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Drawing is a technical skill you develop with directed practice like anything else. It has nothing to do with tracing magical images from your head.

by pram 5y ago

jiggawatts 5y ago
I've heard this, and I did take a class in drawing once. I improved, and could see a path towards becoming good, but it was not "the same". The artist I was referring to didn't draw "iteratively", like most people. He didn't start with a pencil sketch outline that he refined progressively until it looked like the subject. Instead, he'd pick up a pen, put it on the paper, and then he just traced a single continuous outline, moving the pen inwards to fill in details. All in one movement, without picking up the pen. I saw him draw a "dwarf with a hammer" character like this, complete with clothes down to the buttons. A detailed beard and expressive face. Boots with the tops turned down. Wrinkles in the pants. A belt with a buckle. Detail upon detail. But he just... traced it. From the outside in. You couldn't even tell what he was going to draw until a couple of minutes. PS: I've also met a guy who could do the same kind of thing with programming. Most people build up code iteratively, "sketching" the structure using interfaces or function definitions, building them up and refining them one piece at a time. Not this guy. He'd just stare off into space, and then start typing. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom, non-stop. I saw him open seven consecutive brackets and the close the last one a page and a half later. He did this for a couple of hours at a fast typing rate, then hit compile. There were 3 typos due to a sticky shift key. He fixed those, and then the code compiled, ran, and successfully completed the (very complex!) problem. These were some of the freakiest thing I've ever witnessed in my life. Some people's brains just work differently to mine, and I won't ever be able to "think like them".

Drawing is a technical skill you develop with directed practice like anything else. It has nothing to do with tracing magical images from your head.

by pram 5y ago

Drawing is a technical skill you develop with directed practice like anything else. It has nothing to do with tracing magical images from your head.

jiggawatts 5y ago

I've heard this, and I did take a class in drawing once. I improved, and could see a path towards becoming good, but it was not "the same". The artist I was referring to didn't draw "iteratively", like most people. He didn't start with a pencil sketch outline that he refined progressively until it looked like the subject. Instead, he'd pick up a pen, put it on the paper, and then he just traced a single continuous outline, moving the pen inwards to fill in details. All in one movement, without picking up the pen. I saw him draw a "dwarf with a hammer" character like this, complete with clothes down to the buttons. A detailed beard and expressive face. Boots with the tops turned down. Wrinkles in the pants. A belt with a buckle. Detail upon detail. But he just... traced it. From the outside in. You couldn't even tell what he was going to draw until a couple of minutes. PS: I've also met a guy who could do the same kind of thing with programming. Most people build up code iteratively, "sketching" the structure using interfaces or function definitions, building them up and refining them one piece at a time. Not this guy. He'd just stare off into space, and then start typing. Left-to-right, top-to-bottom, non-stop. I saw him open seven consecutive brackets and the close the last one a page and a half later. He did this for a couple of hours at a fast typing rate, then hit compile. There were 3 typos due to a sticky shift key. He fixed those, and then the code compiled, ran, and successfully completed the (very complex!) problem. These were some of the freakiest thing I've ever witnessed in my life. Some people's brains just work differently to mine, and I won't ever be able to "think like them".