Any tips for the artistically retarded?

[Goliath]

I've told a fair amount of people that if I had my undergraduate career to do over again, I'd take at least one drawing class. Occasionally, I get these urges to draw and doodle, but I'm so horribly, hideously awful at it, that as soon as I start trying to draw something, I scribble over the retarded looking bloated stick figure (or whatever the hell it is that I tried to draw) and pretend that I never started.

So....eventually when I get some extra free time (ha ha ha!) on my hands, I'd like to start learning how to draw. Any ideas on websites or books (or pointers in general) that could help me out?

[viscousmemories]

I've heard a lot of good things about a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I've always meant to read it because I'm the same way with drawing. Always want to do it but suck at it.

[freemonkey]

Some helpful books: This one's a classic (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0395530075/qid=1095135126/sr=8-1/ref=pd_cps_1/104-1564454-4642341?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) , Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0874774241/qid=1095135126/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ksr_1/104-1564454-4642341?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) is also good. Another classic, less technique, more philosophy (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553371460/qid=1095135241/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-1564454-4642341), and its companion (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0394719689/qid=1095135241/sr=ka-2/ref=pd_ka_2/104-1564454-4642341). I have an old copy of this one, which I like a lot. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671762664/qid=1095135462/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-1564454-4642341?v=glance&s=books)

As for advice, try not to go into it with any preconceived ideas of how badly you suck at it. If you give it a real shot, you might actually surprise yourself. Try not to judge your attempts too harshly. Try to learn from other people's (and this includes your teacher) criticisms. Sometimes its hard to tell the difference between construction and destructive. Above all, just try to have fun with it!

[Adora]

Practice. Practice. Practice. And then practice some more.

You will eventually reach a point where you go "Oh. I have something that other people don't have, even in the field of X. I am good." And then you reach the "I'm better than the pack in a lot of fields but there are still a lot of people better than me" area, and then the "I'm quite good and better than most" and then the "Damn, I'm good" top-end of the spectrum. But coming from someone who's somewhere between the middle ones, it takes a fucking long while. And there is always, always someone better than you, and there has to be, and you should never get a big head about it, but just accept it and keep trying to change and improve.

Possibly the best book I've ever read about drawing was "Drawing With Children". And I'll tell you why.

Something you realise when you do a certain style of drawing and illustration (or painting, sculpture, whatever) is that before you break the rules you have to know them. And for each level of drawing ability there are rules you must know before you move on. This book tackled the most basic rules, the simplest but most important techniques and excercises I think you should know when developing your skills. And a lot of people simply don't know them. You can copy as much as you want, sure, but as you copy you should be noticing the rules used by the people you're copying to make the pictures they do make. A lot of people when trying to learn how to draw don't, and so take a hell of a lot longer to improve than people who do.

Most mainstream drawing-technique-help books focus solely on drawing from real life, which I find quite disturbing. But that could just be because I come from a manga/non-traditional illustration background, which is less rooted in reality than most things. But even then, you have problems. Pop fads and all that (Kids+Dragonball=hell) make people want to run before they can walk. I think you need a proper balance to be creative, just as you need the right balance of focused talent and developed skill.

And I'm one of those people who thinks the right technology can help. You have to know what to use for what to really make the best effects sometimes. Sure, experts can create lovely things with just a ballpoint pen and a piece of butcher's paper, but, for example, if you're doing CG work, unless you really want to destror your wrist cartilidge in 6 years, you need a tablet. Getting a pressure-sensitive one (as cheap and nasty as it was) was probably one of the best things I ever did.

[Goliath]

Thanks for the tips, everyone. When I get started on this (which may not be until after the xmas break), I'll definitely start slow and try not to be too judgemental.

[lisarea]

I was going to say Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, too, but then everyone else said it first.

The one and only trick, even before you get the book, though: Don't draw things the way you think they should look, but the way they really do. One of the things that makes drawing hard is that we think too much, so the variances and things that don't fit our preconceived notions are sort of blocked out.

