word here... because that's all
anyone can ever do. They can come indefinitely close to recreating what they
see or imagine, but no matter what they produce, it can always be improved
upon. Bear this in mind, I’ll come back to it in a moment.
Part 2: Good and Bad
This section is very subjective, so just be aware that what I'm giving you is
my opinion on how to see things. Only an opinion, but, I'd like to think, an
informed opinion.
As far as I'm concerned, drawing should not be regarded in terms of “good” and
“bad”... and even more dangerous are the terms “succeeded” and “failed”. Let me
reiterate the point I made in part 1 in order to show why these terms are
unhealthy.
"no matter what you produce, it can always be improved upon"
Going by this statement, if you ever want your art to be “good” or to
“succeed”, you will always fail. There will always be someone out there
who is more accomplished than you, and you will never be satisfied. This is why
art can seem so futile, and be unendingly depressing for some people.
Unfortunately, because of the way in which most of you who can read this will
have been taught by school, parents, friends and life experience, it will seem
like everything is a matter of "pass" or
"fail". For the remainder of this writing, I just want you to try to
forget these words, and try to forget about the concept of making money with
drawing, or drawing related jobs, or anything but drawing for drawing's sake.
I'll come back to all this at the end, and hopefully put everything into
perspective.
Part 3: Symbols
Rather confusingly, I think that drawing is not about the act of mark-making
itself, but the things that precede the act. Namely sight, language and
knowledge. This may sound very wishy-washy, but let me elaborate:
As we grow up, we learn to see the world. As a baby, a human has no language,
and so all the things a baby sees have no names. The world around you is
literally one great, unnamed landscape. You then get taught to divide the world
up into understandable objects, that are separated from each other by name...
"this is a tree", "this is a person", "that is a
stone". Endless qualifiers, classifiers, describing words & nouns.
At the same time as learning to name the objects around you, you get shown
drawings of them, in educational books, story books, cartoons, adverts, you
name it, drawings are everywhere. So, as far as the growing mind is concerned
the word "tree" doesn't just bring to mind a real tree, it also
brings to mind a simplified drawing of a tree.
This is where the trouble starts as far as "drawing" is concerned.
What you are learning during this stage of your life is to sub-consciously
recognise everything around you as a "symbol". When you look at a row
of trees, and turn away, what remains in your head is most likely not the exact
image of the trees themselves, but a bizarre mix of the word "trees",
the average pictorial representation of a tree, and a vague memory of the shape
of the trees you saw. Depending on the person, this memory will be (in various
proportions) both photographic and symbolic.
So essentially, the average person's understanding of the world is a mixture of
words, symbols and images. To demonstrate this, as you sit at your computer
reading this, try to recall the exact shape of something you can't currently
see (say, maybe, a "car"), and you'll come across a big problem...
There are loads of different types of car! And even the cars that look the same
can be in different conditions from each other. In order to visually understand
the word "car", you actually need to simplify the image in
your head, otherwise it can’t be representative of all cars. Otherwise, the
word wouldn't just be "car", it'd be "rusty Audi A4" or
"brand new Mini Cooper", or whatever example of a car you happened to
choose as your starting point.
This point doesn't just apply to cars, it applies to everything; trees, stones,
pavements, walls, eyes, noses, faces, whatever. For each word there is an
infinite number of visual variations, but ultimately only one word. So when you
come to draw a "car", which one do you draw? Is it going to be
realistic? Do you design your own?
Depending on how much you think about these questions, the car you end up with
might be anything from crudely representative, to fantastically accurate, to
wonderfully inventive.
Part 4: Overcoming Symbols
So, here's the problem... when you come to draw something, you obviously need
to remember what it looks like first. But, for the majority of people, that
memory is not an easy thing to access or even define. There's a massive mental
barrier of words and symbols between them and a perfectly pictorial memory. And
what's worse, is that this mental barrier was created during the earliest
stages of life, and has been constantly re-enforced ever since. This is part of
why drawing is hard (and usually remains hard) for most people.
What's even worse is that during any art based education you get, the
vast majority of teachers are unsuccessful, if not downright terrible at
describing this problem and how to overcome it.
So, before you even pick up a pencil in order to draw something, what you need
to be asking yourself are the following things:
"Can I really remember what this looks like?"
"Which specific example of this thing do I want to draw?"
"Do I want to design my own variation?"
Then, if you don't have a perfect photographic memory; if you can't decide what
example you want; if you don't know how to design your own...
go and look at it whilst you draw it.
