Since I began learning to draw back in 2015, I’ve bought a lot of art supplies. Had you asked me, I would have said that I’m probably familiar with just about everything available for artists. Today, though, I discovered a new art resource, and yes, of course, I placed an order!
As I’m working on shading and blending techniques, I know one of the most important things is the practice of drawing from life. Reference photos are available for anything and everything we want to draw, but using photographs doesn’t help us develop our drawing skills as much as drawing from life does.
I’ve mentioned this before, but here it is again. Drawing is a process of converting three-dimensional subjects into a two-dimensional form. When we use a photo reference, our subject has already been converted to a two-dimensional format, so our “artist brains” aren’t developing that skill.
Another important fact about art is that drawing is based on shapes which are then transformed into seemingly three-dimensional objects. Again, our drawing itself is two-dimensional, but this is the ultimate illusion of art, making something appear three-dimensional on a two-dimensional drawing surface. As beginning art students we spend hours drawing circles to turn into spheres, squares that become cubes, triangles that change into cones, and on occasion even different geometric shapes that can be converted to geometric forms.
Take a look at what I discovered today:
What we have here are geometric forms — a lovely variety of geometric forms! We have not only cones, but pyramids, and cylinders. We have an array of shapes that we can use to draw forms from life.
Early in my art studies, I purchased an “art man” — that’s the name the grandkids gave to the little art mannequin I used for learning figure drawing. Although he’s lost a few body parts over the years — no idea how that happened — he’s always been useful. This mannequin did help me “see” arms and legs, and torsos, and all the lights and shadows that fall on the human body.
I have no doubt that the geometric shapes will be equally valuable, especially as I continue working on shading and blending.
Maybe you already knew that these existed. It was a surprising new “find” for me. I’ve ordered a set and it will be arriving very soon.
Much of art involves learning to see shapes and then drawing those shapes accurately and turning them into forms. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun playing with this set. I expect to learn a lot. And now that the grandkids are older, just think how much fun the great-grandkids will have with this new set of “learning resources”.
Artistcoveries 
Making the 3-D 2-D … I’ve never heard it put that way before, even though it seems obvious. That might actually help shift perspective in ways that calling it “perspective” might not be able to do! I’ll have to try looking at it that way, and see if it helps. (Perspective is easily my least favourite element to try to create or recreate in art.)
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Oh, I hate perspective! LOL. I’m just not good at it because accurate perspective involves rulers and careful mark-making, and I’m just too impatient (and too clumsy) to deal with all of that. But learning to “add depth” in objects is an important skill, and drawing from life is definitely helpful there! I’m already having fun with my little wooden blocks, and already facing lots of challenges too. 🙂
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Knowing too much about something theoretically might prevent one from really doing something. I have been teaching drawing for 5 decades, and just finished a class, too. You are very correct about drawing from life.
Except, this concept about converting shapes, is somewhat off when it comes to real drawing.
I always would like to emphasize that drawing comes from seeing. Most people look at things, but they never actually see them as it is required when you, for instance want to draw them.Eventually, through eyes and brain, the hand with the pencil knows what to do.
You are certainly on the right path. Can I suggest you tried some simple still life? Some flower pot?
Perspective is not difficult, it’s just understanding how you arrange the lines in your imagination. Ruler helps, but there’s no need for that if you practice line work.
I also do not allow my students to use eraser until they have established the main shapes in composition. I myself, most often don’t even have eraser, but use it for clean-up before watercolor.
I think the modern way of learning drawing is somewhat putting obstacles in one’s way. Seeing, understanding why, what and where, is kind of way more important.
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Thanks for all the helpful suggestions. Yes, “learning to see” is so important. I was actually lying awake in bed this morning thinking about this very thing. I was thinking about making a series of drawing exercises just based on proportions — looking at lines, for example, and saying “Is this line twice as long as the first one? Is the next line three times as long?” The idea being to somewhat “train my eye” to see proportional differences. I’ll be using my “geometric blocks” every day for drawing practice now. We’ll see if I make any improvement 🙂
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Van Gogh broke all the rules and didn’t care about it. Still his works will stand for an eternity. How did he get so good? How did he become one of the world’s finest and most influential artists? Did he do a “How to Become a World-changing Artist” course at university, then pursue that to Masters level before embarking on his PhD, accumulating a huge student debt in the process? And if not, how did he get to be so good, and what might we draw (if you’ll pardon the pun) from that? The last straw for him in his volatile and adversarial relationship with academia was the advice he received in Antwerp from one of his lecturers that he should spend another year just drawing from plaster casts, rather than from real life. He had a hunger for experimentation. Above all, he was passionate. He wanted this. He wanted to change art. He wanted to capture things in the way he saw them. So while I hope that you will not end up choosing a path of living so intensely that you lose all your friends, live in poverty, rarely sleep and end up with local people drawing up a petition to get you driven out of town (as happened to Van Gogh at the end of his time at the ‘Yellow House’), it will hopefully inspire some different ways of thinking about learning, what it is, and how we can do it better.
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Van Gogh’s life was certainly interesting. I watched a “Great Courses” presentation on him a couple years ago. I also had the opportunity to view many of his works at an exhibition, and it was truly a breath-taking experience. No matter how many times we see pictures of his works, or see them displayed in documentaries or other films, nothing compares to the actual experience of SEEING this masterful works in their full glorious colors. Of course, I have no pretentions of ever becoming a great artist. For me, it started simply as a desire to “learn to draw” and now (after a long hiatus), learning to draw again and maybe this time learning to draw better. I do love oil painting, too. I love landscape painting, so I’ll get back to that soon, but drawing is such a foundational skill. Even if I don’t use my drawing skills a lot in landscape painting, they still play a role, and I think it’s good to always keep learning and growing as an artist.
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