The best thing that can ever happen to you when you're drawing is a complete zone-out. The same kind of thing that probably happens to you when you're knee deep in some problem or project and you tune everything else out and just cop a groove.

You can start on some natural object--preferably something without manufactured edges that demand too much precision--and just start drawing it. You'll probably notice a lot of parallels in the way something that appears so simple is really incredibly complex. The 'art' comes out in the editing, kind of.

[seebs]

Hmm.

So, my wife and a couple of her friends are all artists. And I've been watching them draw, a lot. And suddenly I draw a lot better, because I have a better sense of how to make a picture.

The thing is... It's very hard to draw a picture's final state. Normally, you start by drawing a few sketchy bits that tell you where everything will go. So, you don't start with "a face". You start with an oval in the right position to be a face, and then you have a set of learned ways to draw a face on top of an oval...

Another thing, that made a HUGE difference, is that my wife pointed out that, with the exception of medical illustration, you are generally not trying to reproduce an image precisely, but rather, produce symbols which will be recognized as an image. So, you don't need pixel-perfect eyes. A pair of dots in about the right place, maybe with lines over them that reflect expression, will be "good enough".

[JoeP]

Lisa's post and seebs' seem to go in different directions on something fundamental:
Don't draw things the way you think they should look, but the way they really do.
It's very hard to draw a picture's final state. Normally, you start by drawing a few sketchy bits that tell you where everything will go.
Now, if & when I draw, I draw the way seebs describes, and it's also the way I program and the way I write: lots of scribbles and outlines. And I have to rub out and adjust the outlines all the time because the shapes just don't look right. But I see people who I regard as really able to draw and they seem to have an ability to sketch the right outline on the page first time. If they erase it's because they actually want to change the picture they have in mind. And it really seems to be that: they have a mental mapping of what they are going to draw onto a "page" in their mind, bypassing preconceptions of what a thing is and just seeing its form from that particular angle - like Lisa's point.

[RevDahlia]

Oh boy, a screed from someone who never finished her BFA.

Try signing up for a figure drawing or life drawing workshop. These meet all over the place, most often at community colleges or arts centers. You do NOT want a class in which you'll be graded; you do want a regular meeting where you can sit in a big room with good light, in the presence of an instructor who'll give you pointers if you want them, and burn through lots and lots of paper.

The only way to learn how to draw is to draw. "Drawing on the Right Side..." is a good book, but by and large I don't recommend learning to draw from books. Books tend to advocate a "one size fits all" method, which more often than not will be discouraging because it looks a lot easier than it is.

A perfect example is most books on figure drawing, which recommend first drawing a stick figure skeleton, then putting shapes on it for body parts, et cetera, et cetera. Seems easy but isn't, unless you already know how to draw the contours of a figure.

Figure drawing, incidentally, was my catalyst. I took a boot-camp figure drawing class in high school, the point of which was to chuck all preconceived notions and just draw what was there. It was a revelation. I came out of it battered but much more confident in my abilities.

A note on materials: many books advocate starting out with charcoal, but a surer way to get discouraged and run screaming from the room does not exist. I recommend using Conte crayon, and paper with a little tooth, instead. Once I was liberated from the big honkin' mess that is charcoal, I felt a lot better.

You can start on some natural object--preferably something without manufactured edges that demand too much precision--and just start drawing it. You'll probably notice a lot of parallels in the way something that appears so simple is really incredibly complex. The 'art' comes out in the editing, kind of.
This is so true. Novices often start out trying to draw things like cars, which always look awful in drawings unless you're a trained draftsperson or an expert cartoonist. Much better to try drawing landscapes, flowers, fruit, people -- things with more forgiving contours. And for heaven's sake don't attempt anything shiny unless you're a masochist.

