12-27-2017, 09:28 AM
Just a couple things to post.
I've done a lot of drawing from imagination, drawing from ref, trying different things and generally being dissatisfied with those approaches. I think the boring truth is that my hope to pull a figure out of my mind is very unrealistic, and that sketching figures from imagination is a waste. Not a total waste. I certainly see an improvement in the imagination figures below, but these couldn't be used in a process that leads to a finished piece in my opinion.
I know comic artists do figures and heads entirely from imagination but I also see the mistakes in their work to a lesser extent that I see myself making. Weird heads, weird figures, weird anatomy. Same face, same body. But they have to ship something, on a deadline, etc. and that means they lower their standards a bit, and reasonably so.
Drawing from imagination is good because you're unlimited, anything your mind or pencil can create, but it has also an aspect of being a trap. We're used to hearing that about reference drawing, how people fall into mindless copying and not analyzing things, skipping constructive drawing, not simplifying, the drawing/painting that may as well be a photo. Obviously reference has all those potential traps. But imaginative drawing has crappy aspects too. You can waste a lot of time trying to fix something without knowing how to fix it, your memorized simplification may not be what you want to draw, never knowing how right/wrong a drawing is.
Probably this is a temporary disillusionment with my results from pure imagination, maybe some perfectionism going on, and not being able to lower my expectations and standards in results enough to just take something to a finish.
All this is to say, from now at least for a good amount of time, maybe it should be a 2018 thing, to stick to altering reference at most. I'll still do imagination drawing for fun but for now I will stick to construction with ref. Definitely not going to post imagination for quite a while.
![[Image: tumblr_p0mt9eCLK71r4ltwho1_1280.png]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/8c5292f55ee5fc46a7df615cc21af33f/tumblr_p0mt9eCLK71r4ltwho1_1280.png)
![[Image: tumblr_p1lbfqlx7o1r4ltwho1_500.png]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/6a7b33ec6c5914bfd007e41421b8579d/tumblr_p1lbfqlx7o1r4ltwho1_500.png)
I've done a lot of drawing from imagination, drawing from ref, trying different things and generally being dissatisfied with those approaches. I think the boring truth is that my hope to pull a figure out of my mind is very unrealistic, and that sketching figures from imagination is a waste. Not a total waste. I certainly see an improvement in the imagination figures below, but these couldn't be used in a process that leads to a finished piece in my opinion.
I know comic artists do figures and heads entirely from imagination but I also see the mistakes in their work to a lesser extent that I see myself making. Weird heads, weird figures, weird anatomy. Same face, same body. But they have to ship something, on a deadline, etc. and that means they lower their standards a bit, and reasonably so.
Drawing from imagination is good because you're unlimited, anything your mind or pencil can create, but it has also an aspect of being a trap. We're used to hearing that about reference drawing, how people fall into mindless copying and not analyzing things, skipping constructive drawing, not simplifying, the drawing/painting that may as well be a photo. Obviously reference has all those potential traps. But imaginative drawing has crappy aspects too. You can waste a lot of time trying to fix something without knowing how to fix it, your memorized simplification may not be what you want to draw, never knowing how right/wrong a drawing is.
Probably this is a temporary disillusionment with my results from pure imagination, maybe some perfectionism going on, and not being able to lower my expectations and standards in results enough to just take something to a finish.
All this is to say, from now at least for a good amount of time, maybe it should be a 2018 thing, to stick to altering reference at most. I'll still do imagination drawing for fun but for now I will stick to construction with ref. Definitely not going to post imagination for quite a while.