What Is & Isn't A Fundamental.

[OtherMuzz]

Amit man, You actually are at this point are 100% agreeing with everything I said. Well maybe not 100% I think it's a degree of how far we would go with out definitions of understanding form, but we conceptually are on the same page.

Also yes I get the scientific and logic stuff might be trying, but it pushed you to explain your position in depth, so I think it was worthwhile. Thanks for writing it out, I think that your perspective is probably more helpful how you put it than mine for other artists.

[Lodratio]

'Abstraction and simplification are totally different concepts in this context, simplification is reducing information, abstraction is adding new information to get a different understanding or representation of the information.'
I agree that they're different, which is why I listed them seperately. The thing that puts them in the same category in this context is that both are ways of reducing the brain-capacity needed to accomplish a task.

'Again this all comes back to, if you can't draw a box how can you expect to draw a human.'
If what are you trying to say with that statement is that you need some understanding of form and perspective to get anything out of figuredrawing, I'm with you on that.

As for giving examples... you have to realize that you're asking me to call out artists on using a dead-end approach to learning, which seems like a really bad idea. No matter if what I say makes sense or not, it'll cause more trouble than it's worth. I hope that's reasonable.


'your understanding of form and proportion are still developmental. So i want to ask you, what is your plan on improving these things? This conversation directly relates to struggles you currently have with your own art, so even if the advice you follow isn't mine, there is something you need to sit down and work out.'
Aaah, why do you do this man? If you want to crit my art you're more than welcome, but you could just make a post in my cc entry or something. let's not have a discussion about our personal abilities in this thread.

[OtherMuzz]

If what are you trying to say with that statement is that you need some understanding of form and perspective to get anything out of figuredrawing, I'm with you on that.

Then what exactly is the disagreement.

The thing that puts them in the same category in this context is that both are ways of reducing the brain-capacity needed to accomplish a task.

I'm positing that abstraction in the form of gestures is a shorthand for knowledge you already know, it doesn't always reduce brain capacity to learn to begin with, especially if it is in the road of understanding the actual thing.

As for giving examples... you have to realize that you're asking me to call out artists on using a dead-end approach to learning, which seems like a really bad idea. No matter if what I say makes sense or not, it'll cause more trouble than it's worth. I hope that's reasonable.

I'm more than happy to call out flawed approaches, but I understand that you would rather not.

Aaah, why do you do this man? If you want to crit my art you're more than welcome, but you could just make a post in my cc entry or something. let's not have a discussion about our personal abilities in this thread.

Two reasons.

I made this thread because i have been saying this stuff in about 50% of sketchbooks I comment on here, with many people not understanding fully, so I wanted to have a discussion people could read and actually understand. So yeah I could comment on your work, but the point of this thread was so I didn't have to, that being said I can give a proper in-depth crit on your work if you would like.

But the other thing is we are having a deep conversation about the nature of learning art, much of which only becomes apparent after you have had to challenge everything you know to move past hurdles. Like it or not, our art is a reflection of our ideas and philosophies, and if we are talking about specific things with learning, if you haven't demonstrated an understanding of the skill in question, then the quality of the discussion won't be that high. Of course this is a subjective judgement on your work on my part, but the questions I asked are genuine, and the answers would be interesting.

Ps, could you please use the quote tags, it makes it far easier to read.

[username]

...so basically it sounds like you're upset that 'young' artists are doing things in a backwards way because they don't know what it is that they don't know. I have similar feelings when I see cats trying to open a can of tuna when they have no can opener...or opposable thumbs...poor cats.

I'm not sure if I'm beating a dead horse already with this rambling bullshit.

1a. Gesture drawing is great! It forces one to focus on the shorthand of what makes 'the feeling of a thing' without getting bogged down by so many technical details due to lack of time [focus on the whole instead of the sum of the parts]. Gesture practice can allow one to focus on proportion, weight, rhythm, simplification, emotional context [the feeling of a thing]. There's more to 'gesture' than just human body parts...boats, giraffe, tree, ...etc all have 'gesture'. It's important to know 'what does a penguin feel like?' as well as 'what is the construction of a penguin?'

1b. People doing things in an inefficient way doesn't make the activity inherently bad.