[RevDahlia]

Lisa's post and seebs' seem to go in different directions on something fundamental:
Don't draw things the way you think they should look, but the way they really do.
It's very hard to draw a picture's final state. Normally, you start by drawing a few sketchy bits that tell you where everything will go.
Now, if & when I draw, I draw the way seebs describes, and it's also the way I program and the way I write: lots of scribbles and outlines. And I have to rub out and adjust the outlines all the time because the shapes just don't look right. But I see people who I regard as really able to draw and they seem to have an ability to sketch the right outline on the page first time. If they erase it's because they actually want to change the picture they have in mind. And it really seems to be that: they have a mental mapping of what they are going to draw onto a "page" in their mind, bypassing preconceptions of what a thing is and just seeing its form from that particular angle - like Lisa's point.
The two different approaches described above apply differently depending on what you're drawing. Some things can be depicted very symbolically -- a face, for instance. You can draw an oval and a few dots and it will immediately read as a face, because we're programmed to respond a certain way to faces. You can also draw a semicircle with a triangle on top, and everyone who looks at it will think, "Oh, a boat!"

If you are drawing a particular person instead of a generic face, however -- or a gaff-rigged schooner instead of a generic boat -- that's when you have to start drawing what is literally there, as opposed to a symbol.

Cartoonists and graf artists, whose abilities I admire greatly, rely heavily on symbols. But the best of them also know how to draw literally, dispensing with symbolism and just laying down what is there. It's useful to be able to choose between idioms.

[lisarea]

Lisa's post and seebs' seem to go in different directions on something fundamental:
Don't draw things the way you think they should look, but the way they really do.
It's very hard to draw a picture's final state. Normally, you start by drawing a few sketchy bits that tell you where everything will go.

I'm probably being inarticulate again, but I don't think those two things negate each other.

The biggest problem I see with amateur art is that people tend to draw their preconceptions. That is, they draw a nose or an apple or a box the way they think it should look, rather than the way it does look. They draw big black lines around everything, so a portrait, for example, ends up looking like individual pictures of a nose, two eyes, a mouth, etc., without really looking at things they don't expect, or at how the various elements kind of merge together as a whole.

Except in the case of technical drawing, editing is important. You don't show everything. You can't, and anyway, that's what cameras are for.

It's a matter of picking out what's important, and capturing the elements you want to capture.

If you look at the progression of most artists' careers, you'll notice a tendency to begin with representation, and then a slow progression toward editing and emphasizing different elements of their subjects. A couple of good examples are Picasso and Mondrian. In fact, I always hated Mondrian until I saw the natural progression of his work. (LOOK! I just found a webpage: Mondrian's Trees (http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sheelagh/personal/reps/mond/))

So, yes, the goal is to interpret reality through expressive means, but you can't effectively interpret something you don't really see in the first place.

Actually, Goliath, have you considered taking classes? There are various techniques they'll show you, including everything from technical representation skills such as perspective (should be a breeze for you) to rapid drawing techniques used to convey movement and broad expression. Also: Life drawing classes have naked ladies. (And men.)

[JoeP]

The two different approaches described above apply differently depending on what you're drawing. Some things can be depicted very symbolically -- a face, for instance. You can draw an oval and a few dots and it will immediately read as a face, because we're programmed to respond a certain way to faces. You can also draw a semicircle with a triangle on top, and everyone who looks at it will think, "Oh, a boat!"

If you are drawing a particular person instead of a generic face, however -- or a gaff-rigged schooner instead of a generic boat -- that's when you have to start drawing what is literally there, as opposed to a symbol.

...
I was thinking more of representative (I'll have to use the word realistic, even though that's not necessarily the case) pictures, something particular, rather than the symbolic kind of thing. I can do the symbolic stuff. I could probably do a fair technical drawing, showing parts and relations and bits, dimension lines, flow diagrams, data models, concept maps ... yup, I do all this. But getting an outline to be the right shape when you first put it on the paper seems to be a completely different skill.

[JoeP]

Lisa's post and seebs' seem to go in different directions on something fundamental:
Don't draw things the way you think they should look, but the way they really do.
It's very hard to draw a picture's final state. Normally, you start by drawing a few sketchy bits that tell you where everything will go.

I'm probably being inarticulate again, but I don't think those two things negate each other.

