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Underground > Creation >

Teach me to draw and paint, or else.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:54 / 27.04.04

There are people here with Talent. I've seen you. Don't try to hide. I am your Supreme Dark Ruler, and I demand that you teach me to draw and paint forthwith.

The situation is this: I used to be quite good at drawing, but after a longish period where I didn't do very much, I found my skills had atrophied. Now when I put drawy thing to drawy surface, I tense up and get nervous, resulting in sucky drawage. Basically I'm going to have to start from scratch, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but is rather daunting.

I'm currently trying the following: carrying a little sketchbook around so I can doodle on the train, attacking the local landscapes with a felt-tip, arranging still-lifes and attempting to draw/paint them, attempting to sketch people on the telly. I do at least one of these a day, for at least half-an-hour.

Bearing in mind that if you don't deliver the goods I'm going to suck out your artistic skills with my Brain-O-Matic ray, what would you suggest?

flufeemunk effluvia

19:10 / 27.04.04

I (a humble high school student no less) found that I experienced a little bit of painting apathy. I've been taking computer graphics (which rocks my brains out and replaces them with animal caracasses), and I have not picked up a paintbrush for about a year now. The other day I faound myself in need to paint something creative-like (A poster of a decaying mouth for the sadistic dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, which my school is doing a production of) and I found that I could still paint, and that my ability to choose colors has actually improved from spending and hour a day staring at photoshop. Ramp yourself up. Try getting a tablet (one that comes with photoshop elements if you dont have photoshop) and drawing with that and you can make really cool stuff.

20:26 / 27.04.04

When ever someone asked me about drawing skills or whatever my caned responce is:

"Draw 10,000 circles"

This usually ends the conversation for most of them who just retort with "some people are just born talented" or something to that effect. What they miss is when I try explaining that most of us who draw probably get to our 10,000th circle by age 10 and move on from there.

Those who stick it our will probably discover that their 10,000th circle is significantly better drawn than their 1st one. The circle is one of a handful of building blocks from which you can draw anything.

Then comes pages and pages of vertical lines and horizonal lines. Evenly spaced and parallel to each other. good luck

21:12 / 27.04.04

Tricks, that is absolutely brilliant.

MC - Life-drawing sessions before anything else. Not for the tutorial, but for the time with a model. Nothing in the universe more complex/fascinating/educational to draw than the human form. And since you’ve got a model in front of you, a period of doing exercises like 1-minute sketches, 2-minute sketches, 5-line sketches (all these: exactly what they sound like), basically setting a limit and sticking to it over and over for 15 minutes or half an hour, is a good way of warming up that gets you properly looking and makes you very conscious of the fact you’re only ever making marks on paper. It’s about scrutinising, understanding and translating. And you’re bi-lingual MC, you know what fun can be had with the translating bit. And then: doing and doing and doing, just like T says. No such thing as talent. ‘Talented’ people are just people who enjoy drawing so much they do it all the time, even if they’re not holding a pen. If you understand what you’re trying to draw, it isn’t something you can get wrong, exactly. And you’ll never get it perfectly, absolutely right either, just like there’s no perfect translation of a poem. There’s just different degrees of success.

07:37 / 28.04.04

It sounds to me like you're already doing all the right things Mordant. The fact that you're carrying a little sketch book around and you're actually using it is a bollion steps in the right direction.

One thing I constantly do is, even when I'm not drawing, in my head I still trace round the outlines of objects I am looking at which sort of helps me see things in relation to their space. But I'm weird like that.

There are lots of fun drawing exercises like drawing something without taking your pen off the paper, or drawing something without looking down at the drawing until you have finished, but really it's just practice and if you could draw before it's prolly just a case of getting your confidence back.

09:46 / 28.04.04

Good advice so far, handy for me too.

What sort of drawing do you want to do, MC? Do you want to be able to draw things that look right, are in proportion etc?

If so, learning some of the rules of perspective might help. Not only because they help you to get stuff right, but because they are *rules*, which gets rid of some of the 'um-ing' and 'ah-ing' and horrible uncertainty that comes with looking at a blank page. It won't tell your hand where to move, or where to put every line, but it can help you turn your blank sheet into a space to fill, or a framework to start putting things into. Even putting in a horizon line is a start.

The best book I've seen to date is "Perspective for Comic Book Artists" (possibly not thge exact title) which covers just about everything and in an accessible manner. I'll scour the web for it in a bit, for author etc. I'll have a look for online guides to perspective as well...

10:46 / 28.04.04

in my head I still trace round the outlines of objects I am looking at which sort of helps me see things in relation to their space.

I did this when I was drawing regularly as well -also used to look at things in terms of how I'd draw them, what I'd use to draw / paint them... it's all helpful as a way of getting that way of thinking.

Glad you started this thread actually, as I've been wanting to start drawing again recently too!

