Kolya on 21/6/2013 at 07:47
If you put a raster over the original and your own sheet, it becomes quite easy to copy.
Renzatic on 21/6/2013 at 08:15
Yeah, but that's cheating. I want to be able to draw, not trace. I can trace just fine.
demagogue on 21/6/2013 at 09:27
Well mentally I think that's what you're always supposed to be doing anyway. Or I do. A lot of times I imagine a grid on the thing and break the figure and lines down to bite sizes and do just the lines per bite. That's how you can do figures with the head-length rule too.
But it's understandable if you just want to build up hand-eye coordination to get your hand to follow a track. That just comes with a lot of practice I think. Same thing with a sport or musical instrument... Even if your mind know what it wants your body to do, at first the muscles always go wild directions and don't get on track or fluid at it until you practice it a lot. And it's just not a skill people do normally day to day, so there's no particular reason why you should be good at it in advance. You have to exercise it like anything. Give yourself challenges to specifically work out the parts that are troubling you.
zacharias on 21/6/2013 at 10:02
If you are interested in contour drawing I'd recommend the Kimon Nicholaides book, 'The Natural Way to Draw'. It starts off with contour drawing, then into gesture drawing, tonal drawing etc. In theory you synthesize all these methods by the end. It's a fairly big commitment though (375 hours at least to go through all the exercises, but if you are drawing one hour a day that is only a year or so..True mastery takes decades anyway IMO).
Contour is pretty fun..at first you get hilarious errors in position and scale if you really don't look at the page at all (pure contour drawing).
I gotta strongly disagree with the 'Loomis is the figure drawing bible' sentiment. Personally I find his work competent but to my eye it also looks kinda formulaic, typical commercial illustration kinda stuff. Some of the sketches I quite like but his more rendered stuff is very bland to me, no real expression in his work. (Some of it looks like it was done from photos also, not that this is a crime but you won't learn drawing very well by copying photos). That's a question of taste I suppose, but technically I'd say it's good but certainly not great work, although a beginner can learn from him I guess.
I'd advise go back to nature for a less schematic approach or look at the renaissance and later masters for work which absolutely shits on the likes of Loomis. Michelangelo and Pontormo are two of the best who ever lived. Rubens and Van Dyck are also great. Holbein, Tiepolo are fantastic. Schiele is interesting for contour. There's literally thousands through history better than Loomis IMO.
zacharias on 21/6/2013 at 10:32
Yeah, draw from the shoulder is good advice too. Get yourself to a life drawing group, stand up rather than sit and draw from the shoulder. Willow charcoal is great but don't fuss over shading for now, just line and form. Drawing trees is also great practice for contour if there are no life drawing groups near you.
Muzman on 21/6/2013 at 11:00
Quote Posted by zacharias
I gotta strongly disagree with the 'Loomis is the figure drawing bible' sentiment. Personally I find his work competent but to my eye it also looks kinda formulaic, typical commercial illustration kinda stuff. Some of the sketches I quite like but his more rendered stuff is very bland to me, no real expression in his work. (Some of it looks like it was done from photos also, not that this is a crime but you won't learn drawing very well by copying photos). That's a question of taste I suppose, but technically I'd say it's good but certainly not great work, although a beginner can learn from him I guess.
I'd advise go back to nature for a less schematic approach or look at the renaissance and later masters for work which absolutely shits on the likes of Loomis. Michelangelo and Pontormo are two of the best who ever lived. Rubens and Van Dyck are also great. Holbein, Tiepolo are fantastic. Schiele is interesting for contour. There's literally thousands through history better than Loomis IMO.
Eh, you just get into a debate about the technical vs outcome based assessment (probably not the right phrase for it). If you don't like 30s commercial art Loomis will only pollute your expression. Well, not if you work on it. Loomis doesn't want you to draw like Loomis. He wants you to draw like you. He's got a multivarious collection of methods for skill development however. In particular for constructing the human figure, which is something normal brains find terribly difficult to do out of their heads, even after many many years of life sessions sometimes (which isn't to say Loomis doesn't like life drawing. He spends pages on the necessity of it and encourages it relentlessly). Studying the masters or anyone is no guarantee you'll get this right, or anything for that matter. Some of them had no better knowledge of where stuff goes, or when they did, no particular way of imparting that knowledge in a generalisable way. Drawing on and refining the knowledge of the past into a repeatable form is progress.
It's only if you take a 'work as pure object' view that this could ever be a problem (which is potentially another debate about the criminal depreciation of skill in the arts over the 20th century).
faetal on 21/6/2013 at 11:15
Good progression from the first pictures (which had me thinking - really!? this is a BRAGGING post?) to the latter ones (I'm now thinking I may want to try this book).
I have a list as long as my arm of things I wish I could dedicate more time to being good at, but they'll have to wait until after I finish my PhD.
zacharias on 21/6/2013 at 13:40
Not sure a lot of that made much sense to me Muz :)
I'm saying I personally don't like the style (the more rendered stuff; I quite like the quick sketches). I'm also saying technically he isn't that remarkable anyway. There's no contradiction there that I can see.
If you don't like 30s commercial art Loomis will only pollute your expression. Well, I didn't really say that exactly..I realise what I'm saying could be construed as elitist/wanky or whatever. The central problem for me is that I just don't see the greatness of these drawings. They aren't bad, just not truly great IMO.
Studying Rubens or Pontormo or another master doesn't mean you will get to their level, of course. Goes without saying. (They were mostly obsessive types who trained themselves for decades). To my eye these were (much) better drawers than Loomis though - and that's pretty much all that matters to me. Most of the great masters did have excellent anatomical knowledge tbh. The imparting knowledge bit is irrelevant since apart from maybe their apprentices they weren't teachers who had to impart 'generalised' knowledge.
Your 'Loomis doesn't want you to draw like Loomis' argument might work, but when we look at the evidence..Loomis draws quite a lot like Bridgman (his teacher) so to me I interpret it a little bit more as a learned schematic style rather than a more organic development of individual style and expression. To me these drawings are somewhat schematic compared to the true greats. In terms of teaching a large number of people -fine- but it's not work of the highest calibre IMO.
Anyway, short version: I don't rate Loomis, but who cares, if you like him great, anyway just practice your drawing, and draw from life, not from photos.
Another probably more interesting tangent than my Loomis bashing is all these books emphasize drawing what you see, not relying on symbols or memory. But people rave about the power of primitive art and other art that basically uses the 'drawing what we know' rather than 'what we see' model (gross simplification but anyway..)
Muzman on 21/6/2013 at 17:09
Yeah, it'd probably make more sense if the argument were to go where I was leaping ahead to. But never mind.
It's just there's a few comments that seemed to be saying 'Renz, draw something I like, the way I like it', which isn't really what I'd consider good advice.
Whether or not one likes Loomis's style isn't really all that relevant to if his books are the bible of drawing practice. He's an excellent technician at least, with an array of skills and styles. Anyone would have a much easier time attempting to be Rembrandt if they knew what he knows.
I think even non naturalistic stuff can be fueled in interesting ways from such knowledge (not, y'know, Rothko or someone, but you know what I mean)
