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Drawing ideas, what to draw, has got to be one of the biggest questions ever or rather should I say that most of us have often said “I don’t know what to draw” because we want to do some drawing but have no drawing ideas or inspiration.  I do remember quite clearly saying to my parents or others when I was younger “I want to draw” and when I was older as well, “I don’t know what to draw, what can I draw?”  The problem is that it is not the right question and won’t bring results it is wasted because even if others tell you what to draw you don’t do it so the conclusion is that the answer is inside you. I am sorry but you are the only one who can answer that question, I can’t answer the question but I can help you to resolve it because it’s not really a question it’s a problem.

The real problem is simple to understand if you don’t put anything into the basket how can you get anything out of it, what I mean is this, if you don’t fill your head with drawing ideas then where do you think you are going to get your drawing ideas from?

If you think about the pictures you have drawn and the reasons why you did them you will find that it wasn’t because you had the urge to draw a car, a face or whatever, it was a specific car, face or whatever that you wanted to draw, this is often described as inspiration, a desire to draw it.

This is very often because you like whatever it is, especially when you are not very experienced, young, untrained or self taught because you have not disciplined yourself to understand why you draw these things, you just draw them because you’re enjoying it, you like it.

Inspiration is about what goes on inside your head, the things you think about, the things you dream about, the dreams you think about, so inspiration is about agitating/stimulating this process into action to give you food for thought.

Here’s the best part, we all do this all the time naturally but most of it is not channeled because we are distracted by life and living it’s self, unless we make time to nurture the process it gets lost in information overload.

Stimulation is only half of the story, we need to transfer this information from our imaginations into the real world, into something of substance and this is what you are drawing, your ideas, it is called self actualization.

Do you remember this statement “The real problem is simple to understand if you don’t put anything into the basket how can you get anything out of it, what I mean is this, if you don’t fill your head with drawing ideas then where do you think you are going to get your drawing ideas from?”

How to fill your head.

Nowadays it so easy to find something to draw I just go online to Google images I can get all the source material I could ever want and you people today don’t know how easy you have got it. When I was a youngster learning to draw I was lucky if I had 2 Marvel comics or a news paper to get some drawing ideas from let alone the billions of images online. Sometimes this can also be a problem known as overkill, information overload or spoilt for choice but that is not the issue we are concerned with at the moment.

This is how I fill my head with drawing ideas and it works like a dream, in fact I think perhaps I should be selling this to you but I am not because it’s free anyway.

I go to a site called Stumble Upon and stumble for images of the stuff I like, this soon fills my head, feeds my brain, feeds my need or feeds my greed it doesn’t matter because it just works like nothing else I know.

I never get to ask that question what can I draw anymore it is so easy?

For those of you who don’t know what Stumble Upon is then I will tell you besides being a fantastic place to store links to your favorite sites as a social book marking tool it also gives you the option to click a button and view random web pages that can be targeted to your specific interests. So you set it to view pictures and then click the button to look at random pictures of interest, it is another form of channel hoping except you can pick broad topics, this really brings unexpected drawing ideas to mind that feeds my need. I have to say it’s fantastic because it is to me at least, please remember a Marvel Comic as good as they where and a news paper is not much in the way of inspiration.

Then when I have got my drawing ideas off I go to Google Images, Getty Images or any of a hundred other places looking for source material to build my next drawing, pictorial illusion.

You people today don’t know how easy you have it.

Knowing what to draw is no longer an issue Join Stumbleupon and if you are wondering about what’s in it for me then don’t bother

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Then the answer is there is nothing in it for me unless you want to do yourself a favor and stumble http://howtodraweasy.com/ that would help me to help you.

My stumbleupon what to draw method.

In settings, Manage Interests, I have the following selected because I am mostly interested in images if you have too many topics selected then your time becomes diluted with reading and not looking.

Arts

Bizarre/Oddities

Sculpting

Computer Graphics

Drawing

Photography

I installed the tool bar into my browser and whenever I am at loose end and don’t know what to draw I can stumble images and related information on stumble upon but to be honest I am never stuck for something to draw.

I often use this method not to look for drawing ideas or images to draw but develop the ideas I already have because I have been drawing for about 40 years so I have developed my discipline many years ago. I use the stumble upon image hopping process to give me new drawing ideas for what I am working on and it throws up some very interesting potential developments for these ideas that I already have as work in progress.

I also find it to be a good place to store Art/Drawing links to related web pages as favorites for future reference without clogging up my browser favorites and keeping everything related in one place.

