If you want to learn how to draw, read this. All of it. Or you can go be entertained by some process video on YouTube, try to do it yourself, fail, then binge something on Hulu like you always do, and be stuck in a rut for the rest of your life because you still don’t understand what drawing is.
If you make it to the end, let me know. If you have questions, ask. If you think this is stupid, you’re me 25 years ago, so you’ll ignore it and hope the questions its raised in your mind will just go away. Maybe after a quarter century of pain, suffering and defeat you will figure it out for yourself.
This is not about how I make art—it’s about how YOU SEE, how we all interpret a three-dimensional reality from two-dimensional imagery.
This post is all words. No drawings showing you how to do it. But all these strong words are needed to dislodge you from your misconception about what drawing is. Get mad at me if you have to. I don’t care how you think about me—I care how you think about drawing.
You think drawing is if you get the shape of that nose exactly like how it looks out there, or employ subtle “shading”, you will have drawn a great-looking face. It doesn’t work, so you try again and again. Maybe it looks good, maybe it doesn’t. You can’t tell because you don’t know what drawing really is.
Drawing, as I’m using the word here, refers the powerful tool we use to create the illusion of form and space in 2d art. Whatever the medium, if your picture has solid form, it’s because of solid drawing. If it has “drawing problems”, the illusion of form suffers. This is what is meant by “drawing” in the technical sense.
Can you make great, wonderful art without solid drawing? YES, of course! Of course you should do that if you want. If not…
LESSON ONE: WELCOME TO THE UPSIDE-DOWN
You might want to stand on your head for this…
As representational artists, we don’t RENDER form, we CREATE the ILLUSION of form. The difference is significant: the form does not come from the 3d reality being depicted, it comes only from the drawing, obviously, right? Your subject out there may be three-dimensional, but your drawing is two-dimensional, and it is the only thing your viewers see.
A drawing is not a copy or a rendition or a version of some other reality—it is its own reality, a direct line to the viewer’s brain, like you are drawing on the chalkboard of their mind. If you are able to do that, then it seems to the viewer like you are depicting forms that really exist. You must understand this paradox!
In art we have this amazing abstract thing: the line. It is the most basic way of making a shape. Yet that shape, lacking value (lightness/darkness) and color, is not real. Why do we perceive a four sided figure (e.g. a rectangle) as a shape? What even is a shape? Shape is just a human concept. Why does this matter?
Because it demonstrates that 2d representational art is an abstraction. Masterful line art proves that you can create the illusion of a three-dimensional reality without using anything that belongs to that reality. That should tell you what drawing is.
LESSON TWO: DRAWING IS A LANGUAGE
This is not a clever metaphor—it is a direct analogy. Drawing is a means of idea transmission. A drawing is not a copy of reality—it is a tangible, external product of your mind.
You learn to use language by listening to other speakers; analyzing, or being instructed about how the language works; and communicating in that language—not by observing reality. You can stare at a tree all day and you’re still not going to know how to say “tree” in Swahili. If you can say “tree” in Swahili to a person who understands Swahili, the person won’t think “You are speaking Swahili”—she’ll just be thinking of a tree, because you generated that thought in her mind with your use of language.
When you are fluent in a language you think in that language. Fluent means it flows. It doesn’t mean you are Shakespeare. It doesn’t mean you have a huge vocabulary or anything interesting to say. It simply means you don’t have to think about doing it—instead you use it TO think.
Even if you spend time figuring out how to say what you want to say with words, using a thesaurus, etc., you are NOT struggling or even thinking about the fundamentals of your language. That is fluency.
Once you are fluent, then you look at and listen to the world (and/or your inner demons), and use your language to express your own subjective experience of these things.
But learning a new language feels super awkward. You can’t express yourself. You have all these ideas but they can’t come out. You’re so embarrassed you revert to the security of speaking your own language, even though that means the other person can’t understand you at all and thinks you sounded much less stupid when you were speaking her language, however clumsily, and is maybe irritated that you are making her work so hard to understand you. Sound familiar?
Well don’t feel bad, because…
LESSON THREE: WE’RE BAD AT DRAWING
Humans are wired for spoken language, but we are really bad at drawing because we’re really good at seeing. I told you we’re in the Upside Down.
It’s like this: our visual apparatus is fully devoted to interpreting form, without knowing why or how or even THAT it is doing this. You actually think you are seeing forms out there, but you’re not! Your brain is responding to a two dimensional image on your retina.
Do you know how you walk? Do you know how you think? You don’t know how you see either. You don’t know how you see because you’re so good at it. The problem is you base your assumptions about how drawing works on this lack of understanding of how seeing works.
So how do we reverse-engineer the process of seeing? By exploiting how good we are at it! If you think this contradicts the point I made above, it’s because you are not looking in the right direction…
LESSON FOUR: DON’T DRAW FROM LIFE
Gasp, cough!! What?! Yes, drawing from life is critical for most representational artists. But it’s not how to learn to draw. Because there is a difference between how drawing works, vs. drawing things.
Yet, art education combines the two in foundation life drawing class, where you are to employ your (nonexistent) drawing skills to understand the human form, and, conversely, the human form is supposed to teach you how to draw!
Drawing from life/observation is how you learn about that specific subject, but not how you learn how to draw.
LESSON FIVE: HOW TO (LEARN HOW TO) DRAW
Keep your eyes on the drawing. By looking at our dang drawings (and other people’s drawings) we are studying the language of drawing. And a drawing that is not working is just as instructive as one that is (fortunately we all have tons of the former to look at).
Drawing is a 100% learnable skill. Maybe some people are more naturally equipped for it, maybe they develop drawing skills intuitively. If that’s not you, don’t worry—it’s not me and many other artists (and I know how to draw, now J) .
So pick up a pencil, put aside all ref, and try to draw forms. Imagine a form, then draw it, or draw a shape, and see if it has some hint of form. If it does—see why, and make it have MORE of that. If something is working against form, make it have LESS of that. You will become very sensitive to what is making form and what is killing form.
This is different from what you are doing now: now you are trying to draw THINGS. When your drawing isn’t working, you think the answer is to look at the thing more, to make your drawing more closely resemble the thing. Instead you need to remove all the specific thing-ness and just look at the raw language. Does the sentence make grammatical sense: Subject-verb-object, regardless of what the specific objects and actions are? It will if you know the language.
Don’t draw cylinders, spheres, etc.—because those have a right and wrong. You need to be “accurate” with those, and that is another representational trap. You think if you draw that cylinder with perfect perspective and perfect ellipses it must definitely have form. What more could you do—you’ve drawn it exactly correct! NOT TRUE. You are concluding it has form because you understand that what is before you represents “correct cylinder”. But you’re not really seeing form. Learn the difference!
Make up your own unrecognizable forms. A sluggy blob mass. A lump of… some lumpy lump. You will confront the fact that you have previously been relying on recognizability and accuracy to get away with poor illusion of form.