Nelson Evergreen

13:08 / 28.04.04

This method might not be much use for an adult, but it certainly ingrained the basics of proportion, perspective, etc. into me when I was a mere toddler.

Comics! Lots of them. Take a pen/crayon/whatever and trace around any characters or scenes that take your fancy, directly onto the page. Vandalise them, basically. At the time I thought I was meticulously ghosting every last delicate nuance of line, but a brief look at the comics in question a few years later told a different story: they looked like they'd been scribbled over at random by a destructive little bastard. But I do think that this initial year or so of wanton defacement programmed my brain to be able to assemble shapes on paper as readily as it could beam semi-coherent sentences to my mouth.

'Programming'. I think that's an appropriate word here. It sounds like you're already on the right track with a casual sketchbook schedule. Learn to relax and love every second of it; the technical side will follow in time.

21:00 / 28.04.04

no one has yet mentioned 'how to draw comics the marvel way'.

now i have.

.

14:21 / 08.05.04

For what it's worth, a bit late I know, but hopefully still of some use to people who want to draw and/or paint, here are some things I've found useful:

* Most important of all when it comes to drawing or painting anything is to get over the "white canvas syndrome". OK, so the blank sheet of paper is probably the most perfect thing you've ever seen, and any mark you make is going to mess that up. So get it over and done with, make a mark, anything, preferably something stupid and insignificant. Or put a thin wash down, a collage, anything that makes the paper less clean. Then work on from there.

* Second to that, don't be precious. OK, so some marks you make are going to contribute to the greatness of your piece, but some marks are going to fuck it up a little. That's the way it goes - not everything that goes down is going to be perfect. But don't be scared to make mistakes because you can always work over and work into the piece to get it to a stage where you're happy. NB. Except if you're doing a watercolour. In which case you're kinda screwed if you put down a wrong mark. Which is why watercolours suck.

* In terms of actually capturing a realistic likeness, there are various things to think about:
- draw and paint from life wherever possible. Always look at what you want to capture, and try and draw from perception rather than conception.
- think about composition, not just in terms of the objects that are there, but the space between them. Work into the space between objects as much as you would the objects.
- Think first about line and composition, then tone, and colour last. Thinking about colour first is only going to be confusing. If need be you can completely sketch the tonal picture first and then apply colour second.

* Lastly, if you draw or paint regularly and feel stuck, try a change of medium: if you usually draw very loosely, draw tightly, and vice versa; If you use a brush, use a pencil, and if you use a pencil, use a brush, palette knife or your fingers; If you use a computer, use paper, and vice versa.

Lastly, there's nothing special about drawing or painting, anyone can do it. OK, so we're not all going to be Michaelangelo, but we can all end up with work that we're proud of.

15:17 / 08.05.04

I'd definitely second the suggestion of life drawing classes. I was in the same sort of position as you Mordant, used to draw quite well when I was younger, neglected it for years and years, and suddenly realised I had become entirely shit at it.

Started going to life drawing classes, 2 hours a week with a model, pencil, pen & ink, chalk & pastel, paint. After six months I was about 20 times better at drawing in general than I was when I started. The skills you pick up from working with a model are transferable to every sort of drawing, gets you thinking about proportion & composition, encourages you to look at things as if you were going to draw them, etc.

Of course, I havent been for months and am starting to atrophy again a bit. This thread has given me a bit of a wake-up on that though.

10:56 / 10.05.04

some things off the top of my head, cos im at work and should be thinking about invocies and payment dates

try reading the book "drawing on the right side of the brain" really good at explaining the brain mechanics of the drawing process.

when sketching, try to keep your hand moving, if you make 60 marks on the paper one of them will be right, just erase the rest. this also keeps the energy up.

try sketching rough shapes then adding detail, if this doesnt work, try picking a line on the object and follow it with your pen.

if you dont like the way somthing looks, keep working on it da vinci said "a work of art is never finished, only abandoned"

dont be precious with your work, if it looks a bit wrong, but its well drawn, erase the thing, if you did it well once youll be able to do well again.

drawing is an excercise in seeing rather than a feat of hand eye coridnation, flatten the image in your mind (try closing one eye to help) take away couler and tone and just see the lines.

is there any aspect of drawing that your having problems with or is it just genrally

13:42 / 11.05.04

Great thread this. I've been thinking out trying to do something creative to balance out the information suction with which I fill the rest of my time. I kinda just figured it was this: "Talented’ people are just people who enjoy drawing so much they do it all the time". Just got to learn to enjoy it, and switch off that voice in my head that tells me everything I do is shit.

I attended a life drawing class a couple of years ago though and found it really liberating when I produced something I liked. A kind of "cast aside your crutches and walk" moment".

Do not under any circumstances look at The Fool's "Strange Organics" thread in this forum. This will simply make you insanely jealous, and doubly convinced of your own ineptitude.

