Weird Trick for Making Great Art.
Draw finished drawings right from the start. This is only a trick and not really what you would think of as something a pro would do however. It works because random thoughtless art is better than most artists techniques and hard work. You can think things through and through but for most artists they aren't going to improve on random chance. There probably is a technique that improves on random chance but I'm not sure I've figured it out and I'm not sure anyone has. Anyway Travis Charest would draw finished art right from the start and it looked amazing. It saved time too. Stick figures are good if you are just learning and they are always good but so is finished drawings right from the start because the less you erase and the more precise your lines the easier it is to draw the next line in the perfect spot. Random placement of figures will look really good most of the time because in the end even when you are doing roughs you are attempting to create a natural look to the scene. In other words you are trying to make it look random anyway. In fact Dean R. Koontz the writer uses this technique in his writing also. He says he didn't start writing #1 bestsellers until he stopped working from an outline. (outlines are like rough sketches of a story). He wrote two books on writing but before he stopped using his current technique. Anyway it's just a technique but it works because the more you think things through the less and less natural it seems and the more contrived. Random chance has a good chance of seeming well, random.
It gets into every artists head that he is going to try and draw something amazing and we forget that it's just a drawing. That's how it was for Frazetta. He never approached art as this incredible masterpiece he was going to create. He just did it. Boris Vallejo would do a rough sketch and then position the models in a similar position and take a photo.
It gets into every artists head that he is going to try and draw something amazing and we forget that it's just a drawing. That's how it was for Frazetta. He never approached art as this incredible masterpiece he was going to create. He just did it. Boris Vallejo would do a rough sketch and then position the models in a similar position and take a photo.
I forgot to say that drawing with extremely thin lines is another great trick. It's a side trick that can work in conjunction with the above technique. It's to use very thin lines by using a precise tool such as a .5 millimeter pencil or even a .3 milimeter mechanical pencil. You can also use an extremely sharp pencil. That might work even better. What you do is you draw very clean drawings. Don't "rough in" each line by going over it multiple times. You will probably have to erase multiple times. The above technique doesn't mean you don't erase it just means you don't do a rough sketch. But by making the lines very thin and sharp you are also seeing the shapes precisely and you see clearly how to fix them. So drawing with thin lines may be necessary for drawing without doing rough sketches. I'm thinking too that when you are first getting Ideas for a drawing you should not worry at all about composition. Let the composition come later. Just draw cartoony and bad even while you are coming up with a good picture story. Don't worry about anything. Don't worry about time or space perspective or proportion. Draw like a mideval artist. I guess that's more if you are doing a rough but it's not really a rough it's just brainstorming and not meant to be a finished work. It's up to you if you want to make it a finished artwork later. I guess there is a danger of drawing that way and getting lazy to the point where you stop being able to draw well.
ReplyDelete