Drawing from memory

Sometimes when drawing time is limited I’ll do a quick exercise from memory, maybe 10-20 mins in length. I’ll just work through an idea, in this case a leg study but it could be anything really. It’s a great way to gauge how well you know a subject and helps keep the tools sharp. It feels similar and I think has similar rewards to doing scales or exercises on a musical instrument.

Learning to draw for Animation.

Dear reader; I first wrote this piece in March 2008 and published it on an old blog of mine. I recently came across it and while many things have changed in the industry since then I still think there are some ideas here of merit for the beginner who’s trying to get together a plan. Enjoy! Richard

Hey Folks,

In the last couple of years I have taken several classes in different areas of art with a view to becoming a better draftsman. With this in mind I wanted to share some of my observations. A disclaimer, I can not possibly cover every subtlety and nuance of what it takes, (I'm not sure I even know yet). By tomorrow I hope to know more than today and consequently this will evolve, but I share my opinions as they stand today.

So what does it take to achieve this goal?

Firstly we have the universally agreed upon disciplines, figure drawing both human and animal, gesture drawing and drawing from life, a study of drapery and clothing and of composition. You may want to add to this list things like acting, cinematography etc. All of these will bring us to one place, which is to communicate an idea or ideas as clearly as possible. So here's some of my observations.

Figure drawing.

When I decided to learn to draw the first thing I did was start to take figure drawing classes. Although there is "gesture drawing" in figure drawing it is on some level a different beast to the gesture drawing we talk about when we consider going to a coffee shop or the likes to draw. The main difference being that in figure drawing we have a controlled environment where the model holds the pose, whether it be thirty seconds or twenty minutes there is a level of control there which is absent in gesture drawing outside of the class, (more on that later). Then we look at the longer poses which require us to be more critical towards volume, anatomy, tone etc. What I find interesting here is the fact that there seems to be a direct coloration between our understanding of anatomy and the level to which we will be able to draw the human form. To be successful in this area requires a fairly formidable understanding of the human form and anatomy, something I was blissfully unaware of before undertaking this and am still trying to learn, never did I think I would learn so much anatomy! There seems to be many people that attempt to draw the human form without this understanding, and it shows. You can't fake it, there is so much going on underneath that is influencing what we see that we simply have to understand it if we are ever to draw the human form with conviction. Once that understanding is there, only then do you become free to draw the figure and rely less on what you see in front of you and more on your knowledge. Then the model becomes more of a leaping off point and the initial slavish copying can stop, a necessary step none the less.

Animal drawing.

Many of the things that apply to figure drawing also apply to animal drawing with one very big difference, the model in animal drawing will not stay still!, and when it does it is invariably sitting in such a way as to make understanding the form extremely difficult. Drawing animals well from life is a very advanced skill and much benefit will be had from studying animals in animal drawing books and from photographic reference(including footage). I know there is controversy to drawing animals from photos but I believe to study from them is a very necessary exercise if you are to really understand there proportions etc, and video footage is critical if one is to understand there gaits and characteristics. I have learnt far more about drawing animals from books and reference material than I have from drawing at the zoo. I found the zoo to be a pretty hostile environment for the artist, from drawing standing up to animals in various states of lethargy and the crowds, not to mention heat, cold and wind. Also we get back to the problem we had in figure drawing but even more amplified which is the fur, hair or feathers which tend to really distort the structure of the animals. Without a good understanding of the anatomy we end up with soft toys! The zoo is a good place to exercise one's academic knowledge but if I were to study animal drawing incrementally I would put drawing at the zoo as the final stage of development and not my starting point. One thing I will say though is if you ever want to gauge how well you really draw then go to the zoo!

Gesture drawing.

I have read and heard many times "carry a sketchbook everywhere you go" and while this is excellent advice there is a small but very valuable piece of information that tends to get left out which is, even though your subject is right in front of you, you are still drawing from your imagination. Everyone is moving all the time so the idea of sitting down in a coffee shop and casually drawing what you observe is really only half of the equation. As someone new to drawing you tend to take the idea of drawing people very literally. You go out and try to capture what you see in front of you, but then you look back and the scene has changed. As a newbie this can throw you. You could go as far as to say that once that initial observation has been made and the pose decided on in your mind that you would be better not to consult the model again for that is likely to throw you off more than it will help. This also applies to the aforementioned zoo drawing. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but I think it's worth mentioning. It would be fairer to call it "drawing from the imagination on location with reference" but this is a bit wordy!