Gonna print this one out!

14:05 / 11.05.04

Another thing – cos I know your magickally inclined – I figured out the way it was going to come out with me was via what I’m into, so quite a natural way for me to draw is to think designing yantras, the symbolism of I Ching hexagrams etc. This is something I do occasionally but not on anything like a regular basis. So just get you rmagick in there somewhere – I feel that drawing would be an excellent way of earthing significant dreams and visions.

(offtopic – don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of Kenneth Grant’s books, Mordant – the art in these impresses me as much as the text. Same with Spare

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:11 / 12.06.04

Update: It's going okay, not brilliant but making progress. I'm knee-deep in Mr Tricks' 10,000 circles thingy now and it's doing me 'ed in; also mucking about with felt-tips and a kiddy paintbox. Not that I don't have proper paints, but the kiddy paintbox seems to give me 'permission' to muck up, you know: "Whee! I'm a kiddy paintbox, I WANT you to daub unreasonably blue skies and green blobbly trees! Go on, make a bunch of squiggles! You know you want to!"

12:51 / 14.06.04

the kiddy paintbox seems to give me 'permission' to muck up

When I was painting it was with acrylics and a pallette knife, which was great fun for this reason -there's no way of making anything look particularly like what it's meant to be, so it basically feels like playing around. And acrylics are a lot cheaper than oils as well, which is always a bonus. What 'proper' paints do you have just now, by the way?

07:56 / 17.06.04

I can relate to the kiddy paintbox = dicordia privleges. One of the various things I've dabbled with has been the Bates Method, a therapy for curing oneself of poor eyesight. One of the exercises I was given was simply to fill up all the space on a page with shapes (I use pencils). Any shapes. God, it's satifying, there's something really pleasing about just covering space without having to get a good end product out of it, it frees you from lust of result ie. "It must look good! Why doesn't it look good!" It took me back to what I would've have been getting out of drawing as a very young child - the tactile pleasure of marking a mark and manipulating an instrument.

(For the record, this helped with eyesight by getting one to maintain attention as one gazed at the patterns you were creating, as well as encouraging you to take pleasure in colour).

Less searchable M0rd4nt

00:49 / 18.06.04

Puck: is there any aspect of drawing that your having problems with or is it just genrally

Uptightness. That's the biggy.

Vincennes: I have a nice set of watercolours. God, I miss painting in acrylics. I was never very good at it, but I had one or two sucesses. Can't seem to find the damn things over here; I may compromise by getting in a metric fuckload of PVA glue and some powdered poster-colour. I may bite the bullet and get some oils tho'. I really want to paint haunted paintings to sell on eBay and oils just look more haunted than acrylics.

11:24 / 18.06.04

There is one drawing exercise from the book i recomended thats produces really cool looking pictures and developing the skills that are needed for close observational drawing.

choose an object/person to draw, then with a pencil (pen whatever) draw it/them, without taking the pencil off the paper, and without looking at the paper itself. The trick is to pick a line on the obeject and follow it with your eye.

the result will be kinda funny looking but it improves the hand eye interaction, and is usfull as a warm up excercise before starting somthing big and complicated.

When i was at summer camp i did this with the kids and they loved it speshly the ones that claimed they "sucked at drawing"

12:26 / 22.06.04

I’ve just started drawing again recently, making the best of being skint in a new city.

I’ve also read the book of which puck speaks and found it v useful also…
An interesting overall principle behind it: that you need to learn to switch off the part of your brain (the “left” brain, perhaps) that normal life demands you to use almost exclusively.
When people try to apply the symbol-manipulating, logical part of their brain to tasks like drawing they end up just drawing a little circle for an eye, or a square for the side of a house, says this book, when in fact you have to learn to really see these objects for what they are (which sounds contradictory to Tricks’ 10,000 circles advice, but maybe not).

I almost think I can feel the switch happening when I’m doing some of these exercises…like the rational, normally dominant bit of the brain is panicking a bit and trying to hold on.
A good one is to copy a photograph of someone’s face out of a magazine except, before you start drawing, turn the image upside down. It means you don’t really have too much of a clue what you’re drawing and can’t censor yourself throughout (because your drawing doesn’t look right or whatever).

20:43 / 22.06.04

PVA glue and standard powder based paints work fine -I seem to remember that it was a bit more work to get the colours as intense as the acrylics you buy (and they dried a bit more slowly) but after that they looked just the same.

As meme says, the drawing upside down thing is great. And it always looks so much better than you think it will when it's turned the right way up.

11:49 / 01.07.04

two excercises, one from the book already mentioned.

one. have something close in hand to touch. draw it with your eyes closed without taking your hand away for at least five minutes.

two. draw somebody or something without taking your pen off the paper. I first tried sketching portraits as a party trick during a boring spell at a social as a party trick and found that it gets good results. you learn to economize your line.