And, contrary to a lot of opinions, this is not cheating or copying in
any way. Why rely on an imperfect memory, when you can go straight to the thing
that your mind is remembering?
This can be annoying if you're not used to it, but if you put yourself in the
right frame of mind, it can be really enjoyable and exciting. There are plenty
of different ways to do it too. Here are a few:
1) Go outside (or wherever what you need is) with a sketchbook, and practice
drawing what you want.
2) Go out with a camera (preferably digital for ease), and take pictures of
what you want to draw. Then use the pictures as reference when you get home.
3) If you're lazy (like me), sit right where you are now, and search around the
internet for videos and photos of what you want to draw. Be careful when you do
this though, because essentially you're letting other people do a part of your
work for you, which is rarely advisable for obvious reasons.
And remember, when you draw:
Draw the object in front of you, not the symbol of the object.
Forget words, and treat the object (be it natural, human, mechanical or
otherwise) as a set of shapes, a sculpture, a physical entity. Look at it as if
you've never seen it before, you don't know its name, and all its form is
fascinating and unknown.
If you find this hard, a good exercise is to imagine slicing it into
cross-sections and figuring out what shape these sections would be, or to look
at it from odd angles to appreciate it in a new way.
After you've searched a good volume of material, and done a few quick sketches,
you'll find your imagination should be fired up with all sorts of different
ways to draw what you want, and based upon what you've seen, maybe even ways to
design a new one, or come up with a unique variation. You'll also know exactly
how it appears in reality, so you'll have a good starting point from which to
simplify if you want to use a less detailed or realistic style.
The great thing is, the more you do this, the less you'll need to do it in
future, because each time you do, you break down another part of the wall
between you and understanding reality. Conversely, no matter how experienced
you become, never delude yourself that you’re beyond referencing.
Part 5: Practice Makes Perfect
So, it's that simple? Well, no, unfortunately there's a little more to it.
In order to be able to draw the thing you want to, you have to also have
sufficient control and experience with your chosen medium (be that paints,
pencils, pens or whatever). Some who have never picked up a pencil find it hard
to simply draw a straight line, let alone draw the complex set of lines that
might describe a human face.
Unfortunately, the control you need to do this comes only with practice
and perseverance, which can seem daunting and frustrating. The only
encouragement that can be given here is that patience is an incredibly valuable
and necessary life skill. There are much worse ways to learn it than by
drawing.
An exercise to help:
For pens and pencils, try practicing by drawing something in front of you
without looking at the paper, and in one unbroken line. Never take your pen off
the paper, and never take your eyes off the subject.
The resulting drawing will look crap, but that's not the point. Remember I
advised you to forget about "succeeding" or "failing". The
point of this exercise isn't to produce a "good" drawing, it's just
to draw. Be fast, confident, and easy. The various elements of the exercise
help in the following ways.
- By looking only at the subject of the drawing you’re forced to really think
about how to describe it using line, and subsequently increase your awareness
of the space in front of you, and the space on your page.
- By describing the subject in only one line, you’re forced to place that line
as accurately as possible. Sketchy lines, while visually appealing, allow you
to get away with not quite placing the line in the correct place, and never
fully committing to one stroke.
- The visually jumbled pile of lines you’ll probably end up with is hard to
regard as a finished drawing. It’ll encourage you to simply move on without
worrying about the result, focusing only on the process itself.
This won't instantly make a difference, but just like with all practice
eventually it will. Do 1 or 2 of these (drawing random objects) every day for a
month, and you will start to see progress.
Part 6: Learn to not Give a Damn
It might seem like common sense to improve your drawing by analysing your past
mistakes, and fixing them in your next drawing. However, this process can be
slow and unproductive for a number of reasons.
First of all, as you draw, a strange psychological process occurs… your mind
learns to see not only the lines you’re actually laying down, but also the
lines you want to lay down. By the time you’ve finished a drawing, when
you look at it, you’ll actually be seeing a slightly different image from the
one everyone else sees. In your head, the drawing will appear closer to the
result you wanted to achieve.
To see concrete evidence of this, there are a few things you can do. First of
all, try looking at art that’s more than a few years old. It’s always
surprising how different your drawings will look after not having seen them for
years. For a more immediate effect, try turning your paper round, and holding
the drawing up to the light, or up to a mirror, so you can see it reversed.