2. Learning what it is that you don't know is hard. I felt a lot like a seal in a desert for the first few years. It's going to take years just to figure out what is actually important. Everyone will take a slightly different path based on personality and interests. You didn't learn how to walk or talk on the first try, as you didn't know what you the hell you were doing, learning takes time and successive failures. The mechanical aspect of speaking is important, but so is building a vocabulary and understanding grammar, and then learning how to condense ideas into succinct sentences instead of rambling run-on sentences like this one takes years, and some people never fully grasp how to do this [ i hope the point hits home by the inclusion of such a run-on sentence].
Instruction can help focus an individual, but they have to figure shit out for themselves at some point. Learning how to learn for internalization is probably the most useful tool you can have as a human...

3. There is only fundamentals to learn, and many are abstract concepts which will take years to internalize so that one can manipulate at will. I cringe when I see some discussion about flighty topics like 'edges' when it's actually value relationships/contrast [the fundamental] that is the elephant in the room. Edges are a thing, but they're just not that important unless you understand the underlying fundamental behind what makes them a thing.

4. I went to dinner and forgot what I was rambling about. I had sushi. Process is a means to an end and a way of managing hierarchy of thought. I see many 'young' artists get caught up in the trap of 'process'... It is very easy to get trapped and very difficult to get out of the trap. As artists, we explore these abstract 'fundamental' concepts, not processes. Unless you are a fine artist and making some exposition about ephemerality of creation, then maybe your art is really only about the process and the end product is moot.

5. There is no Five. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this post.

[Brian Hermelijn]

I feel the approach amit presented is a much healthier/balanced one, because you need to have empathy and put yourself in the shoes of the student, and understand where they are coming from.

I think I can share my own experience, since I am one of those that first started with gesture drawing. The way I started doing gestures is, trying to replicate what other peoples I follow did. Steve Huston, Karl Gnass, Kevin Chen, Hampton, Villpu, Bridgman, Reiq, Mattesi. But eventually I started noticing commonalities in all of their gestures which is understanding of form and rhythm. 

When I came to that realization, I started practicing form, not intensively as sites like drawabox suggest, but also in the part of seeing the form on the body, seeing the rhythm, and then put lines on paper.

Would I have saved time if I just started with the tried and true system? Of course. But at the same time, I would rather fail at something, because it gives me a better data on what I did wrong, and why the other system is better.

A comparison road on gestures I did in the beginning and now. I didn't delve too deeply with figure construction until now, since there has been a lot of bumps on the road such as not knowing why I was practicing. And also stopped with learning to draw the figure around last month of 2015, and came back to it in May 2016.




Of course there is a lot of room for more improvement, but the point is, I learned from my failure. I learned by dissecting in my own, before I started with the form/proportion way as you suggested.

-

So for me it's about failing, noting down why the approach didn't work, and why the other is better to solve a certain problem.

[OtherMuzz]

Here if the thing Hermi, you are one of the people I am directly talking about it. You are studying in a negative feedback loop where you are changing how you draw, not really improving. While the first sheet of gestures are bad and you made some progress, the gestures in 2016 are no better than the ones in 2014, even if you think they are. In fact in many ways the 2014 gestures are far superior as there was at least an attempt to draw in perspective and the lines were more confident.

There is a very specific realisation that you are yet to have, and unless you break out of this paradigm you are working in, and focus on fundamentals not activities, you will never understand. You are pretty much only doing gesture drawing, and spending a shockingly short time doing each one.

I think you are currently going through some severe sunk cost fallacy trying to justify the last year where you made close to no meaningful progress.

You absolutely should not misinterpret Amit's and Username's words to justify lazy activities. Me attacking gesture drawing isn't me throwing the entire practice out either, I actually do gesture drawing for coming up with poses, and in the first steps of a photo copy. I am attacking people using it as a crutch instead of actually drawing what they see, and learning the reality of things.

[Piotr Jasielski]

A 2D drawing/painting is a simplified representation of a 3D objects. Form, point of view/perspective, lighting and color are the most fundamental aspects that we base our visual understanding of 3D reality. Because drawing is basically solving problems of representing 3D on a flat space we can make an analogy to a math problem - a student can provide a solution for it if he memorizes the whole formula (solved already by someone else before) but it would be way better if he actually understood what he is doing - this way he can solve problems that he hasn't seen a solution to before. Attaining the understanding of 3D is therefore the only way to achieve mastery in creating, not just copying.

