moominmolly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moominmolly) wrote2008-02-22 10:50 am
moominmolly) wrote2008-02-22 10:50 am
creating and thinking
So, I've been trying to learn to make quick sketches of objects that are satisfying to me, in the hopes of eventually being able to doodle things in a way that amuses Natalie and also to sketch the images I see in my head all the time. But when I sat down to draw, I discovered that I can do crummy stick figures, or meticulously-shaded precise copies of real objects, but nothing in between. Argh! So I've been trying to scale back my meticulous copying and get more confident in the lines I'm drawing in the hopes of eventually scaling it back to something that could reasonably be called a quick sketch. For reference, here are some crummy phonecam shots: here's our TV remote, with the remote placed at a slightly different angle in the photo than I was drawing it at -- that took me about 90 minutes. Here is one of my car keys under the weird lights in Starbucks -- that was about 45 minutes. Better! And here is the result of me trying to draw that keychain in five minutes. (Unfortunately, the crumminess of the phone camera doesn't show you the finer lines there -- this is both good and bad, since they give depth to the drawing, but also are a little lumpy.)
Having such a (relatively) tight constraint did make me much more confident in the lines that I was drawing, but I'm definitely, definitely stuck with the following problem: line drawings are unsatisfying to my brain, since what I see when I look at an object is mostly the way light falls on it. If I look at an object with the intent of, I don't know, perceiving it visually rather than just parsing what it is and what I can do with it, what I see is shading and reflection, where the light sources are and what kinds of shadows the object is casting. So, I don't know, I'm stuck! How on earth do I learn to draw quickly if what I want to draw isn't the form of the thing itself?
Last year, I decided, kind of arbitrarily, to take a photo a day for a hundred days. It was VERY productive to me to get in the habit of taking a picture every day and posting it at the end of the day -- it freed me from having to care about whether it was perfect, since, well, I had to post something. A lot of things came out of that, for me; it was useful enough that I wanted to try it again this year, definitely, but being who I am, I also wanted to shake it up a bit and try it in a new way. So, this year, I decided to break it up into ten ten-day projects. My idea was that at the beginning of each ten-day period, I would choose a different theme and take a photo in that style every day. The first ten days, I devoted to taking photos of letter shapes in an urban setting, with the intent of capturing LOTS of the alphabet during that period, and the whole thing by the end of my hundred days. You can see them on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snap_pop, marked 1 through 10 out of 100, and I've got plenty more at home in my iPhoto library. I'm really only missing a couple. Yay me.
The first mini-project as a whole was pretty successful, but I found two interesting and unexpected things: first, that it radically altered the way I looked at the world all the time, causing me to hunt out letters in the forms and outlines of objects, nearly ignoring their light and shadow; and second, that the act of posting each individual photo was FAR less satisfying than it had been last year, being secondary to the mini-project rather than a project in its own right.
When those ten days were up, I took a free-association day, figuring that I'd post my favorite shot from that day and make a ten-day theme around whatever it was. I rather liked this doorbell, so I chose "broken things" as my theme, thinking, hey! there's a lot of pretty broken stuff in the world! But you know what? This theme has also radically altered my perception of the world -- I'm walking around all the time, seeing things that are busted and peeling and dingy and useless. There's a lot more UGLY broken stuff in the world than pretty broken stuff. Wednesday I had to take this just to put in a little whimsy, and Thursday I punted entirely, figuring, fuck! I need a break! I'll just take two on Friday! I am TIRED of seeing broken things! It is depressing! Last night, over margaritas,ectophylla likened it to suddenly noticing plants all over when she started gardening, or the way when I got pregnant suddenly I saw pregnant people everywhere. Except instead of plants or pregnant bellies, it was busted stuff. I tell you, when this theme is over, I am totally not picking anything remotely depressing for the next one.
Anyway, this gets me to wondering: would it be possible for me to alter the way I see things in such a way that I would have no trouble creating and enjoying line drawings? And if I did that, would my experience of the world be slightly less rich? Would my photos be different? Would I be different, act differently?