See if you are fooled—really fooled. This form is definitely further back in space than that other form (or it isn’t, and why isn’t it?). That is a three-dimensional mass, not a flat shape. That blank spot of paper is closer to me than that other blank spot of paper.
Learning how to draw is simply learning how to look at your drawing and see what it is telling you. This requires brutal honesty. Courage, even. You must avoid that wide and hazardous middle ground where you get what the drawing is supposed to be doing, form-wise, so you become insensitive to whether it is really truly unquestionably achieving that.
Drawing recognizable things is a trap that will undermine your ability to understand how drawing works in the purest sense. It’s easy to make a drawing that looks like a thing. The real test is if you can draw a meaningless abstract form that the viewer understands unambiguously, so they could recreate it in clay or Zbrush and it would look exactly like what you intended.
THE PAYOFF
Because you have not previously trained your brain like this, doors will open for you immediately.
You will be surprised at your ability to draw complex, organic forms.
You will develop your own form vocabulary. Once you’ve spent time exploring the abstract forms you find yourself gravitating to, loving to draw, for no tangible reason, they will burst their way into your drawings of things made from imagination and from observation. This naturally leads you to your own unique style. Whatever you draw will have power, integrity, authenticity, uniqueness.
Once you become a world-class liar with your drawing you will find that when you go to draw, say, the human figure, things like proportion and accuracy matter very little in the overall scheme of art. What matters is how the forms interlock—because there are no “correct” human proportions, especially not in art.
When you understand that form does not come from accuracy, you will have access to the bottomless source of art and imagination: inspiration. You can look at one human nose, for example, and draw a million very different noses that all have that basic form in common but reflect your style.
When you look at a model or photo reference you will now be striving to understand its form, rather than trying draw everything. You will look at life like a drawing, vs. looking at your drawing like an inadequate version of life.
You need to understand this because these principles are operating in your 2d art whether you realize it or not. Even if your work is non-representational, these principles are at work because humans compulsively deduce form from everything we see, even those nonexistent things we call lines.
CONCLUSION & HINTS
You think all I’ve done is told you to go figure it out for yourself. But that’s not all I told you to do.
I told you to try to fool yourself.
I told you not to draw specific things.
I told you to not look at anything other than the drawing.
If you need a bit more guidance, here it is. It’s not much. If you jumped ahead to this part, you will be disappointed. If you read all the way through to here, you’ll still be disappointed, but also maybe angry that I wasted your time. But I told you I don’t care what you think of me. In fact I want you to stop wasting your own time by trying to draw certain things in a certain way when you should first understand how drawing works:
It’s not about linear perspective
It’s not about line weight.
It’s not about “shading”.
It’s not about light (it really isn’t)
It’s not about aerial or atmospheric perspective.
It is about shapes.
Understand how shapes operate! They are the words of the language of drawing. And, one more time: it is not about copying shapes accurately or even kind of accurately—it’s about knowing how shapes function. Then you make your own shapes that are better than copying, and people see ‘accurate’.
More specifically, it’s about RELATIONSHIPS between shapes, or shapelationships, or, let’s go with “Relationshapes”—the point is, you need to remember that that is ALL that creates form.
You think the illusion of form comes from light striking surfaces. It doesn’t. In the real world light makes shapes. In your art you make shapes—and you can make better, more specific shapes, and fewer of them, leading to elegance and economy in your art.
Here is an easy way to see this: what makes it look like one shape is overlapping another? What makes you know you are seeing one shape on top of another, when in fact there are really just two or three separate shapes on a two-dimensional surface? This is the beginning of seeing for yourself that there is a grammar to the language of drawing.
If you try this approach you will likely have an ‘aha!’ moment, where you see what drawing is. This is “practicing smart not hard”, like struggling to draw from a model or plaster casts. It is a voyage of exploration and discovery!
(bows, applause)
Now please, go assemble some shapes!
You can see more of Chris Beatrice’s art at:
https://www.instagram.com/chrisbeatriceart/
Whoooa, a mind opener. I am not sure I fully understand your awesome post, Chris, so I will reread it *several times* to get that embedded into my brain. I have admired your way of working since I read your blog about training for anatomy one week at a time for each part. I have never been able to complete the whole tour, but I am quite good drawing skulls 🙂
I’m so glad you found this and my other guidance helpful! I try very hard to not so much talk about how I make art, because I want to help YOU make YOUR art. So I focus on the things that are the same for everyone, because they are more in the objective reality category. Some artists really don’t click with that. I’m glad you do.
This is….. EXCELLENT! Thank you so much!
I’m happy it helped you, thanks for commenting.
One of the best post/article that I read in MuddyColors for sure. This really hit me hard.
As I was saying above, this type of teaching is not for the faint of heart! So good for you!
I really like the fact that you were very blunt about drawing. As a beginner I really put drawing in a very different perspective for me. I see things very different now more in the form of shapes. My wife asked me to draw something yesterday and I did it without using any reference. Thank you for taking the time to write and share this, I will definitely share with others to help them find their own inspiration for their own art.
I feel like I was learning all the dictionary, tried a lot to make sentences with shapes, sometimes it worked (fail and retry again) And now, I have the grammar basic and I can really learn and improve !
Thanks !
I really hope it helps you. I don’t know why art schools don’t teach this separately.
I have been drawing for a long time but never improved. I never understood what you are talking about here until recently. I will now practice this that you have preached and see where it gets me…
Well good luck! It’s good that you are eager to keep learning and improving. It took me a LONG time to make progress at drawing, which I think is one reason why I now understand so clearly how it works. A lot of my artist friends used a much more intuitive approach, which is great for them, but when they try to explain what they’re doing, they’re not really explaining what they’re doing, but what it FEELS like to them.
I spent several hours today almost pulling out my hair, frustrated by my drawing until I decided to tear it all apart. Perfect timing for this post. I’m willing to give this process a shot.
I think if you have the courage to let go some of your preconceptions even for a few minutes your eyes will really open. It took me a long time to figure that out.
Made it to the end and so @#*% ing mad at you.
But i might have learned something..
..I’ll read it again…
That whole post is only to get you to entertain the possibility that there is a different way of doing things. If you try doing it, THEN you will learn something. And you will never forget it.
That’s my dad
That’s my boy.
Sorry I don’t understand the exercise. Am I supposed to conjure a shape in my mind then try to get that on paper and get it to a place where it matches what I had in my mind, or am I supposed to noodle some shapes on paper and then try to make that it speaks its form to me in a way where I understand how the shapes interact with each other?
Either one is great. You can think of a form, say, a wormy type of thing. Or you can draw an organic shape, then see how you can make slight adjustments or additions to turn it into a form. If it already kind of reads as a form to you, see why, and do more of that. You can do this with a very small number of shapes.
Also we are allowed to use shadows to help convey the shape right? And are there yardsticks we can use to measure our progress? What is the goal we are trying to achieve? The best way I learn is to continually hit milestones have help me stay focused and more importantly, motivated. What kinda of “milestones” can we use to make sure we are heading in the right direction?