The biggest problem I see with amateur art is that people tend to draw their preconceptions. That is, they draw a nose or an apple or a box the way they think it should look, rather than the way it does look. They draw big black lines around everything, so a portrait, for example, ends up looking like individual pictures of a nose, two eyes, a mouth, etc., without really looking at things they don't expect, or at how the various elements kind of merge together as a whole.

Except in the case of technical drawing, editing is important. You don't show everything. You can't, and anyway, that's what cameras are for.

It's a matter of picking out what's important, and capturing the elements you want to capture.

...
I think I latched on to a different point from the one you were making :innocent: Part of seeing what's there must be seeing it as a visual field (since we're talking about 2-d art) and putting aside knowing that what you're seeing is certain objects with known structure.

Children don't draw what they see. They draw the sky as a blue line at the top of the page, chimneys at 45deg (if it's a sloping roof). They never see these things so it's fascinating to think how drawing starts out as a mental process. Isn't what you're saying that adult amateurs do something similar - draw ideas of how things look not what's in front of their eyes? Do artists have to unlearn childish drawing?

btw I think editing is just as important in technical drawing; it's just that there may be more objective ways to decide what needs to be included.

[maddog]

I second (or third or fourth) the suggestion of a class. And do not be discouraged if the first or second class doesn't seem to suit you. We had "art" in school, and even "art" with an "art teacher" in Jr. High, but it wasn't until I took an art class my sophomore year in high school that I realized that there actually were things about art that can be TAUGHT to other people. For instance, in Jr. High, the teacher would just say, "Make a perspective drawing of a room, with objects in the room, a light source into the room, and shadows of the objects." He never did, however, tell you HOW to draw objects, or a light source, or shadows. He did explain single-point and two-point perspective, but that was it. It wasn't until the high school class that I realized -- because someone finally told me -- that shadows ARE NOT BLACK. Shadows and shading are composed of different shades of the color of the object(s) the shadow falls on. E.g., the shadow of a tree on the lawn is not BLACK, it's a darker shade of the colors of the LAWN. How you make a 3-dimensional shape like a block or a sphere, is knowing where to put the various shades of color of the block or sphere. It's a matter of shading. They put a brown crayon in your box for "trees," because everyone "knows" that tree trunks/branches/bark are brown. No, they're not! They are all kinds of colors: gray, red, purple, black, pink, blue, green, yellow, etc. But I never knew that until someone actually showed me. Find a teacher who clicks for you.

Also from the same experience, I learned for myself that working with paint is easier than drawing. Drawing, I can shred a paper to pieces with scratching, changing and erasing. It's ugly. I had more luck with fluid color. Although I distinctly remember, when reading "Naked Came I," a biography of Auguste Rodin, when he decided that he wanted to sculpt, his teacher told him, "even more than ever, you must learn to draw."

Another book, which is pretty new-Age-y and takes a great deal of time with exercises and stuff, is "The Artist's Way." Gets you thinking and taking action toward your goals. Can be overwhelming, though.

#12

[wildernesse]

I'm reading this thread with some interest. I really, really would love to draw decently. And when I sit down and look at something, I can make a pretty ok picture--usually only with colors and not with black and white (you know). I can make a pretty good representation of my foot--by drawing what I do actually see.

But, I'm tired of my foot. I've drawn my couch. Last week I wanted to draw a loris riding a bicycle--it seemed simple in my head--but I ended up weirdly. How true. In the end, I could only make its eyes look sort of like loris eyes. And then I drew fingers for it--which were pretty good too. But between the fingers and eyes there was nothing.

So, you see my problem. In between, I drew stick monkeys hanging from a line, but they ended up having teddy bear faces. Do you think taking a figure drawing class would help me?

[Goliath]

A class would definitely sound like a good idea. However, that'll have to wait until the spring semester (at least). This first semester as Assistant Professor is a busy one!

If you find my replies short, that doesn't mean that I'm not reading your comments--I am!

A couple of things that especially drew my eye:

...a complete zone-out. The same kind of thing that probably happens to you when you're knee deep in some problem or project and you tune everything else out and just cop a groove.