This should make all the flaws in the image leap out to you in a rather frightening
way… the reason for this is that the flipped image is completely new to your
mind, and won't remind you of how the image was 'meant' to be.
So, if your mind literally tricks you as you draw, how do you spot mistakes and
improve? Luckily, there are a few things that can be done about this.
Firstly, let other people do the critiquing. Place your work on a community
like deviantart, or a forum like Concept Art (
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/ ), and encourage people to criticize your
work. Be open to what they have to say, and take everything into consideration.
Secondly, the trick is to move on as soon as possible. Doing the observational
drawing that I mentioned before is the perfect way to do this. Put in lots of
small, quick practice, so that when you sit down to spend a long time drawing
something, you can use everything you've learnt doing smaller things that
didn't matter.
Remember, when doing your practice, the process is the point, so
disregard the completed sketches, and learn to really not give a damn about
what you're producing. Get rid of the normal pressure associated with drawing
something, and you'll find that your other drawing will become easier and
easier, and less and less stressful.
Not dwelling over the exacting details of what you did wrong last time
is actually the best way to move forward. If you’ve identified that the anatomy
of your upper arms is off for example (like mine often is), then focus upon
doing as many free-hand sketches of the upper arm and how it connects to the
body as possible. The more you look, the better you get. If you endlessly tweak
one drawing until it appears right, all you're doing is battling with your
mind's preconceptions about how your drawing looks which - as we covered
earlier - isn't how it really looks. For someone who hasn't learnt to
control the way their mind sees their drawing, trying to tweak a finished piece
is frustrating and usually unproductive.
Part 7: Stylism
This is a nasty one. This produces endless arguments, heated debates, wild
opinions and sore prides. Here's my (hopefully all-encompassing) take on it.
Let's sort the semantics quickly, so we both know what we're talking about. A
"style" as I refer to it, is some form of methodical simplification.
Something that produces a recognisable look to the way in which a thing is
drawn. Stylism is usually significantly different from reality, but doesn't
naturally rule out realism (although it does rule out photo-realism). To place
it in context with the way we see the world, a style takes a linguistic symbol
(say, an eye), and creates a distinct and recognisable visual symbol for it
(for example, an eye drawn by a Disney artist). Variations on that visual
symbol are used when different examples of the object are drawn.
An example of a style is the variously revered, emulated and derided
"anime/manga" aesthetic. Although there are many styles within manga,
the archetypal manga aesthetic is universally recognisable, and often aspired
to. I'll discuss this example, since it's what seems to cause the most heated
discussion, but in the following sections I could potentially be referring to
any recognisable style.
Essentially, when someone learns to draw in a style, what they normally do is
this:
Instead of learning how to draw by exclusively observing reality, they also
observe other artist's work.
Now, just to get this straight I think this is a perfectly valid way
to learn.
Many established artists obviously did a similar thing, and it's impossible to
avoid doing completely. If you're into drawing, it's a fair bet that you're
inspired by a particular artist, movement, style or trend, so (if only
subconsciously) that's always going to bleed into your work. It doesn't make
you unoriginal, and it doesn't make your work any less valid.
What does make you unoriginal, is if you set out to say "draw
exactly like Clamp", or "draw just like Katsuhiro Otomo". That's
when a learnt style starts to become redundant. If however, the majority of
your artistic influence happens (like mine) to be Japanese Animation and
Comics, having its influence in your art isn't a crime. It's natural. As long
as your influences within that umbrella are open minded and varied.
A big problem often occurs here though, which I've heard discussed all over the
internet. People who are into a style think that they can get away with only
using existing art in that style as reference. And doing this is perfectly
possible. You can learn to draw without ever consciously considering a
real-life example of what you're drawing. However, I believe it's an extremely
detrimental way to draw, and ends up creating derivative and uninformed work
that is only appealing to people who love exactly the type of art you love.
It also misses one fundamental element of drawing: figurative drawing like
manga is a visual representation of life. Even if you’ve never drawn
from life-reference, somewhere down the line, reality was the influence for
your influences.
To demonstrate, if you want to draw as well as Clamp, remember that they were
inspired in part by Rumiko Takahasi and Osamu Tezuka*, and they, in turn were
inspired by Kazuo Koike (Takahashi's Sensei) and Disney, and so on and so on...
(*source: interview in "Manga: Masters of the Art")
However, Clamp don’t draw like Rumiko Takahashi or Osamu Tezuka. And
their style isn’t a cross of the two either. Rumiko Takahashi doesn’t draw
anything like her teacher, Kazuo Koike. So what changed?
