Tag Archives: Struggle

Practice drawing human.

I hope that this will always be true but I also worry, about there being increasingly, less and less of the human elements, in our lives on a daily basis and at the same time, I embrace the machine for it’s ability, to deliver greater instantaneous gratification, when drawing human.

Can machines draw like a human, could this ever become a reality or is it already partly real because machines can be programmed, to copy every single human movement, with extremely fine precision, every single time.

So the one attribute, a human has over a machine, is we make mistakes and we are never going to be perfect but we are also good at hiding them or adapting them, for our purpose because after all, when drawing we are creating illusions anyway. To add to this, according to the esteemed Greek philosopher, Aristotle, art and science are created in the struggle for perfection. I will add to this and say in a perfect world, there would be no struggle for anything because it is perfect. Drawing is a struggling, to perfect the perfect illusion, where as all illusion is seemingly something it is not, so it is far from perfect. Perfection would serve no purpose anyway because it is the struggle for perfection and the lack of the same, that is the motivator of all action. Conflict is the motivator of the reaction and is the action, that drives further reaction, so perfection is the road to doom. In the struggle between order and chaos, one cannot exist without the other, in theory but within order, there is no chaos and chaos exists, with or without order, order is only a tool, with which to measure chaos. Chaos I believe is the engine of action or reaction, so therefore exists with or without order and it is the fact, that you can’t draw, that makes you human, which makes you good at drawing human, so remember that.

I am sick of hearing it said that drawing the human form is no easy task because in that context drawing anything is no easy task, when in fact I know full well, that drawing is easy, we all do it all the time but just don’t realize.

Lets get real about this, if you can move a drawing implement, around on a drawing surface and make marks with it, that is drawing. If you can make symbols, that look like other things, then bully for you because that’s not drawing. Drawing is being able to make marks, with a drawing implement on a surface, capable of retaining those marks, everything else is about being able to see and organize, those marks so they represent the symbols.

I hear people taking gobbledy gook and they can’t help it because it is wholeheartedly encouraged, by the arty farty brigade. You see the one thing all drawings are is illusions, one thing organized, to look like something else, which is an illusion, a trick or even a lie, what ever you think it is, it is not because it is an illusion.

Many, many people like to make out that drawing is this special, wonderful ability, that people are blessed with, well it might be true of some people but not me. God gave me a pencil and said there you go son, you can draw now, so then all I had to do, was organize the marks into illusions, I then spent my whole life organizing marks into illusions because hey, nobody’s perfect, and isn’t that the point.

Now if you want to get good at drawing human, then go away and make a few mistakes, it’s the only way to draw.
Nothing but the sun and the stars, graphite pencil drawing image.

How to practice using a pencil, without boring yourself to death.

Most people don’t know how to draw, they don’t really know what they are looking for, let alone be able to draw it and why should they?

Why would you know anything about practice using a pencil if you had not been using one regularly?

Most people think that they have to draw an outline but can’t actually see one because they don’t know what they are doing.

Most people get better and learn quicker if they trace pictures but most people also think tracing pictures is cheating and so never use tracing as a learning method, what a shame. When you trace a picture you can only realistically trace out lines, you are not able to do the shading as well when tracing and so drawings that are traced are unfinished looking, very uninteresting because they are uniform, without tonal variation or quality of line.

When tracing pictures, you get your outline very accurate, so the rest of the drawing is more likely to be more accurate and it enables you to see the outline, more easily so it will look good and you will feel good about it.

Constructional drawing is the foundation of all drawing, get it right and you will have saved yourself half of the struggle but doing the other half of a drawing, the shading is a much more enjoyable and a great way of learn about construction drawing, so you learn the difficult stuff by doing the easy stuff first.

Design sheet of ideas for potential further development.

The easy way or the hard way, it’s completely up to you?

If you want further information about why and how tracing works scientifically, then take a look at this interesting article (How to draw easy an extraordinary tail of two brains) or do some research about the functions of the left and right brain. You will learn about the benefits of drawing and how the dominant left brain activities, actually make it difficult to learn drawing but also stunting your thinking power, along with your creative abilities.

Don’t make it hard, make it easy.

Enjoy learning to use a pencil at the same time as learning about how to do construction drawing the easy way first, not the difficult way round, like everybody else teaches, easy way first is the way to go but it astounds me, why the hard way is always practiced. There is a great book by Betty Edwards called drawing on the left hand side of the brain, that many people have used to help them learn to draw and draw well, so well, that many have been astounded by their own abilities, after using the methods given in the book, one of the main methods is tracing because it reaches the parts, other methods cannot reach.

 

Dragons head drawn with graphite pencil 3b & 5b
Dragons head drawn with graphite pencil 3b & 5b as an idea for another picture.

They don’t teach geometry in primary school because the children wouldn’t understand it but they give them pencils to play with, the geometry comes much later when they know what a pencil is, they also teach tracing which has got to be one of the easiest ways to practice using a pencil by drawing because when you trace pictures, you can draw any outline for any picture you want easy.