Art & Art Tutorials
Drawing is Seeing
Intro
Many years ago back when I took my first steps into the wonderful world of art I had in my possession a danish artbook with a title roughly translating into this: "Drawing is Seeing." I didn't quite understand it at the time being nothing but a young lad thinking, "My eyes work perfectly well so why am I such a poor artist?" If I had just read the book and understood the essence of the title instead of just glancing at the drawings inside I might have been a slightly more skilled artist today. Later it turned out not to be such a big mystery as I slowly found out what the title of the book was trying to pass along. Basically it's all about training your eyes to really see all the details in whatever object you wish to paint or draw. I hope that this short tutorial can be, dare I say it, a real eyeopener for beginner artists wishing to step up their game so lets get on with it.
Picture It
Take a look at the picture of the young girl. In just a fraction of a second your mind will process and interpret the information of the picture. After just glancing at it you could most likely point out and recognize the face in the picture amongst thousands of other faces with ease. All by memory. This is because your mind has processed countless of different faces throughout your life and is trained and able to distinguish between each and every one of them.
So having done this countless times before you've become naturally more skilled at doing it. Here is the problem. The human mind is lazy. It takes shortcuts, ignores heaps of details and remembers only what is necessary for it to recognize the face. If you wish to re-create a face using nothing but pencils and paper you have to reverse things. Read on.
Reverse It
When you're looking at a face the interpretation of that particular face happens automatically. You don't give it much thought you just look. By this I mean you usually don't consciously analyze the face of the person at which you are looking. You merely look and conclude. If you wish to learn to draw faces or any other object you need to turn off the autopilot and start some analyzing. For instance take a real close look at the face again. At first you might think you see everything there is to see but the more you look the more details will pop out. Color variations, shades, highlights, lines and so on.
The Last Few Words
The title of the book I mentioned in the intro is pretty much the essence of this tutorial also. Train your eyes to see the many details that actually make out any object you might be studying. And don't be afraid to strain yourself a little just as you would solving a difficult equation or any other task demanding thought and concentration. In time you'll become increasingly efficient at doing it. And so with these final words it's time to end this tutorial leaving you with all the hard work. Good luck and happy eyeballing.
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Many years ago back when I took my first steps into the wonderful world of art I had in my possession a danish artbook with a title roughly translating into this: "Drawing is Seeing." I didn't quite understand it at the time being nothing but a young lad thinking, "My eyes work perfectly well so why am I such a poor artist?" If I had just read the book and understood the essence of the title instead of just glancing at the drawings inside I might have been a slightly more skilled artist today. Later it turned out not to be such a big mystery as I slowly found out what the title of the book was trying to pass along. Basically it's all about training your eyes to really see all the details in whatever object you wish to paint or draw. I hope that this short tutorial can be, dare I say it, a real eyeopener for beginner artists wishing to step up their game so lets get on with it.
Picture It
Take a look at the picture of the young girl. In just a fraction of a second your mind will process and interpret the information of the picture. After just glancing at it you could most likely point out and recognize the face in the picture amongst thousands of other faces with ease. All by memory. This is because your mind has processed countless of different faces throughout your life and is trained and able to distinguish between each and every one of them.So having done this countless times before you've become naturally more skilled at doing it. Here is the problem. The human mind is lazy. It takes shortcuts, ignores heaps of details and remembers only what is necessary for it to recognize the face. If you wish to re-create a face using nothing but pencils and paper you have to reverse things. Read on.
Reverse It
When you're looking at a face the interpretation of that particular face happens automatically. You don't give it much thought you just look. By this I mean you usually don't consciously analyze the face of the person at which you are looking. You merely look and conclude. If you wish to learn to draw faces or any other object you need to turn off the autopilot and start some analyzing. For instance take a real close look at the face again. At first you might think you see everything there is to see but the more you look the more details will pop out. Color variations, shades, highlights, lines and so on.
The Last Few Words
The title of the book I mentioned in the intro is pretty much the essence of this tutorial also. Train your eyes to see the many details that actually make out any object you might be studying. And don't be afraid to strain yourself a little just as you would solving a difficult equation or any other task demanding thought and concentration. In time you'll become increasingly efficient at doing it. And so with these final words it's time to end this tutorial leaving you with all the hard work. Good luck and happy eyeballing.
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