Master copies.

In the classical atelier tradition making "master copies" from works of the great masters is a important part of development. You can also take this concept and apply it to many different areas of animation such as composition, layout, color theory etc. I forget who said it and am most likely butchering some elegant philosophy but it went something like this "copy the masters enough and eventually this quality will find its way into your own work". Doing copies of poses from model sheets is a tool I have found very useful in helping me refine my drawing. I have found this a great way of learning how the masters pose their characters. It is also very useful for acquiring the skill of drawing on model, more so than with your own character designs which tend to be at the will of your discretion. When copying from model sheets be sure to be very critical of whether you are drawing on model, otherwise this exercise becomes less useful. DO NOT do what I see many people do when they start on a character which is trace the model sheet, (something I have admittedly done in the past), a quick satisfying result that you will learn almost nothing from.

The frame by frame analysis of animation could possibly fall into this category to some extent although your observations would be the end result rather than a copy of a scene. But the spirit remains the same.

So while all of this covers little more than craft I do hope that these observations offer a different perspective in areas I still battle with on a daily basis.

In improvised classical music we study structures for improvisation, scales and exercises and copy our teachers long before the student starts to improvise on their own, and yet in art we seem to jump head first into the improvisation without necessarily acquiring the tools that it requires. Is there a balance? or should there be.

You can teach craft but not art.

Then comes the art.

....I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and have been putting off posting it because I fear I will be criticized for these points of views. After writing this I went back over the Walt Stanchfield notes and felt that maybe all of this was missing the true spirit of drawing. That said these are very real problems I have encountered and therefore have decided to go ahead and throw this up here. This could be considered the first part of a much longer conversation and I hope that at the very least it can start a dialogue about some of the battles we all face in our pursuit to become better artists. In saying that I still believe these points to be fundamentally true, (for me anyway).

2 Day Life Drawing Workshop at Frogmore Paper Mill

Next week! A two Day Life Drawing Workshop at Frogmore Paper Mill, in Hemel Hempstead on May 10th & 11th, 10am-4pm each day. Take your Life Drawing to the next level! Hope to see you there!

Life Drawing bootcamp starts tomorrow!

This three week bootcamp will help bring your Life Drawing to the next level. Over the 3 weeks we'll look at the different stages for developing solid drawing habits through a variety of techniques, lectures and demos whilst drawing from the model. We’ll discuss design language, transitional forms, foreshortening and a variety of topics that will help develop our drawing.

Anatomy: An Introduction

Some thoughts on Anatomy and why it matters

So many years ago when I started studying figure drawing I had no idea I'd get so immersed in Anatomy! Artistic Anatomy has been an essential component in my development as a Figurative Artist. But understanding Anatomy alone is not enough, it's how we apply those ideas that matters. 

So why do we need to learn Anatomy?

Back Anatomy study from écorché. 2018

Well, if we understand what lies beneath the surface we can make some informed decisions on how to represent what we see on the surface. We use anatomical landmarks to help understand and make sense of what it is we are looking at. In turn, we can then make creative decisions on how we want to represent those ideas. When we start to learn Anatomy it can be quite intimidating but it's not essential to know all the names of all the muscles. Knowing some of the major groups and how they relate to each other will go a long way and over time your knowledge will increase and a certain familiarity will start to take hold. 

If we break it down into sections, we can make it manageable and develop our understanding in an incremental way without having to get overwhelmed by the whole.

Get out that Anatomy book!

This is a good place to start. Open the anatomy book sitting on your shelf and have it next to you while you draw. If something that you're seeing on the figure needs clarification then you have reference easily at hand. I'll do a book list in a future post where we can look at just a few of what are probably thousands of books on the subject at this point. Another option is obviously google images, but it's a bit more chaotic. 

Leg Anatomy study from écorché. 2018

Anatomical study of individual body parts is a great way to familiarise yourself with the patterns and proportions of the muscle systems. Take the torso, an arm, leg or anything that grabs your interest and copy it from the book. Most likely the names of the muscles will be next to them and this will help start to build that knowledge base.  

A nice supplement to the above if you have access to one is an écorché. The écorché used for the drawings on this page is a model that sits in my studio. They're not essential by any means, but a nice additional reference. 

If you can give just a few minutes a day to Anatomy you'll be amazed how much it will help. As you continue to develop your Figure Drawing you'll have that knowledge to fall back on and help inspire the next decision. 

Plenty more to come about Anatomy and how we can apply that knowledge in a meaningful way in future posts!