learning to draw

Um. Unlearning isn't going to be quite that easy, I suspect, but my mind has been giving me flashes of when I used to actually "feel" the muscle and bone structure I was working on with the tip of a pencil.

That would be an unalloyed pleasure, except that it was when I wanted to SLEEP, drat it.

Too many breakthroughs in too many areas in too short a time... now all (all?) I have to do is integrate them.

I am a high school art teacher and let me like everyone else recommend "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". It is the text I used in my intro classes at collage and what I tell my students to buy. There is a video too. It is hands down the best book to teach you how to see so you can draw.

Here's a few suggestions:

Browse the samples if you don't have them:

1. http://rackham.artpassions.net/

2. Inner child cards (Isha Lerner)

http://ishalerner.com/home/is1/index.html

3. Other suggestions:
Tarot suggestions:

a. Animal Lords (Lo Scarabeo)

b. Renissance Tarots (Lo Scarabeo)

c. Flower Fairies (Lo Scarabeo)


4. I absolutely adore Edmund Dulac and Warwick Goble, but I prefer Dulac and found out he was a friend of Yeats...rich information to me through net searches.

http://dulac.artpassions.net/

If you find online samples and can print one sample, look at how the colors affect you, what you like about them, etc. It can be the detail of ink for the delicacy of the face and the hands and then you might also like the color, body elegance, rich and colorful backgrounds...

If this is the case, then you might want focus as you said in perfecting your detail of a shell, birds, flowers and then apply the same study to how portraiture deals with facial and hand proportions.

You are also welcome to trace a details from a beloved picture and then modify the coloring with watercolor pens, etc, allowing the edges to blur into the background. That way you can work with an image you enjoy and then learn to make it your own.

The idea of tracing is not to slavishly copy the artistic work, but to get your eyes and hands to gesture, practise and retain the memory of subtle detail in the way that you like. If you take traced elements of different pictures and then copy them separately into your own composition, you will have something like your favored artists and something unique to you.

I've built a notebook as a 'library' of things I like from a few artists and enjoying writing up notes so the colors and ideas that they focussed on becomes a part of my own mix.

Hope that helps.

Cerulean Mari

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Hi Punchinella,

Thanks for starting this great thread!

I just wanted to let you know I have both versions of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and they are equally good. The primary difference is that the new edition includes a chapter on color and a chapter on fine handwriting. These are nice extras, but the basic drawing instruction is essentially the same.

And like everyone else, I must say that to the extent I can draw, learning as an adult, this is the book that made it happen.

I am so excited for you, learning to draw in order to create your own tarot deck. I think the process of developing one's own images of the archetypes is about as much fun as a person can have. I started painting so that I could illustrate science fiction books, and that is also great fun. This is harder, maybe, because there is so much desire to get it "right."

I second Astra's thanks, Hudson Gray, for the suggestions on visualizing. It is the trickiest area for me too!

Cerulean Mari,

Blessings on you for these fairytale images! You are a guru of web research. I've loved these illustrators all my life, grew up on their books, and they are such magic. But I haven't seen them in years and years, seems like everything in the children's section is Beatrix Potter and Goodnight Moon. And when I look at "grown up" art, that is rich and wonderful of course - Matisse especially - but there is something about the fairytales one grew up with that no Matisse can replace. Thank you for bringing them back to me.

Cerulean Mari (great new name btw) I'm swooning

What is it about this art that sets it apart . . . is it just that we looked at it so much as children? I don't know, I think there's a bit more to it than that . . . it's just . . . so . . . darn . . . beautiful . . . *punchinella swoons again*

Actually, the thought of copying 'elements' & incorporating them into my own compositions occurred to me last week. Copying (w/out tracing paper) strikes me as a great way to study line, & figure out exactly what it is that I like so much about a particular picture!

Before the age of machine-aided reproduction, copying I understand was an art in & of itself. The Marble Fawn by Nathaniel Hawthorne is, as I recall, about a young copyist in Italy (a gorgeous book!)

I wonder about the legality though of appropriating elements from other people's work into one's own . . . Well, I guess it's been done throughout the centuries, any time one artist 'models' work on the work of another . . . ?? --Please correct me if I'm wrong about this

P.