Alternatively if you don’t want to join and use stumble upon then you can go to Google images or where ever your own preference might be to view images you like because by viewing images you are actually stimulating your brain into thinking about these, generating inspiration for developing your own.

Not knowing what to draw is about not being inspired and the best way to inspire yourself is to look at other peoples pictures, photographs or ideas which will fill your head and feed your need.

Some images created through stumbling can be seen below.

A picture of a car, a frog and a girl, all the girls love a frog ask Louie.

Dragon in the city stalking its pray.

This is the dragon stalking the girl.

All the most well known and loved stories in our lives are most often filled with elements that we can identify with and recognize, these are personal but also very similar from person to person so they are a shared reality, they are most often cultural preferences with common threads from one culture to the next and not so personal after all. This means that stories contain elements that are common to most people the same can be said of images, people recognize and attach meaning to images, the symbols within them and even the colors used become meaningful, this seems more so with time and maturity.

Girl on tong, maker pens and graphite pencil drawing see it on YouTube quickfirsts channel.

The further you move away from the norms the more unrecognizable your drawing ideas become and sometimes more outrageous or distasteful making them less likable in general to the masses but like I have already said “the answer is inside you”.

You decide what to draw through your own inspiration.

Spirit of the times pencil drawing, life and death.

Aerial maneuvers, dragon over the roof tops.

Negative space might sound like a science fiction phenomenon, a Doctor Who concept or something from Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy but to be totally honest it’s not.

Negative space is the concept of space surrounding an object, if you where to draw a car then that car would be positive space but the surrounding area around it would be negative space.

As you can see below the surrounding area known as the negative space still depicts the outline of the car and can be just about recognized as a car, making this an example of how negative space can be used to depict an image that is not actually there.

The example below will help you understand this better I am sure.

Beatles and a Honda Civic, positive, negative space what is it?

The space around an object is important and deserves consideration as it can be used to suggest objects when they are not even there saving you a lot of time because they are only used as outlines saving you the time of rendering the detail.

MC Escher provides probably the most celebrated examples of how negative space can be used to great effect and below is an adaptation of his ideas for illustrative purposes but best seen in his own work.

An example virsion of flying geese, birds and fish taken from work by MC Escher.

The image above taken from Day and Night 1938, with the original being made from a woodcut print in black and grey, printed from 2 blocks and Sky and Water II another woodcut of the same time

These are just two pieces of work from a vast collection of work by MC Escher that convey the use of both positive and negative space, the same image in both spaces creating a clever illusion which can be seen in many other examples like, the Chinese, Yin and Yang which is another very popular example.

In its visual form the Yin and Yang concept is conveyed as opposites of equal size and proportion, where each contains some of the other represented by the opposite neutral tones portrayed as black and white dots in its opposite portion.

The use of negative space to convey other double illusions can be seen in the images below where the use of simple outline cutouts portray a similar image to the main figure on the same theme of popular culture and music.

The example above takes contemporary images to convey them in both positive and negative space through the use of outline cutouts.

Below is a further development using outlines as silhouettes?

When drawing an outline of something as like when you are constructing a drawing, what you are trying to recreate is the line between the positive and negative space, for this reason it is important to be able to see that line, distinguishing the two.

The point where one stops and the other begins is the outline.

The Beatles and the 5th Beatle, negative, positive space.

The official MC Escher site: http://www.mcescher.com/ is a place to look if you would like to see some of the very best examples of negative space illusion as MC Escher was/is the grand master of optical illusion and negative space.

Sketching, draw and drawing are the same thing right, are they really, but of course they are, aren’t they?

To draw and sketch, are they the same?

Dictionary examples:

“To draw is to sketch (someone or something) in lines; delineate; depict: to draw a vase with charcoal, to compose or create (a picture) in lines, to mark or lay out; trace: to draw perpendicular lines.

A sketch is a hasty or un-detailed drawing or painting often made as a preliminary study.”

Many years ago when I was in school I took an option to do Technical Drawing I didn’t like it because it was more about mathematics, accuracy and precession with no room for mistakes, I did not consider it to be drawing at all. I believed it was too mechanical, too calculated and I did not realise then that all drawing is about these same processes of measurement but carried out in different ways using your eyes rather than a ruler. When doing Technical Drawing you know how to do it and how it will look before it has even been done but when you do some sketching these restraints are not as important as just getting something down on paper.

To me there is a big difference between them, drawings are about accuracy and detail, where as sketches are about speed and experimentation but to clearly define them individually is difficult because aspects of both spill into each other.

