DOING EXCELLENT LIFE DRAWINGS
DOING EXCELLENT LIFE DRAWINGS
Felipe Echevarria untitled figure drawing charcoal on paper 2002
Please keep in mind the following blog is directed toward accurate representational life drawing, and is not an opinion of how all life drawing should be done. The approaches are endless, and the results can be just as effective as what I talk about here!
Felipe Echevarria untitled portrait drawing charcoal on paper 1996
This may or may not come as a shock to you (depending if you're taught as a fine artist or a commercial artist), but sequential art (comic book) artists have the greatest self-sufficiency for drawing the figure of any artist category on the planet. They see the figure with amazing depth, from any angle and any pose, and can do it out of their heads--a model is not required!
How do I know this is so? Not only do I have extensive sequential art experience as well as fine art experience, but I have taught both figure drawing and sequential art classes for many years, in both a fine art academy and in commercial art schools, and I have found many fine artists are helpless without a model. In addition, the poses a lot of fine artists work with for finished paintings are typically straight on shots, with a minimum of foreshortening, so the time spent figure drawing/painting is rather tame.
Now, this is alright, because that is the fine art world--radical, foreshortened shots are rare and it's not really necessary to do them to make a good picture. However, here is the average fine artist's downfall: this lack of self-sufficiency when handling three-dimensional form also becomes apparent in their still life work, landscapes, and even abstraction. There is a subtle lack of finesse, a clumsiness that hinders their work from becoming great work. I have noticed this time and time again.
Before going further, I must say right now that comic book artists have their difficulties in making great figures, too, but from a fine art point of view. Although their command of representing 3 dimensions in a 2-dimensional space is profound, they often make comic book looking figures when drawing a live human model.
Therefore I say, doing fantastic representational life drawing requires a merging of the two:
- the COMIC BOOK ARTIST'S power of visualization and command over a systematic approach to orient the figures in space, and--
- the FINE ARTIST'S ability to handle edges, values, and render form.
When I taught figure drawing in the fine art academy, I had students doing exercises to further their capacity to see through the forms, to see three-dimensionally, to properly orient forms in space, and to apply perspective to the figure. And then combine all that with fine art techniques for rendering the forms and dealing with edges (edges being the horizons of the forms, the areas where background meets foreground).
What a way to go! In my mind this is the ultimate! You can work with or without a model, all your work will have little or no drawing problems --be it landscapes, figures, still life, abstraction, etc., and you can use any art technique or materials to obtain the best results for the particular picture. There is nothing to hold you back. Only when your drawing is up to top-notch levels will all your paintings look correct.
It blows my mind, because when I was an amateur artist I used to drool over professional artist's work, but now I can go through a magazine like Southwest Art or other popular art magazines and find lots of paintings where the artist ruined the piece with improper perspective and poorly foreshortened figures. This is not an ego thing, I'm saying that this is where you will be too when you get your drawing problems behind you.
Below are suggestions for approaching this way of working:
- Get books by more commercial art/illustration oriented instructors like Andrew Loomis, Jack Hamm, Burne Hogarth, and George Bridgman (Bridgman is the least commercial oriented out of all these) and practice their methods for handling 3-dimensional form on a 2-dimensional surface.
- Get books by and for comic book artists--like How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way; Cartooning The Head & Figure; The DC Comics Guide to Pencilling Comics; Joe Kubert's Wonderful World Of Comics, etc., and practice storytelling and layouts with the figure, how comic artists handle perspective with the figure and other forms, and how they initially approach the handling of form.
- Especially draw the nude human figure in figure drawing classes and do it often. Constantly draw people while you're on the bus, on the train, in the restaurant, etc. Pay particular attention to your eye level (horizon line) in relation to the figure you're drawing and the perspectives that can be applied to the space the figure is in.
- Draw everything under the sun in your sketchbook every chance you get.
- Learn to selectively handle the blurring and rendering of edges on forms.
- Always seek to do less in your work. Simplify. Practice economy and brevity.
In summary:
- Learn to draw for absolute self-sufficiency and to be able to handle any drawing problem.
- Learn to see 3-dimensionally--through, and around form.
- Finally, learn fine art methods for rendering form as a fine artist will do it.
Felipe Echevarria untitled figure drawing charcoal on paper 1990
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TO SEE MY FINE ART ONLY site please visit:
http://www.FelipeEchevarria.com
TO SEE MY EVERYTHING ART site:
http://www.felipe.tv
Posted by Felipe Echevarria at Friday, May 26, 2006 10:36 AM 
Categories: ART CAREER TIPS, ART SCHOOL advice
Categories: ART CAREER TIPS, ART SCHOOL advice
I hope it is ok with you I posted thei on a drwaing tutorial that we do on cafemom.com and a link to your blog. if it not ok let me know ans I will take it off.
Shayne
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