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July 26, 2005
Drawing from Memory
Draw something from reference. Let's say it's a skull.
Hide the reference and draw it again from memory. Focus on essential planes and basic forms, not little surface details.
You will be imediately confronted by what you don't know about it. Is the mastoid process above or below the teeth? What is directly above the last molars? Things like that.
Write your questions down.
When you use terms like "above" and "below", make sure your questions are phrased in terms of the imaginary axes of the object itself -- not the axes of the paper. If you ask questions like "In this particular view, is the base of the nose above the base of the back of the skull?" you will be memorizing a drawing -- not an object's form. The idea is not to memorize a series of drawings, but to learn the object itself, so that later you can use what you learned to draw it from any angle. In the photo above, the blue lines are not a fixed grid in paper-space; they are the edges of cubes. When you turn the skull off axis, mentally turn the cubes off axis as well.
Draw it again from reference. Answer your questions.
Repeat the process with and without reference until you have fewer and fewer questions and can draw the object well without reference.
Move on to another view of it and repeat the process until you don't need reference for any view at all.
You may be surprised at how fast you can develop a "conception of form" for a complex object.
The feedback question / answer loop is better than staring at an object and trying to memorize it through sheer force of will.
The nineteenth century French artist Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran was a pioneering proponent of this general sort of learning method.
Posted by digital artform at July 26, 2005 08:39 AM
Comments
That's a great tip, DA!
I notice you have references for two different views in this example.
When applying this technique to a very flexible or configurable object (such as the hand or the human body), is it better to use references that illustrate many different possible positions or the same position from several different views?
Posted by: Chris at July 26, 2005 06:39 PM
That's a good question.
I'd say the guiding principle in all things complex is "divide and conquer."
In the case of the figure, I'm trying, for my own sake, to reduce the figure into simpler constituent parts -- the skull, the rib cage, the pelvis, the upper and lower arms and legs, the hands and feet -- and then finally learn those.
In the case of the hand, I think you have to learn the bones and how they connect, and then the muscles and fat pads and where they go.
I also think that it's important to "enforce" a conception of form (as Robert Beverly Hale puts it) onto everything -- finger as a collection of roughly boxy cylindrical forms, for example -- and to identify and account for all the sides, rather than to focus too much on contours.
(see this Glenn Vilppu video on The Box: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.7/3.7pages/3.7vilppu.html )
...as an aside, I might also add a note about the importance of choosing which lines to draw to sell the idea of form and volume. Look at drawing number 4 on this page by Glenn Vilppu: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.5/3.5pages/3.5villpu.html
See how by choosing which lines to draw he makes two overlapping spheres look advancing, receding, or twisting? It may see obvious, but slight line choices have a big effect on the finished drawing.
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So in answer to your question about hands, I'd treat them like the figure itself: not something to be learned as a rigid shape, but something to be further reduced and simplified.
Posted by: Joseph Francis at July 27, 2005 08:42 AM