When you draw with accuracy the information you record becomes visual knowledge so when you sketch that same visual knowledge spills over into your practice to inform you’re sketching.

Sketching is about getting things right and wrong to test or find new ideas to drive your ability, where as drawing is about doing this but also it is about getting it right with all the details in all the right places.

Drawings can sometimes also go wrong which often inspires new ideas but with sketches there is less emphasis on accuracy so more opportunity for errors of judgment and greatly increasing the chance of finding happy accidents.

Happy accidents are where people find positive outcomes by accident and many great discoveries in art, science and all other areas are found often in this way, the one premise for doing this is you won’t find anything if your not looking.

When people draw they first sketch an outline then they sketch where the detail goes and then they draw in the detail. This process is one of the basic rules of drawing and sketching, along with working from light to dark.

When people draw they first make small light marks identifying where everything goes in relation and proportionate to everything else in the drawing as compared to the subject of your drawing or sketching.

Drawing focuses on conveying subjects through the deeper understanding of details contained within them, both require you to think about what you are doing at least in the beginning, both require you to constantly look from subject to work area.

Both teach you to see and to look for more, even when producing less detail you still learn to see in terms of plains, angles, curves, contour, light and dark, the process of drawing or sketching will both aid the development of this ability.

The more you do it the better you get at it, sketching, draw and drawing are the same thing right?

Julian beever, Kurt Wenner, Edgar Müller,  are three artists known for doing modern anamorphic perspective 3d paintings, 3d street art and these three artists give us some proof that there is more to looking than just pointing your eyes in the direction of an object.

Everybody and the dog will tell you drawing is about looking and do you know what, all of them are right but do you want to know something else, very few of them actually explain what they mean, do they?

How important is it to understand some basic principles about looking?

I don’t know about you but I see so much I cannot possibly take it all in, we live in a very visually informative world 80% of all the information we receive is visual any way. So we are literally being bombarded with it, saturated with it, we even see things in our sleep or at least we think we do.

But we actually see very little because it doesn’t register we are not really looking we are just seeing, browsing you might say but if you are going to learn to draw then you need to look with reason.

Here are some obvious points that weren’t so obvious to me once upon a time; I used to lie on the bed as a kid and draw but no matter how hard I tried my pictures never looked right.

When I used to draw at the kitchen table they always turned out much better and it was because of the angel I was drawing at if you try to draw at an angle lying down then you will usually end up with a distorted image. If you only look at this image from the angle at which it was drawn it will look more accurate than if you hold it up squarely in front of your eyes to view.

This information is very useful when you look at the fantastic work created by pavement artist’s, Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller these are modern day artist’s who completely turn this whole problem to an advantage, not only do they make this a unique selling point but they also makes it their trade mark.

There is a name for this type of art it is called anamorphic perspective and the earliest examples of this are by Leonardo Da Vinci and Andrea Pozzo.

Some examples of this early work can be seen in Andrea Pozzo’s work on the ceilings of the Jesuit, St Ignatius’ Church, Rome, 1685 – 1694, this masterpiece is a fabulous example of illusory perspectives and the dome being of particular importance.

Sant Ignazio ceiling.

Sant Ignazio ceiling further away.

The dome is not real either and from a certain point marked with a brass plate on the floor you find it very difficult to see that it isn’t.

Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller, these guys do this on the street and also create fabulous examples of illusory perspectives so the question for me is how they do these illusions.

Julian Beever and Kurt Wenner.

Kurt Wenner.

Edgar Muller.

Edgar Müller uses the computer to digitally render the work, concepts, ideas, if you can use computer photo editing software then this is the way to go.

Looking at the way Edgar constructs his drawings shows that he uses what looks like masking tape to get parts of his street paintings accurate it also looks like he takes an approach similar to that used by Julian Beever.

Here are just a couple of ideas I tried after looking at work done by these other guys but mostly I used Edgar Müller for inspiration and I was pleasantly surprised.

Image done with photo editing software to give an example of Edgar Muller type theme.

Another image done with photo editing software to give an example of Edgar Muller, Jillian Beaver , Kurt Wenner 3d street art type illusions.

Julian Beever explains that he is not a mathematician and has no mathematical skills to speak of; he says that he uses the good old grid method in order to construct his drawings. He also uses a camera on a tripod as a viewer which enables him to use the fixed position of the camera to always be able to identify the exact position to view the street painting accurately.

A statement made by Kurt Wenner that explains how he approaches his work “Artistic geometry was the most fascinating subject” this is mathematics in another name exactly the opposite to Julian Beever.