I will say “NO” to the ‘shadows’, because I can’t be sure how you use them. Here is the kicker (for my next post?): light and shadow are still just shapes. The fact that in reality the shapes are generated from light and lack thereof is immaterial. So when you draw shadows their shapes are critical. But, as with everything I said in the post, it is not about accuracy or depicting the illusion of light. We are taught that the illusion of light is related to the illusion of form, because, again, we mis-reverse engineer what we think we are seeing. So to remove ALL variables but shape, we must start with just line. We remove the variables of color, value, light and thing-ness.
As far as measuring progress, that is hard. If I were looking at your actual drawings I could tell you a lot more. One test is like I mentioned in the piece: can you draw an organic form that someone else can understand fully as a form? For example they could model it in Zbrush or Sculpey, or make a drawing of it from a different angle? The fact that this is so hard to test exactly indicates how much we artists normally get away with, in terms of not really depicting form well. As soon as the thing is recognizable, everyone becomes unconcerned with how well the illusion of form is being delivered. Put another way, they fill in the blanks themselves.
The art of drawing, without drawing. 😉
I’ve found that drawing and golf are similar in a lot of ways. You can spend an eternity watching videos and practicing with all of the intent in the world trying to perfect technique. But, if you are so consumed by the processes of doing the thing “correctly” then you are never ACTUALLY doing the thing. You will instead be forever trapped in practice purgatory.
I think similarly about dancing. You’re not actually “dancing” until you’re improvising and responding in the moment. Otherwise, it’s routine. Same thing with drawing.
Except dancing is stupid and drawing is awesome! (says the worst dancer in the world out of jealousy mixed with rage)
That is a good analogy. Divorcing the language of drawing from the reality of seeing is only the first step. I look at it like learning a foreign language, starting with vocabulary and grammar. I say “foreign” because most of us don’t organically learn to draw like we learn our native language.
But compare that process to, say, taking a creative writing course, where you are trying to DO something with your language. The analogy with golf is good because drawing is a PHYSICAL thing. The pencil is just as much an extension of your brain than your arm is (or than the golf club is). So FEEL has a lot to do with drawing. I think the problem is people don’t necessarily separate the individual feel from the fundamentals of the language.
Regardless of whether or not the blog helped you, this is one piece of advice that could benefit everyone reading it.
I feel only more confused after reading this article to be honest . But maybe it takes time and practice to absorb it . I always felt like shape design is the most important this but then how can it exist without perspective and light as it defines shape .
That’s so great that you are asking that question, “how can it exist without perspective and light as it defines shape?” Let us first be clear about our terminology. I use “form” to refer to three-dimensionality, and “shape” to two-dimensionality. I know in common parlance we sometimes use “shape” ambiguously for either. To clarify my terms: a sphere is a form, a circle is a shape.
So if you draw a circle with line on a piece of paper, does it read as a sphere? I’d say, no. If it does to you you are imagining that.
The sphere form is a good example because no matter how you view it, the resulting shape (that a camera would make, or that is projected onto your retina) is a circle. How does the shape of the projected sphere differ as a result of perspective? It doesn’t, right?
So now we have our flat circle shape that by some arguments SHOULD read as a sphere, because it is totally correct in shape. But lacking any other information it cannot read as a sphere.
If we throw a light directly above it, what happens? The lower half is shadow, and the upper is lit. But the edge of the shadow is a horizontal line, no different from if you painted the top half white and the bottom half black.
If you want this circle to read as a form, as a sphere, what do you do? I say, try tipping it forward (in the case of the black and white painted sphere), OR move the light forward, so the shadow edge is half of an ellipse. Then you will have two shapes (a circle divided by an elliptical curve), and you will start to have form.
But you can do that same thing by simply drawing the shadow edge as a line, like the equator on a globe. It is that curved line that makes the circle begin to read as a sphere (in this example). There is no perspective, and the fact that in one picture that elliptical line may be associated with a light is immaterial in terms of the language of shape and form.
This reply is its own beautiful article; maybe as important as the entire rest of the article in terms of giving closure to many of the questions asked. Bravo. Separating “forms” from “shapes” is a BIG GAME, and something that I wish we could make standard somehow.
Agree with that, and thanks for the nice comment. The fundamental points I am trying to get across here lead very smoothly to the next steps, about understanding the form you intend to draw. Our studio is full of 3d ref (models, toy cars, animals, manikins, ecorches, pieces of braided and twisted rope, spare pieces of cloth for studying folds, etc).
That in turn leads to the subject of drawing from memory, another thing basically non-existent in art school (as a specific discipline). A lot of artists intuitively think the way to memorize how to draw things is to memorize what something looks like from different angles. But we see that many artists who rely totally on photo ref can draw that way for years, without this automatically leading to any understanding of those forms that they have been drawing. If you learn the form, you only have to memorize one thing.
In that case, I can’t wait to read on! Each thing you’re talking about is something I couldn’t find resources for early on, and had to painstakingly learn for myself over the course of several years. Glad you’ve got the gumption to write all this up and put it out there.
Tommy, that was exactly my experience too. I’m kind of surprised there isn’t more out there even now.
So when you think of an object to draw do you imagine it as existing in 3 dimensions and then interpret it into a 2d language or just consisting of flat shapes interlocking together?
I’m asking because i can copy subjects pretty well at this point from reference but when it comes to actually imagining an object and interpreting it on paper its a real struggle and never turns out the way i want it to. So i have to go back and almost copy reference inventing some shapes and piecing it all together .
For me, now, this language of shape is so integrated with how I think and automatically draw there is not a particular order to it. I do have very good 3d visualization skills, but I think that comes from years of studying FORMS not simply drawing them. If you draw from 2d ref for years and years you still won’t understand those forms–because you’ve never actually seen them.
Your particular dilemma of being able to copy pretty well from reference but unable to imagine a form and draw it I think indicates a huge growth opportunity for you. I can’t give solid advice without seeing your work, though.
I can try, perhaps, a little. If you were to try to imagine a thing you are somewhat familiar with, that is a fairly simple form or set of forms, maybe a piece of fruit, a ketchup bottle, a hamburger. Not a face or anything like that. Then you were to try to draw it, trying to create a strong illusion of form, what would probably happen in your case is you would immediately realize that you don’t really know what that ketchup bottle is shaped like (it’s the same with all of us, and again points to a huge fallacy about how we think we see: we are great at RECOGNIZING things, for obvious reasons, and we somehow think that means we are REMEMBERING WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE. Really that is not the case).
Anyway, so you would consult your real ketchup bottle and that would help you do a better drawing in two ways: 1) it would look more like the real thing, 2) you would glean some shapes from it (like a camera would) that will help you deliver the illusion of form. The problem is, for all of us, we can’t separate the two without a lot of training (and that training is what the exercise in the post is intended to do).