One can not do a gesture drawing without at least basic knowlege of the 3D form, the problem is most people don't focus at gaining a better understanding of the form before they jump into representing it in 2D, which makes it hard for them to change the angle or point of view without having a reference.

[Brian Hermelijn]

Here if the thing Hermi, you are one of the people I am directly talking about it. You are studying in a negative feedback loop where you are changing how you draw, not really improving. While the first sheet of gestures are bad and you made some progress, the gestures in 2016 are no better than the ones in 2014, even if you think they are. In fact in many ways the 2014 gestures are far superior as there was at least an attempt to draw in perspective and the lines were more confident.

There is a very specific realisation that you are yet to have, and unless you break out of this paradigm you are working in, and focus on fundamentals not activities, you will never understand. You are pretty much only doing gesture drawing, and spending a shockingly short time doing each one.

I think you are currently going through some severe sunk cost fallacy trying to justify the last year where you made close to no meaningful progress.

You absolutely should not misinterpret Amit's and Username's words to justify lazy activities. Me attacking gesture drawing isn't me throwing the entire practice out either, I actually do gesture drawing for coming up with poses, and in the first steps of a photo copy. I am attacking people using it as a crutch instead of actually drawing what they see, and learning the reality of things.

Which is why I stated, I didn't delve into figure construction (in my last post if you have noticed) I just did gesture drawing and learning about the rhythm/feeling the pose, since that was my main interest up to this point for delving drawing the figure, instead of going into the more analytical part of things such construction of the figure, anatomy etc.

Now my interest is changing towards learning how the figure is actually constructed and not focusing solely on the rhythm/gesture. Which is why I made the other point, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the peoples doing the said ways you mentioned. And why they only did this and not follow the logical steps you suggested. Which is the reason I also said, a student is more prone to follow ones advice if you let them experiment and fail on their own.

[Brian Hermelijn]

Hey Muzz, since I am interested and commencing with learning more about figure construction, how would you suggest to go about it? The main goal is to eventually be able to construct the figure out of imagination. (Invest/design poses)

What do you think of this approach?
->Loose drawing->Lay in gesture(Connections/Releationships) on top of the loose drawing->Add construction->Add anatomy

Check this video see Proko describing the approach I am referring to(Natural Way to draw,
Kimon Nicolaides):
https://youtu.be/-ktfwayByRU?t=263 (That proko speaks of)

My main focus should be 5-60 minutes figure
drawings. In conjunction with form practice (box,sphere,cylinders)
and combining the forms. But specifically boxes, I noticed
cushart (one of the artist I follow) he can literally draw the poses
in all direction, and one thing he uses is boxes.

I do want to keep figures somewhat organic as well. So will have
to see how I can implement organic/loose feel to the whole
figure as I continue to sculpt it out.

[Abnormal]

I have been practicing as Kimon Nicolaides says in his book "The natural way to draw" . And the first chapters are only focused on " Gesture" and for me it is a level of abstraction difficult to reach and make it look good, and then the if talks about "glass box " design and more.

Perspective is as important as gesture but make forms look fluid and harmony is a long way.

[Abnormal]

Hey Muzz, since I am interested and commencing with learning more about figure construction, how would you suggest to go about it? The main goal is to eventually be able to construct the figure out of imagination. (Invest/design poses)

One formula I had in mind for practicing is:
- Loose drawing/gesture drawing
- Lay in the figure, like taking the time to lay it in
- Add construction on top
- Add anatomy

Specifically it's this kind of approach from Karl Nicolaides:
https://youtu.be/-ktfwayByRU?t=263 (That proko speaks of)

I think my main focus should be 5-15 minutes figure
drawings. In conjunction with form practice (box,sphere, cylinders)
and combining the forms.

At the same time, I do not want like to lose the
organicness of the figure. Like Frazetta still has
this loose feeling in his figures.

 Hey HermiDraws !! Look at this example of a tutorial that I have about how to create the same pose in different angles, created by artist Yu Cheng Hong . Whoa !!! It is a way to focus purely on construction and very effective .

[Brian Hermelijn]

@Abnormal
Now that reminds me of cushart, because that's basically how he invest/design poses, which is using the boxes. He can draw everything from any angles.