:yup: Oh lordy yeah! I've gone several days in a row thinking about a problem or one aspect of a problem...and almost nothing else. During those times, I even have dreams where I'm sitting at my office trying things (or sometimes I'll have dreams that are filled with nothing but random, jibberish calculations).

It's very hard to draw a picture's final state. Normally, you start by drawing a few sketchy bits that tell you where everything will go. So, you don't start with "a face". You start with an oval in the right position to be a face, and then you have a set of learned ways to draw a face on top of an oval...

Hmmm...interesting. There's kind of a parallel in mathematics. When trying to prove a theorem, you usually start out with some sketchy calculations and examples. These then lead to a conjecture, and (if you're lucky) you can slowly piece together and expand proof to make it a theorem.

You see, it's weird shit like this that is part of my reason for wanting to draw....I want to somehow artistically express the parallels between going from ovals to faces and the stumbling towards a theorem.

And no, I have no idea how to do it.

Of course, I also want to learn how to draw so that I can make nifty looking doodles while being both a) bored to death in meetings and b) too tired/uninspired to work on a new result.

Then again, if a colleague were to glance at my notepad during a busy meeting and notice that it was covered with very realistic drawings of eyes (various types, various sizes, etc) looking out of the page..... :eek: :D

Well, it's time to med myself up with NyQuil and go to bed. Goodnight.

[viscousmemories]

How one can tell I have a problem:

I read "Well, it's time to med myself up with NyQuil and go to bed" and thought: "Man, I wish I was sick." :D

[JoeP]

How one can tell I have a problem:

I read "Well, it's time to med myself up with NyQuil and go to bed" and thought: "Man, I wish I was sick." :D
No problem. You are liberated and free in that you can admit this: a lot of people feel like this from time to time. Modern stressful life or not, it's appealing to have an excuse to switch off and tune out; to get sympathy (even if no one's actually going to give you any); to escape pressures (even if you can't really - often still have to go to work, lecture etc). Sometimes I find that even if I don't escape stress or get affection ( :liar: ), I can still get a fuzzy space-helmet feeling of detachment - and for free - no tranquillizers or Zen masters required.

[seebs]

If you are drawing a particular person instead of a generic face, however -- or a gaff-rigged schooner instead of a generic boat -- that's when you have to start drawing what is literally there, as opposed to a symbol.

Sometimes. Actually, computer models suggest that caricatures are partially based on symbols instead of "reality". But... There's a bit of both.

What I've found is that different artists draw different things in different ways. Experienced artists (Rah and Jesse both qualify) will draw things they know well fairly quickly, skipping some of the intermediate states. But, if Jesse wants to draw something well, she'll almost always do the guidelines and intermediate states - and get better results for doing so. So... She can just sit down and draw a face, but she will do a somewhat better job if she starts by drawing an oval and filling in.

Cartoonists and graf artists, whose abilities I admire greatly, rely heavily on symbols. But the best of them also know how to draw literally, dispensing with symbolism and just laying down what is there. It's useful to be able to choose between idioms.

Yeah.

The key to the "draw what's really there" thing is that it means you have to learn to not compensate for perspective as much. If you look at a square object, your brain says it's square, but in fact, the lines you see are not all the same length; that's additional information your brain provided, which will make your drawing wrong if you duplicate it.

[seebs]

You see, it's weird shit like this that is part of my reason for wanting to draw....I want to somehow artistically express the parallels between going from ovals to faces and the stumbling towards a theorem.

Oh, COOL.

Of course, I also want to learn how to draw so that I can make nifty looking doodles while being both a) bored to death in meetings and b) too tired/uninspired to work on a new result.

Heh.

Yeah... I think you and I will always be hobbyist artists.

[Farren]

Just for redundancy:

What lisa said makes a hell of a lot of sense and implies a couple of other things.

1. When you want to draw something, drawing from life rather than out of your head helps a lot when its static. Moving things have the disadvantage of always changing perspective, but with static things you can see the way it really looks, not the compounded image from every angle you have in your head.