So what if you have to create the illusion of form for that bottle but you can’t look at the real thing (and you are not expected to make your drawing look like that particular ketchup bottle, just a bottle).
Here’s where the real point comes: you can draw a single outline of the bottle looking at it straight from the side. It would be symmetrical, nothing on the inside of that shape, and the top and bottom of the bottle would each be a horizontal line. People would likely recognize it as “bottle” but would it have form? Almost certainly not. But already we have fallen into the representational trap. We think it has form because we see “bottle” and we know that a bottle is a form.
But ok, I’ll let that go to talk you through this. What can we do to give that bottle form? Let’s first NOT LOOK AT IT FROM THE SIDE. Let’s look at it from slightly above. Now the opening at the top is an ellipse, the bottom is an ellipse. The sides may or may not be in perspective–it doesn’t matter (because the bottle could be wider at the top, canceling out the effects of perspective, etc. Perspective does not make form).
What else can we do to give that bottle form? We could stick a label on it. What things are critical about the shape and placement of that label in order for it to give the bottle form?
We also might have the base of the neck overlap the body of the bottle a little.
This all seems very SIMPLE, and it is, but what most artists miss is how IMPORTANT it is. They are so caught up with depicting the thing and merely kind of suggesting form.
The exercise, like some kind of Zen thing, takes away all other factors–light, recognizeability, shadow, value, color–anything that potentially misleads us about whether there is form or not. It also proves clearly that none of those things is needed to make form, and, moreover, they actually don’t contribute much to making form. They are just ways of making shapes, and it’s only the SHAPES that matter.
Is this why studying Loomis and things like Reilly abstractions is so helpful ? because in a way they break down things into shapes .
Anton, one last thing I forgot to say. All those decisions I ran through starting with which way to tilt / look at the bottle, all that, that’s what making representational art is in terms of creating the illusion of form. Obviously there are many other factors about what we are trying to do with a picture, but just regarding form, we must consciously make all these kinds of decisions. The simple part is knowing the tools. The next part is realizing that they are YOUR TOOLS. The real world subject you are looking at does not know how to use those tools for you. You need to use them. Then you need to (probably) figure out how to make them not show obviously in your work. You probably want the viewer to see form, not how you did it.
Thank you Chris ,this clarifies a lot for me . So far i can only draw things from memory / imagination which i’m extremely familiar with like skull , asaro head . But seems definitely like a very useful exercise i’m add it to my practice .
That clarifying of definitions and examples was SUPER helpful to me for processing and understanding the rest of the article. Now I feel like I can actually go an attempt the practice.
Yeah, my bad. I forget some people aren’t necessarily familiar with the distinction between “form” and “shape” as artists use them. I had the same problem when I wrote a piece about “value” (meaning lightness vs. darkness). I few people thought I was talking about the worthiness of a picture.
For those of you confused, This is a really long winded way to say “don’t draw what you think something looks like, draw the simple shapes that compose that thing”. If you try to draw “finger” you’ll struggle, because your brain will try to translate a 3d object to a 2d space, but if you break “finger” down into its composite shapes, you’ll have better results and When you get comfortable recognizing those shapes, you can manipulate those shapes to form any type of “finger”. Of course it’s much easier said than done. Wish you would have provided some actual examples Chris, as opposed to just posting finished work and negging your readers. Artists love to hear themselves talk, but most are pretty bad at communicating.
This is not about drawing things.
It is not another way to draw things.
It is not about breaking down complex forms into simpler forms…
and it’s REALLY not about breaking down forms into SHAPES.
DO NOT LOOK AT THINGS AND TRY TO EXTRACT SHAPES FROM THEM.
You need to understand the FORM then create your own SHAPES to create the illusion of form in 2d.
And you need to understand the language of shape (2d) as it exists apart from things and reality.
Then communicate that clearly and succinctly? There’s no need to write a meandering post that gives next to nothing of meaningful value in place of an efficiently delivered bit of information.
“Language of shape.” Pretentious, nondescript, and poorly-defined (not defined at all, too subjective).
I know why you’re writing in this style; it’s the same reason every blog on the planet does it: You need a certain article length and keyword density to rank for search engines. You could at least be forthcoming about it with a bit of a preface to warn us for the meandering nonsense.
I honestly thought I was missing something here but your explanation made things WAY less confusing so thanks ?
Not really what he’s saying at all, actually. No need to be insulting to someone who’s spending their time trying to convey a difficult concept.
Wow you put art schools to shame. Did I just right that I guess and my point is this is a great piece I read! Every time I like my work it’s becasue I’ve drawn the right my way. The times it
s been wrong are because I’ve drawn or tried to replicate. Thanks
I’m very pleased this helped you!
I really like what you said here and not only in art related sense but in “reality” related sense too. Are you familiar with D.Hoffman book “Case against reality”? I got the similar vibes from your article. In a sense what we see is also just a kind of a language (different from species to species, even different between human individuals) – a way to transform information which in reality might just be something completely different. Same with drawing or writing – we use a technique/language to share experiences and information.
Thanks!
I am, and yes! You’ve hit the nail right on the head in terms of the point of this post. The first step is to at least consider the notion that making a picture is its own unique abstract process, means of communication, idea transmission, whatever you want to call it, that (and this is so obvious it’s amazing it needs to be said), that comes entirely from the artist’s brain and body, no matter what they are looking at when they do it. Just to get some people to allow the possibility that this assertion does not fit neatly into their current frame of reference is a challenge. This is before even talking about how drawing DOES work, in any great detail, using images, etc. The idea here is to generate a strong sense of QUESTIONING, because that makes the mind very open for ANSWERS. But if the artist is not in a position of questioning, they will only be operating on confirmation bias and the tendency we all have to gravitate to whatever reinforces what we already believe.
I’m trying to absorb what I just read (several times in a row)… You are saying that in order to master the many techniques of drawing, we must first understand the fundamental of what it is to draw, which is give the illusion of 3D from a 2D surface. And in order to do that, we must understand what transform a shape into a form with just shape language and line drawing, as in your circle example, transform a circle shape into a sphere form by just adding half of an ellipse, like the equator line on a globe. Am I correct ? I drew a random shape on a paper and replicated it 10 times, and then, by just adding lines, I tried to assign a form on that shape and by adding just one line on the same basic shape, I had 10 different ways of seeing the form, as my brain tried to interpret the informations into a 3D space. Was that sort of practice what you had in mind writing the article ?
Yes, that is exactly right! And as I said, looking at a drawing that is NOT working (in terms of delivering the unambiguous illusion of form) is just as instructive as looking at one that is. Equally instructive is to deliberately make drawings that don’t have the illusion of form, or that have some illusion of form but it’s ambiguous. This is like shining a light into those dark corners that your art brain may not otherwise explore.