Gonna also wait and see what Muzz suggests, and start on with my new learning approach for the figure next month. Since the focus is to construct/design the figure from imagination (which of course gonna take a long time)

[OtherMuzz]

EDIT:

missed your edit

What do you think of this approach?
->Loose drawing->Lay in gesture(Connections/Releationships) on top of the loose drawing->Add construction->Add anatomy

I think it's fine, but i'd just suggest a modification, do the loose drawing as a separate image from the construction blockin. So sketch, find the idea, then on a new page, put some perspective guides down for the ground, and build that pose you sketched.

But i still stand by what i said below. Use your judgment, and try out these things, don't just take my word for it.

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Man I really applaud you for giving this a shot!

Abnormal is totally correct with that example, also, krenz is probably the best popular example I can think of right now, he uses dead simple techniques to amazing effect, all of his studies are really what you want to be getting to.

So here is what I would personally suggest, I'm not at all saying these are 100% mega sure they are the best, they are just my best shot at the moment. There are two skills you need to develop, copying and freehand sketching in a 3d scene, and when they are both ready you need to "bridge" them and start doing them together in the same image.

These two categories for exersize both have a very important theme. You are able to check your working at any point and hold your self accountable for quality, in a way where other exersizes don't have such easy checking mechanisms.

img source: Krenz


The first is the form exersizes, provided that you can do cube construction with a ruler with vanishing points; Start off drawing a ground plane, and maybe a box using vanishing points and a ruler, and then you want to attempt to place some objects into the scene freehand.

Start with boxes, then start to turn up the complexity. You can draw little robots made out of cylinders and cubes, and keep turning up the complexity towards a human as soon as you find yourself thinking that it's getting easier. Have fun with it, and really play with the idea of designing things in a 3d space.

If you are having difficulty at any point, you can always grab out the ruler and make sure that things line up, but you really want to be drawing in a situation where you can easily check for errors and correct yourself, because eventually you'll be moving onto drawings where you can't do this checking.



You should also be attempting Loomis Flat diagrams, as a way to learn how to measure proportion within perspective. These are page 30 of figure drawing for all it's worth.


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The second is learn how to copy accurately, just with line for now, and just straight up, 2d copying. This will train you to analyse the world around you with a much sharper eye, and will make your memory and drawing in general a lot more precise and confidence.

There are difficulty levels, and don't feel like you need to start at the very beginning if you can already do some of the easier versions, but always keep in mind that if you are having too hard a time, move down a difficulty level and try it again.

1. grid photo copying dense grid (like 10x10)
   
2. grid photo copying Sparse grid (like 3x3)
   
3. Photo copy, traced landmarks (make some marks for form large forms to start from)
   
4. photo copy
   
5. copy from life
   

One of the key concepts is that you have to hold yourself accountable to quality. if you can't overlay your drawing over the photo, and have the lines match up, you aren't being accurate enough. This sounds ridiculous, but most people can learn this within a week or two of diligent effort.

---------------

Once you have both of these things to a fairly confident level, after a week or two, what you want to start doing is doing photo and life copies, where using the 2d copying laying out the proportions and major forms, and then starting to lay in geometric forms, like boxes and cylinders. This is where you will start to make the mental bridge between construction and life.

If you follow this, I'm confident you'll have a very solid base to build on-top of, and these are actually the basis of my morning studies that i have been doing for the last month.

[Artloader]

A really interesting an informative thread!  Thanks to OtherMuz for starting it up and thanks to all who have contributed :).

I must admit - I myself have been focusing quite heavily on gestures recently and can see that gestures on their own do not equip me with the tools I need to build a figure.  Having said that I do feel that gestures have helped make my figure poses (such as they are) more fluid and natural looking.

At the end of the day though, I believe in building solid foundations and am keen to weave the above techniques into my studies and see what happens :).

I only stumbled upon this place by chance but I am so glad I did because in the short time I've been a member, I feel like it has boosted my art up a few levels!

[OtherMuzz]

Glad it helped!

Really this thread is more about trying to get people to think about what they are learning and why in a much more concrete way. But to change thinking you actually need to challenge people, so I'm glad to see that people are understanding what I'm trying to say now!