2. Close one eye when you're looking at things. Unless you're astigmatic (like me) and use one eye to do most of the work, binocular vision means that your brain is merging two images all the time to get an impression of distance from the difference between what the eyes are seeing. This can have a distrting effect on your perception of what things look like in 2D

3. Use your fingers to form a box around what you're looking at because the shape of your drawing surface usually doesn't correspond to the complex shape of your vision. Closing one eye when you do this helps.

4. For moving objects or general landscapes/human environment-scapes, get your hands on as many images as you can and just look at them a lot. The Internet is great for this. I know a multi-talented guy who does web design among other things and he has a massve collection of images categorised in folders. This helps with not only accuracy but subtler things like a feel for composition and mood.

When he wants to do an antique or classical looking theme, for instance, he just stares and stares at old photographs from the 1920's or thirties before he begns, taking note not just of what they represent, but the quality and colouring of photographs from that era as well, the kind of fonts they used on signs and so on. Incorporating the typical discolouration of 1920's photos into an image can evoke a more powerful sense of time and place than accurately representing it in vivid technicolour.

5. Hold your works-in-progress up to a mirror and look at them in reverse. Two artists I've known do this a lot because when you've been looking at something for a long time you no longer have the reflex reaction to it most idle viewers do. Seeing it in reverse makes your brain re-evaluate it as a new image and false perpectives etc that you didn't see before just pop out at you.

6. Use the most correct-able mediums you can find initially. i.e. Don't start with straight ink. Start with pencil. Its kind of obvious, I admit. Learning photoshop and doing a lot of computer art also helps because its the ultimate correct-able medium - and it does improve your non-electronic drawing skills. Or at least it did mine. Some drawing skills are tied to hand/eye and some are tied to judgement and mental planning. The latter skills are rapidly developed doing computer art. Obviously the hand/eye stuff still requires manual practice, though.

7. If an example or examples of what you're trying to draw aren't available, learn to stop, close your eyes and visualise before drawing. Really make an effort to see it in your minds eye, not just conceive of it intellectually, which if you're more left brained you'll tend to do.

Many people let the image evolve out of what they're seeing in front of them, as seebs indicated, including some accomplished artists. But the hidden process in this technique is that the people that get it right have a correct mental picture of what the thing looks like and are simply unconsciously aiming for that. If it doesn't come naturally its a good idea to practice visualising properly until it becomes an unconscious habit.

8. Learn how vanishing points and perspective work. Draw a horizon across the page (for a tilted-head perspective, it can be diagonal), select a vanishing point on it (start with the center) and draw lines out at various degrees from that point, then draw a bunch of similar-sized objects that are bounded (touched at the top, bottom, left and right) by the same lines, so that you can get a better sense of how objects diminish with distance and so on.

This technique can also be used to learn how perspective changes from left to right and up and down in your field of view. First, draw squares (parallelograms, since in perspective they wont be square) where two opposing edges of every square you draw are along a line radiatng from the vanishing point. Then start drawing more complex objects, "squaring" them off. For instance, draw a foot at different positions in the field of view where the sole, top or side of the foot is bounded by a square with edges corresponding to the radial lines.

Keep the objects aligned to the horizon in the way they normally would be. So if the horizon is horizontally across the page the base of the foot would always be pointing down, parallel to to a line below the one that bounds the top of the foot. Moving the horizon up and down changes the perspective in the same way looking up and down would. Rotating the horizon changes the perpective the way tilting your head left and right would.

9. Learn how light and shadow works. This can be done in many ways. Expanding on the perspective technique above, a shadow is always a sillhouete of a shape from another perspective. So if you imagine yourself standing where the light source is then redrawing the scene from that perspective you can guess the shadow.

In that alternative scene, imagine a line going from the light source through the object to the shadow surface (in the simple scenario, the ground) if the line is 90 degrees, the shadow would be a sillhouette of the object from the top. In the alternative scene you would be drawing the object (or rather their outline) at the vanishing point. Moving the object around to the left, right, up or down away from the vanishing point is the equalivalent shifting the light source left, right, in front of or behind the object.