Well, this thread is so long that I just "sampled" it a bit so forgive me if I repeat anything already said
I myself started to draw as soon as I could hold a crayon, I never had formal art training other than in your regular public schooling but my family is blessed with a large dose of natural artistic talent. I worked as an art director for a small family owned company that specialized in custom logos for close to five years.
All that being said, I am a firm believer that everyone has artistic talent, you've just got to be willing to let it out and not sabatoge your efforts by having that little voice nagging you in the back of your head saying "I'm not artistic" "I'm too old to learn this" etc. etc.
Another big stumbling block is thinking that you are going to be able to make art that is just like so and so. Everyone is individual and although you may learn to emulate so and so's style, you will never get it exactly the same, you will have something better - your own personal style.
The book that was repeatedly suggested "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" is a good place to start. Also, as others have said - practice, practice, practice - always have pencil and sketchbook at hand. Even after all my years as an artist if I don't draw a little every day I get sloppy.
Another thing that you should also keep in mind is that each person is going to be better at drawing some things than others. It is the "old school" that believes that to truely be an artist you've GOT to draw the human body, you've GOT to master it. I'm here to tell you it just ain't true. I spent all that time working as a professional art director, creating art professionally, and my human drawings, well, they suck, not to put too fine a point on it. I can draw a good human - if I sit there and torture myself over it, but why? If you choke on drawing people but you find you're fantastic at drawing animals, then draw animals - if you don't want to draw people there is absolutely no reason why you should force yourself to do it. I know that there will be those who will vehemantly dissagree with me on this point. I don't intend to ruffle feathers here and I don't intend to start an arguement, I am only speaking from what I have seen over my many years of being an artist.
And I'm going to spill a dirty little art secret here as well - a LOT of PROFESSIONAL artists "trace" - they take photos, they use a projector to put it onto their canvas, they get they basic outlines and then they use the photo as a reference as they paint. I even personally know one very famous artist (who I won't rat out ) who not only photographs his subjects in the exact lighting and positions with the exact clothing and props but then he also has "assistants" do all of the preliminary drawing and pencil work, then he just goes in and inks over it. Many "purist" artists would say that these people are not artists but I beg to differ. They are creating art, in their own way, and a good many of them are making a good bit of money at it. So I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that you CAN be an artist and you CAN make your own rules - I don't care how old you are when you start, you CAN do it.

N

Your sketchbooks are your own to study

and collect. Many artbooks on learning portraiture--Drawing from the Masters--take samples of Raphael, Da Vinci, Degas...one of the reasons I really investigated Jacabo Carucchi di Pontarmo (excuse the spelling) is his color and his sketches were so wonderful--and in turn what I learned about him beyond Vasari helped me appreciate him more.

So choose an artist that you really like and sketch away. After six months to a year, I consolidated and copied studies from life drawing open studio (you pay a fee that goes toward the payment of the model) and classes and made a few painting studies from my own sketches. That way I also tossed loads of things that didn't matter away and kept what worked for me. But I think that is your preference-some people like to keep their stuff.

Interesting. I think that copying from masterpieces is considered very old-fashioned nowadays, and yet I do think it's possible to learn a huge amount this way. It's one of the things Alex did as part of his (undoubtedly old-fashioned) Russian training, and I can see how much it taught him. I think we should revive this as a practice. I wish I'd done it at art school - but the constant refrain now is "be creative" which I think is in fact almost impossible without some actual technical ability - and you only get that over time (Eight of Pentacles stuff!)

practice makes perfect ;-)

Amazing. I had not seen this thread previously. I just finished posting a message in which I said my tarot deck project is in part a reason to practice my 'art'. (Or maybe practicing my 'art' is in part a way that I can create the tarot deck that is just right for me) Then here I find a collection of thoughts about drawing and practice and tarot decks......

I am pleased, but not surprised to see Betty Edwards book highly recommended. I liked her approach so well I invested in her video and spent time doing all of the exercises she offers. Hers is a very encouraging message for those of us, not artists by trade or by any obvious natural born talent but who very much wish to draw well.

I do believe there are some individuals who are clearly gifted from a very young age, but even a natural talent needs to be nurtured. I like others who have already replied on this thread also believe that 'talent' comes with work and practice and any age can be the right age to learn and grow.

Deb