Allenthelost's Sketchbook

[allenthelost]

If you want to get out of your comfort zone, what I would suggest is a more visual approach to drawing. What you've been doing is a lot more of a conceptual approach. You're trying to describe the forms and structure and the "things" of the subject. What I suggest is that instead of trying to draw the "thing", you draw what the "thing" looks like.

Hope you don't mind but I did this quick paint-over to suggest what it could possibly look like. This isn't to say "THIS IS HOW YOU DRAW" but rather just a way to show how the thing you did draw could be represented in a more visual approach. Now of course I didn't have the reference you did so I just sort of guessed and draw it from my imagination, the idea is the same. I tried to emulate your scratchy style of drawing to not make the difference so jarring.



The idea being that our drawings in a sense reflect the visually relevant information and by doing this, convey the form and impression of the subject in a more naturalistic way. 

So a way to study using this approach is to squint down real far and just look for the basic impression of what you see. Then you try to draw that impression, avoiding any and all details you see when you're looking at the subject with your eyes wide open. What this does is that it puts the visual information in a more clear order, telling you what is fundamental and hiding any details or half-tones that would distract you. It's a very old technique but it is very very effective. 

What you then have to pay attention to when doing this is what things actually look like. It can be difficult because the mind has a tendency to impose an idea on top of what we see, and this can distract us from seeing the world accurately. We all have these tendencies and a good artistic education is largely about overcoming them to see the world more as it truly appears and be able to represent it accurately. It is of very big importance that the things we draw in paint are represented the way they actually appear, with the right contrast to its impression. The best way to see what the impression actually is without the details distracting you is to squint and follow that more fundamental big impression

When you have an organised drawing that is careful with what information it includes, it puts extra pressure and weight on that information. So if you have to block in a head in 10 lines, those lines become very important and you have to first select the important information fundamental to the impression and then draw them it correctly for it to read well. This is hard to do because you have little to hide behind and a great weight is put on your skills to see and draw accurately. However it is also easier because when you're working with a drawing, you don't have 100 different lines to keep track of, you have a handful of very important lines. 


You do a lot of construction lines in your drawing and it's something I want to touch on. The thing with "construction" lines is that they don't exist. They exist in your head, they're a concept you're projecting on to a subject but they are not an inherent part of the subject itself. So with things in your head, I'd argue that they're best if they stay in your head, at least when they don't appear visually. This way you can keep your drawing or painting focused on looking like what it's supposed to look like and it frees you up to better be able to judge the image. Like when doing a "construction drawing" of a head or something and there are a bunch of boxes there, does it look like the thing you're drawing? not really. How do you know you're right in what you drew? you can kind of guess but it becomes harder to see it because your drawing is further away from the visual impression of the subject.

What you can however do is use these concepts of construction to help orient yourself in your drawing, to help you select the critical information and to help in designing a block in that is both visually appropriate and conveys some of the structural qualities in a "construction" method. The advantage of this is that you get the structure of a constructed drawing but you don't have all these ugly abstracted lines cluttering your drawing, so instead you can focus on the critical information for your drawing. I did a quick example of this just to illustrate the point.



So in this drawing, there are no construction lines. What I did was I drew something from my imagination just focusing on what would be the visually important information but I used ideas about construction to aid me when simplifying and designing the block-in. I would really encourage this if you're interested in a structural approach to drawing because it lets you see what you're actually doing rather than working blindly as is done in pure "construction" techniques. So it keeps the theoretical stuff in your head, and it keeps the visual stuff on the paper/canvas/screen, and it keeps them from interfering with one another.


Now of course, if this doesn't resonate with you, that's perfectly fine. There are many ways of drawing and it's good to learn several to find which ones resonate with you and are effective. 
Ps. I haven't gone back over and edited this post, going to bed as soon as I hit "post" so sorry if there are half-finished thoughts there (as I often leave).

Heya Tristan!
thank you so much for your comment! I’ve read through it a couple of times and I think I understand what you are talking about, I’ll admit that squinting while looking at a photo and drawing isn’t really...well the most comfortable thing I’ve done and while also not using any construction lines during the entire process made me very unsure if I drew things in the correct places.
I’ve always more or less used construction lines to figure out where everything is and where it should be, and usually when I make those portraits that I’ve done earlier I am sketching everything out on the same layer, so I don’t really bother to remove the lines at all, which I guess is kind of biting me in the ass depending on how you see things. 
I have to tell you thought that I had a bit of a hard time fully understanding what you meant when you spoke of trying to take a more visual approach to drawing instead of a conceptual approach, so I apologise if I didn’t fully understand fully what you were talking about but I reread your comment a couple of times so I think I kind of understood.

And so I decided to make a few portrait while squinting as you suggested and I also didn’t do any of the normal construction lines that I usually make when I’m drawing. I also decided to add the photos by the side so it’s easier to see where I possibly went wrong and where I did okay.
However, I do wonder if one is suppose to be squinting really hard? Because I can’t imagine that being super healthy for your eyes in the long run if one does it during long periods of time, currently I can feel my face being all weird, so I’ll probably not do anymore of this kind of study tonight.
Once again thank you for the comment, and I hope I didn’t completely misunderstand you! 
(sorry I’m Swedish, so English is my second language x,).    )
(I probably should start doing that so I can get help with this department more often tbh.)