learning to draw

rota

"...is that I've known Kelly Freas for a number of years,.."

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Astra: You know Frank Kelly Freas?! How nice! Please tell him from me that I admire his work to death.

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HudsonGray

I met him once in the late 1980's at a WisCon (sf convention) downtown years ago, when he and Phil Foglio were guests of honor. He's been around for a LONGGGGGgggg time, hasn't he.
 

Astra

rota said:
Astra: You know Frank Kelly Freas?! How nice! Please tell him from me that I admire his work to death.

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I'm afraid the last time I saw him was, sheesh, close to 10 years ago now - he'd moved to the Southwest, and remarried, and was up in Chicago with his new wife for a convention. What with one thing and another, I haven't been able to hit any cons since that one, and I'm out of touch with a lot of people.

Google lists his site as www.kellyfreas.com, but when I checked, it was down, so ??
 

punchinella

Hey guys, I don't know who Kelly Freas is so I can't comment on this subject :) But after a couple of days of experimentation, I'm a bit more clear on what my 'problem' actually is. It's not translating what I see (I feel that if I were to work on that long & hard eventually I would get a whole lot better . . . ) What I can't really imagine myself ever being capable of is sketching out an 'idea', something I'm not actually looking at . . . which, it seems to me, is what illustration actually requires.

Do any of you do this--draw from your head, rather than through your eyes??? If so, how did you learn? --Simply by translating elements of the 'real' world so many hundreds of thousands of times that eventually you came to know them intimately??

It strikes me how much tarot art is illustration in this sense; in that the idea, the logic/archetype/kernel or whatever else you want to call it exists before, not after, the image . . .

Are there links around here to some of the tarots you guys have done/are working on?? --I guess I need to spend more time in this forum, don't I (also History & Iconography, this is another very significant front to my personal campaign :laugh: )
 

Ruby7

Punchinella, I know exactly what you mean by this, I can draw what is in front of me but I have difficulty drawing from my imagination. I keep hoping that if I just practice and practice my drawing this ability will follow, but so far no. I am a jeweller and I can draw jewellery designs from my head and can make up jewellery designs why can't I draw other subjects from my head?

I'm interested to see what other people think about this.

Ruby7
 

isthmus nekoi

I've found the key to drawing realistically from your imagination is to understand the *basic structure* of a thing. Once you understand the base structure of an object, and how that structure moves, you can manipulate and rotate it in your head e.g. the human body. I would be willing to bet, Ruby7, that your work in jewelry has given you an intimate knowledge of the structure of jewels and that is why it's easier. I'm sure a car mechanic who is not an artist could draw a better car than me since this is something I've never studied.
 

mandragora

Hi Punchinella,


your question inspired me to rethink aspects of how to draw...well, basic truth about drawing is that you must not be concerned about 'what' you draw because no object, concrete or imaginary could be captured unless you enter the spirit of it and completely try to be it, in other terms you do not treat objects but you are becoming a 'subject' of what you draw, paint or play.
This is a basic principle. We are not trying to capture objects, but our perception of them, therefore, we try to express it. We try to express our reaction.
One of the methods to achieve this is to capture a general mood. Some of the best portraits I have done were people I felt the most. Some of best nudes I make were about how I felt (body language).
So get in the mood, pick the easiest media you can think of (pencil, chalk or even collage or wathever) try to express it through your facial expression or body movement, even try to dress like that, and draw freely and carelesly as much as you can. And oh, btw...use as much version, on as much paper as it take, do not get concerned with what final outcome will be.
 

HudsonGray

Right. A lot of classes try to get you to see balls & cones & squares, but that always hindered me. It's a different way of thinking to put down loose strokes on the paper & to see it 3-D in the head.

You can start with outlining, too, which is what kids do, but at some point you have to actually be able to rotate the image in your head enough to see all sides of it & that'll move you to the next step of drawing.

Try imagining a cat in your head. Then take away the inner structure till you can see through it & rotate it in the air 180 degrees, slowly, keeping everything in proportion. Turn it over or shift it the other way. Once you 'see' things inside in 3-D you can better put it on paper because you're now bringing memory of an item into play instead of relying on a picture in front of you as reference. It's easy for some people, harder for others, but practice makes it a lot easier to do.

But keep sketching things, like leaves or shells, from all angles. Once your mind starts seeing in ways your hand wants to draw, you start improving fast.
 

Astra

Drat you, Hudson Gray! I think you've just pointed out why I have so much trouble with sketching!

Thank you immensely, Hudson Gray. I'm pretty durn sure, after a really strong flash when I read your post, that the drafting has been sending me about it almost totally backward - after all, I was trained for years to be able to easily break things down into geometrics and mathematical curves, so that they could be machined more easily. No wonder I've been much, much more comfortable using a 3D setup that would let me BYPASS the "drawing" part of the process, so that I wouldn't automatically start doing that.

Which means I probably have to retrain in that area almost from scratch. Well, it's at least possible, now that I know where the problem is.
 

HudsonGray

Wow! A breakthrough?

Actually, as an adult, you likely won't have to start from scratch, just 'shift' thinking slightly, a way of seeing something different. You're already familiar with shapes in your mind's eye, you've just been training yourself to work with blocks. Nature rarely has a straight line, so once you step away from architecture & manmade items, you really do have to be thinking differently.

But I think your mind already has what you need, you only have to unlock it. Try doing a LOT of doodling!