These steps from artist to artist are unavoidably informed by the environment
of the artist in order to progress. So if you want to be the next big mangaka,
you can't draw exactly like Clamp, because if Clamp simply copied
styles, they'd draw exactly like their influences. And we’ve demonstrated that
they don’t at all.
So, learning to draw also means learning to draw observationally,
at least in part. As an immediate visual example of this, check out
mincedniku's deviation Eight
Years of Art
The steady improvement is plain to see (and considering her current ability,
very encouraging for anyone just starting out), but to my eye, there is a
particularly marked improvement during the 2004 year. After asking her about
this, we had a brief conversation from which I’ve extracted the most relevant
details:
“[That’s] probably the time I started trying to combine anime with realism to
get the style I have now … what a lot of people don't understand is that if
they practice their realism, their stylization of it will be much stronger …
You need to understand something before you can take it outside of itself, make
it something different, and still be recognizable.”
Mincedniku’s art, is in my opinion one of the strongest examples of an
anime/manga influenced style I’ve encountered on deviantart, and her popularity
attests to similar sentiments from a large number of people. It’s evident from
her comments that observational drawing needs to be a primary point of
inspiration before a style can truly come into its own.
Part 8: Reference vs. “Imagination”
“But!” I can picture some people crying out “what about my
imagination?”, "What about fantasy?", "Not everything we draw
are things we can see!".. Well, good point. Surely a good imagination
should be enough. I’ve read pages upon pages of argument claiming that “imagination”
can be a replacement for observational reference. So, lets do the semantic
thing again. If we accurately define “imagination”, we can be sure we’re
discussing the same thing…
Life is necessarily a collection of experiences. For the spiritual among you,
you also believe there is something above and beyond experience, but,
describing this higher existence visually is always very tricky and ultimately
symbolic. If you do so, you do so using recognisable images that everyone has
experienced such as “bright light”. Self evidently, you can’t describe
something using an image no-one has ever seen.
So, to simplify, the visual part of life is made up of the experience of
sight. This means, that if you “imagine” anything visual, you have
to either recall something you’ve seen, or mix together a number of things
you’ve seen. Imagination is a highly creative process, but it’s not
divine. It can’t create from thin air. To do so would be the same as claiming
you’ve invented a new primary colour.
Take a fantasy creature like a dragon. How can that spring from life example?
Surely you can only know what a dragon looks like by looking at drawings of
one. But no, those drawings are informed by things that exist. The scales of a
lizard, the skeletal wings of a bat, the claws of a bird... all grown in
majesty, and morphed into a new form, but drawn from life none the less.
Understanding the underlying process of inspiration from life is the only way
to truly bring your own drawing to life.
To say that imagination can replace observational reference is like saying that
a building has the same function as a brick. It doesn’t make any sense.
Life-reference feeds imagination; it is the fundamental building block
of creativity.
Bearing this in mind, it becomes incredibly important that even if you prefer
drawing from pure imagination (and I think, most people do), that you also
reference life in order to stop your imagination relying on the same set of
images over and over, and growing stagnant.
Returning to the discussion of style, style works by creating a drawn symbol
from an object in life. When emulating the style of another artist without
considering life, you essentially create drawn symbols from more drawn symbols,
and your drawing takes a step away from what it’s describing. It becomes less
vital and less able to represent the original object. A symbol of a symbol
might be recognisable, but it’s not going to be as well informed as the
original symbol.
Finally, bear in mind that referencing from life ultimately has no bearing on
how “realistic” (or how “manga”) the resulting drawing is… that’s your choice.
It only changes your understanding of what it is you're drawing.
Part 9: Practicality
Well, with all that said, what does it mean if you want to apply art to life.
If you want to make a living, there is such a thing as succeeding and
failing, and no matter how you perceive reality, ultimately it’s other
people who decide how good your work is. They may not know or care about
“symbols” or “reference”.
Basically, what the methods of seeing and drawing I’ve described do, is to
provide you with a stable platform.
This platform is free of pressure, and from it, you can produce drawings which
you can then send to either fly or fall. But the flying and the falling
is nothing to do with you. If you seek to observe, learn, improve and practice,
and above all, enjoy, then you've truly done all you can. And if (as I
believe), every person's potential really is infinite, you'll most definitely
succeed in time!
Please note that all work in these galleries is ©Paul Duffield unless stated otherwise. If you wish to use my work, then please contact me first.