The book taught me that the things that we "see" in our minds are really very incomplete. You think you can imagine an elephant vividly in your imagination, but what is the ratio of their ears to their head, or their trunk to their head. Where are their eyes? How does their mouth open?
When you draw from what you see, or draw from what you imagine, it's easy to think you know exactly what you're going to draw, but unless you really pay attention you are probably glossing over it in your mind.
To draw things that you imagine well you need the same skill as you need to draw things that you see. You just need practice to memorize a form, or components of a form, or the principles behind a form before you can compose them into your own idea.
If you think that the book is just about copying what you see in front of you, you either haven't read it or really didn't pay attention to it. On the other hand, if you can't reproduce something you see right in front of you, you're going to have an impossible task in reproducing something that is vaguely held in your mind.
Funny though that comment of yours is precisely one of these things I don't like about this book. That "incompleteness" of picture in your mind is something everybody notices as he starts drawing anyway, but the thing that book "taught" you as you say is the wrong one.
You see, there is some maxima repeatedly imposed by that book, like "draw what you see" or something like that — you could formulate it by yourself just fine as you've read it I guess. That is an important thing that you should hear once, that's right, because relying too much on technical methods (like perspective) is often impractical and you must learn to draw not relying on it too much. The problem is, that it's just one thing you need to hear after you'll learn perspective and other basic techniques just once, but not a lesson itself.
Because, you see, there are infinite forms in the universe and our imaginary worlds as well, and drawing an elephant isn't about memorizing it, it's about understanding. If you want to understand what I'm talking about, I'd recommend you to read Gottfried Bammes "The Artist's Guide to Animal Anatomy".
Actually, if you'll go to the art school or similar place you'll be strongly discouraged from that "line tracing" thing (however, as I said, remembering that you can draw like that as well is important), which can seem surprising at first (because, really, it's so easy and so natural to just trace it!), but you'll understand why really soon.
By the way, if you are interested, maybe you should check some sketches for famous pictures of famous artists (like Dali) who were professionally drawing for years. That actually impressed me when I first saw that, that really, really good artists who I might have thought would just draw anything from the top of their heads actually do sketches with all these support lines and stuff. Then you understand that drawing isn't just line tracing after all.
So in the end of the day drawing tons of cubes and spheres is way more useful and important than line-tracing your face. Really.
I'm not seeing much disagreement here. Yes, it's typical for a beginner to draw from their (deficient) internal model of whatever they're drawing — a beginner drawing a face will typically put the eyes at the top of the head and not in the middle, they'll draw eyes as symmetrical lemon shapes, etc. The book teaches people to go beyond that and actually look at whatever they're drawing, which is an important skill for any visual artist. But it's still a very basic skill.
Right now I'm trying to finish an illustration where I've already sketched out everything in detail; the composition is good, the perspective is correct, one of the elements in the drawing is a running person, drawn from imagination, with a good likeness, anatomy, and sense of motion. Still, I struggle A LOT with choosing and simplifying the color scheme and rendering the final drawing in lines that feel spontaneous and alive.
I've been drawing since I was a kid and I had a good handle on the things DotRSotB teaches when I was twelve years old. But there's so much more to learn. A good step after DotRSotB might be learning about shape design, gesture drawing and movement from cartoonists, e.g.:
Comments
I disagree.
The book taught me that the things that we "see" in our minds are really very incomplete. You think you can imagine an elephant vividly in your imagination, but what is the ratio of their ears to their head, or their trunk to their head. Where are their eyes? How does their mouth open?
When you draw from what you see, or draw from what you imagine, it's easy to think you know exactly what you're going to draw, but unless you really pay attention you are probably glossing over it in your mind.
To draw things that you imagine well you need the same skill as you need to draw things that you see. You just need practice to memorize a form, or components of a form, or the principles behind a form before you can compose them into your own idea.
If you think that the book is just about copying what you see in front of you, you either haven't read it or really didn't pay attention to it. On the other hand, if you can't reproduce something you see right in front of you, you're going to have an impossible task in reproducing something that is vaguely held in your mind.
Funny though that comment of yours is precisely one of these things I don't like about this book. That "incompleteness" of picture in your mind is something everybody notices as he starts drawing anyway, but the thing that book "taught" you as you say is the wrong one.
You see, there is some maxima repeatedly imposed by that book, like "draw what you see" or something like that — you could formulate it by yourself just fine as you've read it I guess. That is an important thing that you should hear once, that's right, because relying too much on technical methods (like perspective) is often impractical and you must learn to draw not relying on it too much. The problem is, that it's just one thing you need to hear after you'll learn perspective and other basic techniques just once, but not a lesson itself.
Because, you see, there are infinite forms in the universe and our imaginary worlds as well, and drawing an elephant isn't about memorizing it, it's about understanding. If you want to understand what I'm talking about, I'd recommend you to read Gottfried Bammes "The Artist's Guide to Animal Anatomy".
Actually, if you'll go to the art school or similar place you'll be strongly discouraged from that "line tracing" thing (however, as I said, remembering that you can draw like that as well is important), which can seem surprising at first (because, really, it's so easy and so natural to just trace it!), but you'll understand why really soon.
By the way, if you are interested, maybe you should check some sketches for famous pictures of famous artists (like Dali) who were professionally drawing for years. That actually impressed me when I first saw that, that really, really good artists who I might have thought would just draw anything from the top of their heads actually do sketches with all these support lines and stuff. Then you understand that drawing isn't just line tracing after all.
So in the end of the day drawing tons of cubes and spheres is way more useful and important than line-tracing your face. Really.
I'm not seeing much disagreement here. Yes, it's typical for a beginner to draw from their (deficient) internal model of whatever they're drawing — a beginner drawing a face will typically put the eyes at the top of the head and not in the middle, they'll draw eyes as symmetrical lemon shapes, etc. The book teaches people to go beyond that and actually look at whatever they're drawing, which is an important skill for any visual artist. But it's still a very basic skill.
Right now I'm trying to finish an illustration where I've already sketched out everything in detail; the composition is good, the perspective is correct, one of the elements in the drawing is a running person, drawn from imagination, with a good likeness, anatomy, and sense of motion. Still, I struggle A LOT with choosing and simplifying the color scheme and rendering the final drawing in lines that feel spontaneous and alive.
I've been drawing since I was a kid and I had a good handle on the things DotRSotB teaches when I was twelve years old. But there's so much more to learn. A good step after DotRSotB might be learning about shape design, gesture drawing and movement from cartoonists, e.g.:
http://theartcenter.blogspot.se/2010/02/what-is-drawing.html
http://animationresources.org/?p=2091