Are you familiar with the concept of a stress test, in industry? A stress test is not simply applying stress to a product–it is specifically and deliberately applying stress UNTIL THE PRODUCT BREAKS. Then you know exactly at what point it breaks, and where it breaks, and why. So even though you might have a great, strong product, you don’t know everything about it until you know how it breaks, and therefore you are not able to use it to its full extent. Similarly, your product may be overbuilt, meaning it is unnecessarily using way more material than it needs. You can make it cheaper and lighter (more cost effective) by trimming it down, based on the results of the stress test.
It’s the same with drawing. A lot of times we see artists making a ton of contour lines going across a curved surface (e.g. a cylinder / arm), in order to create the illusion of the curved surface. What’s really happening is those curved lines are making curved SHAPES (sort of like crescent shapes). If you keep removing them until the illusion is gone (the stress test) you will find that you don’t need very many at all. All those contour lines may work ok, but this is extremely inelegant, uneconomical. If one WANTS to draw that way, fine, of course! I only suggest that if one is drawing that way because one doesn’t KNOW BETTER, one may want to explore a bit. In fact in this example, the contour shapes don’t even need to run all the way across the curve to get the job done.
As we move forward with understanding this concept of elegance or economy, we start to see that because this is all abstract language, the viewer’s brain is generally a lot more engaged and stimulated when the stimulation is max but the means is min. Because, in that case, by definition a lot more is happening in the viewer’s brain than is actually on the paper.
To go back to answering your first question about “the many techniques of drawing”, this is before technique. The language analogy is instructive: a creative writing class might be a lot about technique, but a basic English class really isn’t. The basic English class is about the mechanics of the language, and the vocabulary. We use the term “drawing” to refer to many different things (just like “writing”), but here it is referring only to the process of using 2d shapes to create the illusion of 3d. You can use value and color to make those shapes, you can simultaneously imply a light source to make those shapes, but the main force of those shapes is shape, regardless of the means of creating them.
To drive home just how basic this is, imagine a series of dots on a piece of paper arranged in a line (curved, straight, whatever) close enough that you see the pattern. You see an “S” curve, or whatever. Does that curve exist? Does that line exist? No! You just see a line because that’s how we see, because seeing that way helps us make sense of the physical world. But there it is right “before your eyes” with those dots you are seeing a line that you at the same time know is not actually there. That’s how elegant drawing works too.
Your statement about “elegance and economy” immediately made me think about Mike Mignola’s drawings, especially the latest ones, around Hellboy in Hell. He uses very sharp shapes to describes his universe and define the forms with a formidable economy, removing almost all details not essentials to his depiction of a scene. It’s almost abstract, and yet the storytelling is very strong. I think I understand better now why it works so well…
Thanks a lot. My brain has been melting since the moment I read the article and it seems I can’t draw anymore but thanks ! 😉
He does indeed. And he plays with the illusion of form, sometimes intentionally allowing parts to “flatten out”, and become more graphic, because there is a big tradeoff with pushing the illusion of form. Flat shapes (shapes that seem to lay on the picture plane vs. moving or turning in and out from it) read stronger (like a sign). Logos and things like that often exhibit no form (on purpose) or they do, but it is balanced with a simple bold statement of only two values, like you said. Too much form and softness and the boldness is lost (which is of course perfectly fine depending on what you want your work to be like, I’m just saying it is a fundamental trade off that by definition we cannot really get around).
But we can COMBINE flat and form in a single picture (like Mike does brilliantly). There are other ways to do that like, say, Frazetta, using flatness on certain forms to “take them out of the picture” so to speak, and making them read as graphic elements.
Thank you. I don’t draw well. But I will give this a try. I’ll particulary look at your points about shapes again. Maybe I wll draw better. I believe it’s possible.
I meant it when I said drawing is 100% a learnable skill. That’s the good news / bad news. Drawing as in creating realistic, accurate looking forms and things in 2d is very teachable and learnable in a step by step way. Making ART and having something to say is another matter entirely (and you don’t need to be able to draw well to do that, it’s just one way that is more or less important depending on the artist).
Wow Chris, timely post! Quarantine has got me exploring a lot of new skill sets/subjects and running into a lot of frustrating meltdowns. Going to absorb this knowledge and commit to it. And thanks for virtually speaking at SCAD a few years ago!
I virtually spoke at SCAD? How was I? Glad you liked the post.
Interesting post Chris, you have really got me thinking.
As I was reading I thought I was understanding what you were saying until you said to not use shadow to convey form? How do you make something appear 3D without shadow? I tried simply drawing in the shadow shapes in my blob but that didn’t convey any depth and made it look like a cut out… Completely lost?
Read Chris comments on this section, he explains how you turn a circle shape into a sphere form.
Thanks Julien. I actually did already attempt the circle but couldn’t work out how to translate this to other organic shapes.
Sometimes the point is so simple we miss it. But this is good because, like me 25 years ago, you perhaps do not know (or, like I was, you are actually AFRAID) to get into the middle of that form and draw your own shapes like you have a right to do!
Many artists are like wall flowers, stuck to the edges of their form shapes (the “outline”). They really want to get that outline just right, then they won’t have to venture into the vast wasteland of the interior of that main shape… where they will disappear and never be heard from again!
I will give you a simple assignment. First, imagine your organic form. Or draw its outline, if you want. I’m going to use a recognizeable form for this example, so I can refer to it in words, but you shouldn’t, for the reasons noted in the post. You really want to be seeing pure drawing and pure form totally separate from any thing-ness. I will use the form of a banana (so a curved cylinder that tapers at both ends).
See if you can draw that with just a little more than an outline, but without covering it in contour lines. As with the globe I used in my response to the comment below, the idea of using contour lines does give a lot of hints as to what kinds of SHAPES and where you might PLACE them to create form. But that is only one way. There are other ways we employ line and shape to make form. One significant tool is overlap. This is probably the most powerful part of our visual apparatus: being able to see that one thing is behind another thing and therefore I am not seeing part of it, but I know it is there. Perhaps I am looking at the banana end on, so the end in front of me is overlapping the other end. If you want to draw that banana with form, this might be a better way to view it than, say, from the side, where it might look like a flat boomerang.
Hi,
I don’t know what to think really. I probably do not understand it yet. I have to draw random shapes, then what? Turn that into a 3D form? Like placing contour lines? I’m confused 🙁 really would like to be send in the right direction. Thanks in advance!
I will be doing a follow up piece where I get more into it. The point here is to create the big fat question, so good for you.
To answer your specific question: sure, ONE way of doing it might be what you call ‘contour lines’. In fact, if you draw a globe with longitude and latitude lines, it will exhibit form. But… it will also exhibit form if you just draw the continents on it in the right way, right?