Remember that silhouettes/shadows look the same regardless of whether they're being cast from front to back or back to front, because they're outlines, so you only have to get a sense of how the shadow perspective changes in a 90% radius along each axis in simple scenarios (person on ground), since the shadow will be a mirror image in the opposite direction.

More complex shadows, like the way light falls on a face (the way your brows form pools of darkness over your eyes and upper cheeks, f'rinstance) are often easier to learn by rote. Look at a lot of faces lit from different perspectives. A lot of complex surfaces like a face always have the same components in the same relationships, so you don't have to learn the shadowing seperately for each component (like the shadow for the nose, the shadows for the brows and so on), you just have to learn the characteristic shadows of the entire shape from that perspective.

9. If you're going to draw humans, get some anatomical charts. Look at what the muscles under the skin and the skeleton looks like and learn which muscles pull and which are slack for various motions, because the body not only changes perspective, it changes shape when it moves. Do things naked and half naked in front of a mirror to get a sense of this.

10. Composition/arrangement are as important as accuracy. Things can look crap not because they're inaccurate, but because the entire scene is imbalance or has a jarring oddity. The immaculate holiday snap of an idyllic scene with a floating arm thrust rudely in from the side of the picture is an example, belonging to no visible character in the picture.

One technique I've seen for composition is to start out not with the elements, but with the underlying lines and boundaries into which those elements will fit. I picked up a book by a well known fantasy artist some time ago where he clearly and articulately laid out the planning and execution of some of his work.

In one striking example he had a view from underwater showing as its major elements a shipwreck at the bottom, a huge fish and the sunlight shining dimly on the distant surface. He then deconstructed it and showed how he had first drawn a sinusoidal wavy line from the bottom to the top of the picture. The ship's keel, the vertical edge of the fish and the center of the distant sunlight are all drawn along the line. Even though the final picture is assymetrical, you get a powerful sense of underlying pattern. It just seems "right", like everything is logically interconnected, even though there's no real-world logical connection between the elements.

11. One last thing I forgot about perspective (8 above). Learn how you can change the speed at which things diminish to the vanishing point. I'm not sure what the artistic term is, but in programming its determined by FOV (Field of View). If you've got a very board, panoramic view, it stands to reason that, since you can see more objects further away if you can see a lot up close, size must diminish rapidly with distance to correctly display the perspective.

Try drawing an object in a bounding box, like say a beer can. The bounding box must be drawn with its edges along lines radiating from the vanishing point described in (8). now draw the same object, but with the bounding box stretching much further along the same lines, so now the open end of the beer can is huge and the other end is tiny, like a fisheye effect. Thats the effect of changing FOV. The reason fisheye lenses produce this effect is that a small viewing surface (the lens) is shaped so that they have a large FOV (they can see a lot of things a short distance from them, unlike looking through a keyhole)

[JoeP]

Damn good post, Farren.

[Adora]

5. Hold your works-in-progress up to a mirror and look at them in reverse. Two artists I've known do this a lot because when you've been looking at something for a long time you no longer have the reflex reaction to it most idle viewers do. Seeing it in reverse makes your brain re-evaluate it as a new image and false perpectives etc that you didn't see before just pop out at you.

Ehhh, I do this all the time. Very important for someone who has one eye quite lopsided to the other (and thus, all her pictures have a lean to them).

Hee, you said 9 twice.

[Farren]

5. Hold your works-in-progress up to a mirror and look at them in reverse. Two artists I've known do this a lot because when you've been looking at something for a long time you no longer have the reflex reaction to it most idle viewers do. Seeing it in reverse makes your brain re-evaluate it as a new image and false perpectives etc that you didn't see before just pop out at you.

Ehhh, I do this all the time. Very important for someone who has one eye quite lopsided to the other (and thus, all her pictures have a lean to them).

Hee, you said 9 twice.

Nein! Nein!