04-19-2021, 03:16 PM
Honestly you have a very good eye, and your drawings look pretty good to me, so Idk if this will help, I'm not trying to give you a drawing lesson or anything. This is stuff that is going through my head when I draw, though. And some of it is kind of strange.
My general process is to 1. Draw some lines. 2. Draw the rest of the f*cking owl. 3. do the lines again.
Like I spend a lot of time in the beginning figuring out where things are supposed to go, and then either erase or reduce opacity of all that mess, and express the form how I want it to be. And then go and analyze those shapes again now that it's been expressed. So you basically consider the thing you're trying to draw in as many different ways as you can, not just the obvious ones, going back and forth between flattening and unflattening the form.
Like if most people are looking at a figure, they are going to first be trying to draw just the outline, right? and just go around the contour and when the contour goes in, they go in, and when it goes it, they bulge it out. That's fine, but it's not gonna be accurate. it only looks at one limited aspect, not how those lines relate to each other. So I try to find more ways to relate things together than that, especially if something can relate across the object to a part on the other side.
So for example:
Starting with some kind of sketch. It looks really bad honestly :(. Should have started with a better gesture, oh well. If you drop a vertical line, you can see the heel, knee, hip, elbow, and nipple all line up. Bam, just related 5 things that otherwise would have no relationship. Then that line creates new negative spaces to look at, like the triangle to the left, and that angle of his groin leads right into the angle of his back. And the angle of the leg leads into the foot and the armpit, and crosses through the navel. So I can correct all of that now.
And then I also like to look at 'positive blobs' I guess I would call them, as opposed to negative shapes. Just looking at the light shapes of forms as just a blob and judging if I have the same shape in my drawing. I have a tendency to draw things without enough volume, or bulge to the form, for example the right bicep is way too small. so this corrects that.
Now I've looked at those three things, and corrected the sketch, it still doesn't really look like anything much. But it suggests an idea of what is supposed to be there. So I reduce the opacity and redraw it, except trying to express it as forms overlapping, and consider how things work with anatomy, construction and so on. I think a lot of people would start with constructing forms, and I would, too... except i wouldn't know where to draw it, or how big since there would be nothing to go on.
And then i basically repeat the process now that something is established, looking at the shapes in different combinations, how the lines flow into each other and so on. It's kind of a reverse approach, where now I'll consider the form and gesture once some kind of placement and proportion is established. A weirdly helpful thing is to find shapes in there that look like something you can name, even if it doesn't really. I tend to see a lot of birds with beaks, and for some reason that instantly shows me what's wrong with the corresponding shape in my drawing. Especially helps with faces, since they are complex and there are so many preconceptions about them.
A lot of this sounds kind of like weird Da Vinci Code stuff, like why would it matter if some random angle lines up with the armpit? but I honestly think it helps a lot to examine things in ways that aren't immediately obvious. if in your ref it does line up, but in yours it doesn't, then that instantly reveals that the angle must be wrong. We get really used to always trying to draw stuff in the way we first learned, or in the way that is habitual, and then we just ignore mistakes.
My general process is to 1. Draw some lines. 2. Draw the rest of the f*cking owl. 3. do the lines again.
Like I spend a lot of time in the beginning figuring out where things are supposed to go, and then either erase or reduce opacity of all that mess, and express the form how I want it to be. And then go and analyze those shapes again now that it's been expressed. So you basically consider the thing you're trying to draw in as many different ways as you can, not just the obvious ones, going back and forth between flattening and unflattening the form.
Like if most people are looking at a figure, they are going to first be trying to draw just the outline, right? and just go around the contour and when the contour goes in, they go in, and when it goes it, they bulge it out. That's fine, but it's not gonna be accurate. it only looks at one limited aspect, not how those lines relate to each other. So I try to find more ways to relate things together than that, especially if something can relate across the object to a part on the other side.
So for example:
![[+]](images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Spoiler
Starting with some kind of sketch. It looks really bad honestly :(. Should have started with a better gesture, oh well. If you drop a vertical line, you can see the heel, knee, hip, elbow, and nipple all line up. Bam, just related 5 things that otherwise would have no relationship. Then that line creates new negative spaces to look at, like the triangle to the left, and that angle of his groin leads right into the angle of his back. And the angle of the leg leads into the foot and the armpit, and crosses through the navel. So I can correct all of that now.
And then I also like to look at 'positive blobs' I guess I would call them, as opposed to negative shapes. Just looking at the light shapes of forms as just a blob and judging if I have the same shape in my drawing. I have a tendency to draw things without enough volume, or bulge to the form, for example the right bicep is way too small. so this corrects that.
Now I've looked at those three things, and corrected the sketch, it still doesn't really look like anything much. But it suggests an idea of what is supposed to be there. So I reduce the opacity and redraw it, except trying to express it as forms overlapping, and consider how things work with anatomy, construction and so on. I think a lot of people would start with constructing forms, and I would, too... except i wouldn't know where to draw it, or how big since there would be nothing to go on.
And then i basically repeat the process now that something is established, looking at the shapes in different combinations, how the lines flow into each other and so on. It's kind of a reverse approach, where now I'll consider the form and gesture once some kind of placement and proportion is established. A weirdly helpful thing is to find shapes in there that look like something you can name, even if it doesn't really. I tend to see a lot of birds with beaks, and for some reason that instantly shows me what's wrong with the corresponding shape in my drawing. Especially helps with faces, since they are complex and there are so many preconceptions about them.
A lot of this sounds kind of like weird Da Vinci Code stuff, like why would it matter if some random angle lines up with the armpit? but I honestly think it helps a lot to examine things in ways that aren't immediately obvious. if in your ref it does line up, but in yours it doesn't, then that instantly reveals that the angle must be wrong. We get really used to always trying to draw stuff in the way we first learned, or in the way that is habitual, and then we just ignore mistakes.