This imaginary globe is a good teaching tool. Maybe you think if you are drawing a globe you need to get the shapes of the continents just the same way they are on the real physical globe you are looking at. For geography, you do, but for form, you don’t. You need to get them JUST RIGHT to CREATE THE ILLUSION of form, which is backwards from what most people think. Most people might think it’s easier to draw a plain sphere than a globe with continents. But is it? No, because the continents provide the artist a great tool for generating form. In fact you can create an imaginary planet globe with whatever continent shapes you want (as in what the continents would look like from overhead)–and if you draw them just right on your drawing, wrapping around the form, they create the illusion of form. So they’re not really “wrapping around”–it’s the opposite: putting those kinds of shapes on your circle drawing TURN IT INTO A GLOBE.
Now try to understand, what “kinds of shapes?” If the continents on a flat map can (obviously) be ANY shape, and I’m making up an imaginary globe, what “kinds of shapes” am I making when I draw that globe?
There is a good hint in your “contour lines” idea. Going back to the latitude and longitude lines, which most certainly create the illusion of form, the first thing to realize is that it’s not the LINES that are making the form, it’s the SHAPES ENCLOSED BY THE LINES. For example, you could only draw one or two of the “curved triangles” created by two longitude lines and a little piece of the equator. Or you could, say, erase half of the longitude and latitude lines. In fact you could probably get rid of all the longitude lines and you’d still have form using only the latitude lines–BUT NOT IF THE GLOBE WAS VIEWED FROM THE SIDE in which case all the latitude lines would be straight horizontal, so no form.
You as a human have this amazing superpower to think about this and come up with ways of drawing shapes within that circle to create the illusion of 3d. There are an infinite number of ways to do it. You just need to understand this idea of deliberately employing shapes to make form.
So I do have to in 3D? I could place a curved rectangle shape in a circle to make it look 3D. So let’s assume I understand shapes and forms, what would be the next step since I should not use reference etc. Or do I still have to use reference and break them down into shapes to turn them into form. I’m really trying hard to understand this but so far it kinda got me so frustrated that I can not even draw a random line ??. I guess I really have to see this theory in action to actually see what’s going on.
Yes, you could place a curved rectangle shape in a circle to make it look 3d. This is one very important device that we see used EVERYWHERE, though not always knowingly and intentionally. It would happen, for example, if you were trying to draw a picture of the earth from a photo. You would be copying the continent shapes as you see them, trying to be accurate. If you do that NOW half thinking of accurately represent the continents of our world and half thinking “what is it about these shapes that make the globe appear 3d” you will almost certainly produce a drawing that looks MORE 3d than you would have previously, and it will look no less accurate.
I would also suggest you experiment with WHERE you place that curved rectangle. It could be right in the middle of the circle, it could be off to one side, etc.
But this “curved thing on the surface” is only one word in the language of shape. It is a VERY IMPORTANT word, and it’s a good one for a sphere, because a sphere is the simplest of forms. It is literally ONE SINGLE SURFACE, with no inner creases or anything. I’ll venture to say you MUST use this type of approach to give it form.
This seems very obvious and simple, right? It’s good if it does. Really the point I think artists need to get is, again, we EMPLOY these tools to MAKE FORM. The challenge with realistic painting is, what if I have to draw a ball but I can’t stick a curved rectangle on it? What do I do? There are an infinite number of solutions that all fall into the category of “putting a curved rectangle on it.” For example, if the ball is resting on a hand, that hand will give the ball form. Think about that A LOT. The ball is still just a circle, partly obscured by the hand, but now it has form. This is why the language of shape, though incredibly simple, is not a linear set of rules. Or there could be a cast shadow on the ball. This results in a couple of ellipses “wrapping around it”: One where the ball transitions to facing away from the light, the other from the cast shadow. Or, depending on how the viewer was positioned relative to the light, there might only be the cast shadow. But also, if you position the viewer in the “wrong” place, those shadow shapes could be straight lines, so that is a mistake. The “trick” of creating form in realistic painting is to come up with ways to create form that are not so obvious as drawing a curved rectangle on a circle (though that idea of yours perfectly encapsulates the principle in its pure form).
Again this seems simple, but is it? I have just talked at length about a single form, the simplest form, and I could go on for days. Now imagine the complex forms artists are trying to create in their fantasy and sci-fi pictures. Often there is a lot of beautiful rendering, killed by weak form all over the place, because they are not DELIBERATELY AND SELECTIVELY employing these principles.
So in the end I still have to study from life/photographs and super simplify the form with my own found shapes to lets say, remember it or create new subjects?
agim, yes, I’d say so, but the point is not to jump directly to that point. It’s like, before you play the violin, you need to tune it. This is a very scientific, objective thing (well, mostly).
I have been drawing my whole life but just recently came to the realizations you are describing in the article, it was somekind of epiphany moment. The way I understand it is we are caught in trying to draw meanings and representations, and then adjusting the shapes to these meanings. What everyone drawing should do is the opposite: create interesting shapes, an abstract composition that can already work wthout meanings and then transform those shapes in what we want to represent.
I´m trying to figure out why things work or do not work. It has to do with rythm, and contrast of shapes, sizes, colors. Like a musical composition works to our ears, we instantly notice when something is out of tune, even without knowing music. There is a lot of biology taking part in this process, the way in which we evolved to understand what we see. As you said it, we are experts in seeing but we dont know how the process works.
Dario, thank you for your insights. I would never tell artists what they should do, though, what I like to do is very much what you described. I am more interested in developing my own form and shape vocabulary. I love looking at artists’ work when even the smallest piece of it, like an ear or a toe screams that that artist did it.
Here I propose that what prevents many artists from getting to this point (if they want to) is they can’t distinguish between the fundamentals of the pure language of drawing vs. the other broad principles of picture-making (content / narrative, composition / design, theme, etc.). Because of course in a great piece of art (or music, or anything) these things all come together in a wonderful symbiosis. Unfortunately this is exactly the problem for LEARNING: we can’t distill from the masterful work of art what the process or underlying understanding was that produced it. And the kicker is–often neither can the artist who did it!
Thank you for the insightful comment. Your description of what a drawing “should” do is, I think, very valid. In fact it is exactly what I do when I practice “automatic drawing” which is something between a mindfulness practice and an exploration of personal subconscious imagery. But this is just one way of employing the core principle, which is that we invent and employ our own shapes to create form. As we will see later on, if we are working from a model or reference, very realistically, then the shapes we are employing will in many cases align with the shapes that would be projected on a camera, with one major difference: we are picking and choosing only the shapes that create the illusion of form. Many shapes that show up in the camera image work against the illusion of form. To push form in ART we need to make sure EVERY SHAPE IS INVOLVED IN THE EFFORT. It’s analogous to the Harvey Dunn (or Howard Pyle) saying that everything in an illustration must contribute to the narrative (story) or it will distract from it, weaken it, jeopardize it.
Once we understand the simple language of shape, which really when you come down to it only has a handful of basic principles, then we can employ them however we want, including the way you outlined.