If I was going to create the illusion above then I would do it like this, first of all I would do a scaled painting on paper of the above image that would be four times bigger than the original image which is A4 so my preparation painting would be A2 in size.

This will give me a greater understanding of how to construct the drawing and mix the colours it will give me a feeling for the picture plus it is a desirable image in it’s own right. This would also give me two images to work from and a more informed understanding of what I would be attempting to create.

I would find the farthest point from my camera tripod, yes I would use a camera because after carrying out some experiments I found it to be very helpful for viewing not just this type of work either, so thanks to Julian Beever.

I also realised that these illusions don’t have the same impact to the naked eye and after reading extensively about these artists I find that they also hint at this.

From the farthest point I would run a tape like Edgar Müller does, to use this as an anchor point for the rest of the picture. Then using identifiable points in the drawing space, environment, with this actually being the street I would construct my drawing outline from reference points identified when doing the preparation painting.

I would construct my outline by marking in key areas, identifying them from my original image and marking them with a chalk stick until I was confident I had enough information to create my painting. I would keep going back to the camera to view the image and check for accuracy I would basically draw it like any other drawing by using reference points from the surrounding landscape to identify reference points in the drawing/painting. This is a necessary continual and ongoing process when doing any kind of drawing but even more so when doing anamorphic perspective you need to be checking and double checking for accuracy just like Julian Beever and others.

A plan showing how elements in the picture can be used to mark out the drawing.

Street art construction plan with text to explain in more detail.

Creative artists rule the world if we think about it but we are not doing that today because everybody should be able to at least understand the creative process and creative techniques we use if they they just keep on reading this simple explanation.  Creative drawing is a pastime that many people enjoy all over the world and I am no different, it has been so many things to me throughout my life but one thing it has always consistently been is pleasure. The wonderful thing about drawing is you only need a pencil or pen, some paper, your eyes and your mined in order to draw great pictures, a pleasure so easily obtained it’s little wonder that many people enjoy it, the creative process is simple.

When I draw pictures I often get lost for hours fantasizing and dreaming to myself about all sorts of imaginary ideas, concepts, stories or worlds, people, creatures and places, magic and illusions. This is often the realm of things that don’t exist until you draw them and they are released from the imprisonment of your mined onto an unsuspecting world, it’s amazing when someone looks at your work and says wow.

Below is an image of Gearman he is an attempt at showing the workings of how an imagination creates illusions from everyday objects something I have done many times when drawing because you can often see things in other things.

Image showing the constructional stages of building an image from another different image.

Yes I know this is not a creative drawing as such but is it because it is not a photograph either except for the LX mountain bike gears the rest could be considered a digital drawing rather than a pencil drawing but in this format it more easily shows the process of seeing things as other things.

If you draw pictures, any pictures, out of you imagination, from a picture or from life and you look at what you are doing you will start to see other things, this is not likely to happen at first because you will need to build up a stock of past works that is often called a repertoire. This is why it is important to practice by doing drawings all the time but if you like drawing like many people do it will not be a problem and you will soon have a repertoire.

I want to tell you a little story it is a bit of a dark story but a true story all the same and also a good reason for understanding a little bit more about what I am trying to explain.

I had a bit of an obsession from when I was a small child I wanted to be able to draw the human likeness, to be able to draw portraits of real people that looked like them. A large part of my young life had been focused on trying to do this accurately so as others would uphold my observations and confirm that I had the ability to capture the human likeness through drawing. I eventually reached the pinnacle of my success in this by drawing and painting portraits for people, getting paid by them for this work. During this time of about 3 years doing portraits I sold over a hundred of these to their expressed wishes but drew many more in the process that I also sold how many I do not really know but in total a couple of hundred. I was at it all the time but it was causing me other problems I was so over exposed to faces that I began to start seeing them everywhere in everything I looked at. I seen faces in trees, bushes, the drawings I was doing, buildings, everything, it was fun at first but it soon became annoying for me because I felt it was restricting my imagination unless I was drawing faces.

I never wanted to be like that I wanted to be able to draw faces as well as cars, robots, landscapes, mountain bikescapes or what ever but not just faces and I had to stop.

I am glad I did, I don’t just see faces in everything I look at anymore but the only way to do this was to stop and go back to drawing anything but not faces, only when I need them for something else now.

My new obsession is to be able to draw everything and I am joking because I can do that anyway so that’s what I do, we are all creative artists developing a creative process in every thing we do because that’s what humans do when they focus their attentions on a task this dose not just apply to drawing.