Please, if you have any experience learning to draw (or teaching drawing,miss_chance!), stop me from this ceaseless pondering and tell me how to learn to draw something simple and cartoony before I disappear into my own navel forever.
Having such a (relatively) tight constraint did make me much more confident in the lines that I was drawing, but I'm definitely, definitely stuck with the following problem: line drawings are unsatisfying to my brain, since what I see when I look at an object is mostly the way light falls on it. If I look at an object with the intent of, I don't know, perceiving it visually rather than just parsing what it is and what I can do with it, what I see is shading and reflection, where the light sources are and what kinds of shadows the object is casting. So, I don't know, I'm stuck! How on earth do I learn to draw quickly if what I want to draw isn't the form of the thing itself?
Last year, I decided, kind of arbitrarily, to take a photo a day for a hundred days. It was VERY productive to me to get in the habit of taking a picture every day and posting it at the end of the day -- it freed me from having to care about whether it was perfect, since, well, I had to post something. A lot of things came out of that, for me; it was useful enough that I wanted to try it again this year, definitely, but being who I am, I also wanted to shake it up a bit and try it in a new way. So, this year, I decided to break it up into ten ten-day projects. My idea was that at the beginning of each ten-day period, I would choose a different theme and take a photo in that style every day. The first ten days, I devoted to taking photos of letter shapes in an urban setting, with the intent of capturing LOTS of the alphabet during that period, and the whole thing by the end of my hundred days. You can see them on
snap_pop, marked 1 through 10 out of 100, and I've got plenty more at home in my iPhoto library. I'm really only missing a couple. Yay me.The first mini-project as a whole was pretty successful, but I found two interesting and unexpected things: first, that it radically altered the way I looked at the world all the time, causing me to hunt out letters in the forms and outlines of objects, nearly ignoring their light and shadow; and second, that the act of posting each individual photo was FAR less satisfying than it had been last year, being secondary to the mini-project rather than a project in its own right.
When those ten days were up, I took a free-association day, figuring that I'd post my favorite shot from that day and make a ten-day theme around whatever it was. I rather liked this doorbell, so I chose "broken things" as my theme, thinking, hey! there's a lot of pretty broken stuff in the world! But you know what? This theme has also radically altered my perception of the world -- I'm walking around all the time, seeing things that are busted and peeling and dingy and useless. There's a lot more UGLY broken stuff in the world than pretty broken stuff. Wednesday I had to take this just to put in a little whimsy, and Thursday I punted entirely, figuring, fuck! I need a break! I'll just take two on Friday! I am TIRED of seeing broken things! It is depressing! Last night, over margaritas,
ectophylla likened it to suddenly noticing plants all over when she started gardening, or the way when I got pregnant suddenly I saw pregnant people everywhere. Except instead of plants or pregnant bellies, it was busted stuff. I tell you, when this theme is over, I am totally not picking anything remotely depressing for the next one.Anyway, this gets me to wondering: would it be possible for me to alter the way I see things in such a way that I would have no trouble creating and enjoying line drawings? And if I did that, would my experience of the world be slightly less rich? Would my photos be different? Would I be different, act differently?
Please, if you have any experience learning to draw (or teaching drawing,
miss_chance!), stop me from this ceaseless pondering and tell me how to learn to draw something simple and cartoony before I disappear into my own navel forever.
I'm definitely no expert, but:
Also, check out "illustration No. 3" on this page:
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.7/3.7pages/3.7vilppu.html
It is worth doing exercises with shapes like this to see how they work in 3D. This is perhaps the biggest skill I started to acquire and the thing that most changed how I can see things. You basically take a mental blob of play-doh and bend it around in your head and try to draw it. Actually just drawing bent, edgeless solids without a particular shape in mind is good. You can try spheroids too. This is the sort of excercise you can do intermittently for months.
The 3D comment really is about seeing 3D shapes in 2D lines. Mentally tracing the leading edge of one of those blobs, without lifting your pencil, and thinking to yourself "now it's coming at me, now it's backing off, now it's going horizontally." This might be what you're looking for.