The problem is, most of us conflate the way shape makes form with other things, such as the illusion of light. Because in the real world and in painting, they fuse together. Light is one of the factors that creates the shapes we see in the real world (that is to say the 2d shapes projected onto our retina or our camera). But it is erroneous to believe that light is what is creating the illusion of form, because if you remove the light and only use shape, shapes that have no explanation vis a vis light, there is still form. Similarly, you can do real world lighting setups that create form ambiguity. So these are very separate things.
Chris, first off I want to say thank you for the awesome article, It took me a couple Of goes as well as going through the comment section more than once to grasp this concept, think I have finally had that A ha moment..
Perspective and visualising form have been the fundamentals that ive had the most trouble with and felt it had really being impacting my drawings for a long time so spent the best part of a year dedicated into study linear and fisheye/ 5 point perspective, but still something was off. It was only when you mentioned the concept of creating the illusion of 3D form and spending time doing the exercise of wrapping lines over 2d shapes did some gears in my brain started to finally start turning .
Apologies in advance as I am not the best in describing technical things, but am I right in thinking that the flat 2d shape dictates what the direction and orientation Of perspective when it’s transformed into a 3D form ? where as before I was solely focused on of perfecting the correct 3D forms ie cylinder cone (right angles and all ) etc Then trying to wrap the shape around it…
I think I shall read through everything again, and keep practicing, I guess the next step for me to do is to practice and understand how to arrange the 2d shapes correctly To create more detailed subjects such as animals and figures. Like you mention with shape relationships…
Anyway thanks again, Sure this article will continue to help many people in the future, this is honestly the first time I’ve heard 3D form being explained this way.
Vicky, I’m SO glad this piece has prompted some kind of “aha” moment for you. These are how we grow. We push and test and then suddenly there is a surge, a breakthrough. Good for you for having the drive and courage to do that.
To answer your question: let’s forget perspective for a minute. Perspective is one of the least important factors in producing the illusion of form. It’s easy to conflate what is producing the illusion of FORM with what is producing the illusion of REALISM. It’s the same with light and shadow. These things are not at all critical to producing the illusion of form, but SHAPE is. Therefore these other things are not even NECESSARY.
To illustrate this, let us imagine a tapered cylinder (like a cone with the top cut off, perhaps a paper cup, but with no rim or lip, just a tapered cylinder). If you were looking at the bottom of it, and rendering this in perspective. depending on your FOV, the sides may appear parallel (in 2d), they may converge as they get further away (toward the top of the cup), or they may converge as they get closer (toward the bottom of the cup). All three are perfectly accurate, valid, perspective drawings, right? So if we see one of these drawings, say, the one where the sides converge as they move away, how do we know if this is a cylinder in perspective, or a tapered cylinder in perspective, and if the latter, which way is it turned (is the wide end the closer one, or the further away one)?
Perhaps this cup has stripes running up the sides. Does that help resolve the question? No.
A simpler example might be two cubes, drawn exactly the same way, one big, one small, the small one higher on the page. Which one is closer? Their lines don’t even run to the same VP. Yet this is a perfectly accurate setup, right?
Perspective does not really tell us anything conclusive about form. So let’s put that aside for a minute, and talk about forms and surfaces.
If we are, say, looking at a sphere, the center of it is exactly perpendicular to our line of sight. The edges are exactly parallel, by definition. An “edge” is precisely the point at which the surface turns away from view. There are three things to get from this: 1) There is always more information per “square inch” of 2d area in those edge areas vs. the center. A simple way to understand this is imagine you were looking at a globe through a small window: you would see more longitude lines crammed into that window near the edge vs. near the center. 2) Shapes that sit on the surface of this sphere distort in a consistent and predictable way: they are most un-distorted near the center, and most distorted near the edges. In the center they are essentially not distorted, toward the edges they approach the shape of the edge itself. 3) The surfaces in the center of the sphere are parallel to the picture plan WHICH EQUALS FLAT, while those at the edge are perpendicular to the picture plane WHICH EQUALS DEPTH.
Think of how amazing this is! We can state # 2 and #3 like this: a shape near the edge of the form TELLS US ABOUT THE FORM while shapes near the center ONLY TELL US ABOUT THE SHAPE. These are inversely related: it is very hard to figure out the shape of, say, a continent when your only view of it is right at the edge of the globe. Because all that shape information is crammed into a small area, and it’s highly distorted.
All that is only about one aspect of the language of drawing, that is, how surface shapes distort across the form, and depending on what angle you are viewing them from.
Thanks Chris,
This helps so much, especially with the looking at the globe through a window example. Guess I have being going way too hard on perspective, going to keep focusing practicing this way instead for a good while.
Im sorry, im really sorry. Im trying to put all this in a way someoneike me with adhd can understand.
Because i want to understand, i truly do. One comment here said it best. Trying to get things to look right so youre stuck in practice hell.
Ive been there for 10+ years now.
I cant draw because im doing it wrong just like it says. But i dont know how to put this ‘right way’ into something my brain can understand so i can do what i want to do.
Im self taught so im really struggling to understand this. The only terms i can say understand are anatomy and construction.
Even pouring through these comments and having read the article. Im upset not because i read it but because i know its important, its ringing bells and i dont know how to make them ring in a way my brain can discern as ‘sound’ and not ‘noise’.
So when you say things about form and shapes and how to use shapes to make a 2d thing 3d i cant wrap my head around the verbiage. Can you please explain what you mean by forms and surfaces in simplistic terms.
From the paragraph starying with the sphere example onward im lost, and i dont want to be anymore. Someone please help!
I loved this article, thank you very much Chris! I think this article, as I understand it, is to see beauty in simple things, like the way you draw the ears of mice in some of your illustrations. It is about discovering your own way of making or seeing the forms and that they communicate something to you and to others. It is also a way to close the gap between academic training and imagination. It made me think that I believed that copying realistic things in a very academic way could create more stylized things at some point and maybe it helps but you get stuck in more technical stuff and we forget that art is also aesthetic and elegance as you mentioned in a previous comment. It is about what you want to communicate even in simple things. That’s how I see it.
Thank you for the comments, ERick. I agree with what you are saying. For me the stylization part was a very welcome, unexpected side benefit. Now when I see the real world I see things in my own “style.” It’s really amazing when that happens. I guess we all see things a little differently from each other (maybe A LOT differently). Take care, and good luck with your art.
Hi Chris
I’m about to go into my second year of art school. I spent the first year of art school trying to really understand form and have been trying to approach my drawings differently than I have been in the past. I read your article and will give drawing organic forms a shot. I was wondering however if there were any books you would recommend on form specifically? Is all this knowledge from intuition or did you supplement it with additional knowledge too? I’ve also heard that sculpting is a good way to intuitively understand form so I may take this up too. Thanks
Luke
These are good questions, Luke. Let me clarify a few things.
First, understanding form(s) is critical for solid, three-dimensional drawing. Many artists get by using various 2d tricks and shorthand that kind of work. Of course that is perfectly fine. But getting a firm grasp on form(s) means two things: 1) understanding / learning the forms of different things, and 2) being able to think in 3d, that is, to turn forms in your mind and visualize them from different angles (and with different lighting setups). Understanding the forms of different things includes memorizing things you want to draw a lot (e.g. the human figure), and being able to quickly learn new forms from looking at objects or pictures. Looking at multiple pictures of, say, a frog, and trying to learn its 3d form(s) is VERY different from looking at a single ref photo of a frog lit from the angle you want, and painting from that. Again, fine if that’s what you want to do, I’m just trying to clarify the different principles and considerations. I think you already know all this anyway.
This post was not so much about learning forms, but about conveying the illusion of form in 2d. To do that you do need to have some understanding of forms (the second part: being able to think in 3d), but you don’t need to be familiar with specific forms like the human body. The point is to remove any unnecessary variables and get to the pure language of drawing (which is why we remove value and light as well).
Many artists will stumble here. Without being able to fall back on things like recognizeability, light, shading, etc. their forms will be stated weakly. That’s good! That means they’ve identified big opportunities for growth. Other artists will find this trivially easy, drawing simple forms in 3d with line. BUT the challenge for them may be applying this child’s play exercise to a real piece of art, especially one which is using photo ref. Then you need to be able to marry these two things: getting information from the ref (forms and shapes) while imposing the principles of the language of drawing to re-inflate these forms in your painting or drawing.
To answer your question about resources, no, I did not learn this from outside. It was, as you said, a combination of intuition with a HEAVY dose of scientific analysis and controlled experimentation. I’ve not found materials that help much in this area, other than the many so-called illusions we are all familiar with. These point the way to how seeing works, from the perspective of how it can be fooled. But usually the takeaway is exactly the opposite of what is of value to artists. It’s a shame there aren’t more scientific materials for artists, because I firmly believe this material is not “my way of doing things” but actually what IS, in terms of how seeing works.
Luke, I posted a lengthy reply to your comment, but it doesn’t seem to be showing up. And when I try to repost it I get a message saying “duplicate comment.” If you are not seeing that response, please let me know or message me on FB (or email me).
This was really cool to read. I’ll have to reread this, but I’m excited to apply what I’ve learned from this article. I’m also sharing it with a friend who just started doing pixel art. I’m also very new to the art form.
Well good luck!
Probably THE BEST ADVICE for anyone who is learning, struggling, succeeding even… or (in my case) unlearning/relearning. A huge thank you!
Thank you so much for the comment, Mayya.
I got confused and I read some of the comments where you said we need to turn shape into form by adding lines
like the circle + ellipse = sphere
but isn’t that perspective? When you add lines around the forms that indicate its 3D form
they show the perspective of the form
so I thought it’s just called perspective, is that wrong?
Thanks
David, two things; 1) “Adding lines” that reveal the form is just one aspect of showing form in space. And even within that one category there are dozens of ways to actually do it in a real picture. And finding the right way that works for that picture in terms of color, content, mood, theme, etc. is the challenge. Drawing a sphere via longitude and latitude lines is not so much of a challenge, right? The problem is a lot of artists don’t seem to transfer that fundamental perception principle to their real art, so the art is understood well enough, “oh, that’s a picture of a girl’s face” but lacks form. That point is the main point I’m trying to make.
As far as perspective, yes and no. For centuries artists understood (by seeing) that, for example, when you look at a circle from an angle it makes some kind of oval (technically an ellipse). So they would draw the top of a well or a cup or whatever as an oval shape. They also saw that, say, the walls of a building or room, though square in reality, do not appear square when viewed at an angle. So you’d see various approximations of this, as in walls drawn as trapezoids, and so forth. And lastly, they would typically draw things smaller and higher up as they were further back in space.
What had not been figured out yet is the science of what we call “perspective” (really LINEAR perspective). The underlying structure that governs exactly what the shape of that ellipse or trapezoid is based on the form of the object and the position of the viewer and a few other factors. So, absolutely, yes. If you take a real globe, or a globe in a 3d program, and project it precisely onto a 2d surface, what is happening to plot all those lines and points is what we call “perspective.”
What I’m saying here and in my posts in general is that relying solely on perspective is like a big blunt object, first of all. That is to say, maybe you don’t need ALL those perspective shapes to deliver the illusion of form. Further, because humans don’t really understand perspective in the technical sense, sometimes if you distort it a little the 3d effect is GREATER, though less “realistic.” Part of this is because in nature and in a lot of art, we are not dealing with geometric shapes. We don’t really know based on “plotting the points” what the form of the thing is. For example, if you look at a traffic cone from the top down, the part closer to you (the top hole) is much smaller than the base. The perspective effect is not really doing much for conveying the form. In fact, you don’t really know if it’s a tapered cone or what. It’s just two circles. So if you’re going to draw that cone with line only, what do you do? You need to employ other things.
If you are working hyper-realistically, then, yes, you’re drawing of that cone will conform exactly to the rules of linear perspective, just as that sphere you draw will necessarily have the outer shape of a perfect circle. But you need to accept that simply plotting those things correctly does not deliver form. It merely is one aspect of REALISM.
As you start to play with these things, with what truly delivers form vs. what is merely correct, even though it may not really be conveying anything useful, In the end you may find that “faking perspective” like faking light and shadow, is, paradoxically perhaps, a more effective way of delivering the illusion of form. In any case you will be able to see clearly when looking at reality or a photo, which things are necessary for delivering the form, which things are unnecessary, and which are actually working against it. Because the real world is this messy–but your art doesn’t have to be. And this generally makes for stronger art.
Howard Pyle said that in terms of story, everything in the picture must contribute to it or it is working against it. At the very least it is a distraction. At the worst it causes confusion or misleads the viewer as to what is happening in the story. It’s the same with the illusion of form and light. In the real, messy world we are pretty good at figuring out what’s going on by ignoring certain things and finding the pattern(s) whose consistency points to a specific interpretation. But that doesn’t mean that’s what we do in art. Because with art the viewer knows they are looking at a creation. So as Howard Pyle says, if you choose to stick a dinosaur in the background of your cowboy painting, viewers will wonder what is going on there. If you stick some things in your realistic image that are not contributing to the illusion of light and form, or are working against it, viewers will home in on that or be confused and not know why.
Supposed to be “And 2), as far as perspective…” but I couldn’t seem to edit the comment because of some security issue. No biggie.
Thanks for the detailed reply I understand now!
This might be one of the most important things i’ve read on drawing in quite a while. I hope by thinking about it more and practicing, it will mark a significant progression in my work. Thank you!
Great, Ryan! Enjoy your art journey.
This is the dumbest artice I’ve read in my life, the only question it left in my head is why I wasted my time reding it.
Nonsense article, filled with fluff. Want to improve at the visual arts? Take a psychometric exam and see where your spatial reasoning skills lie. If they’re mediocre or worse, don’t bother — you won’t find any success. If you score a standard deviation or more above the mean, well… you won’t gain anything from this article, either way, but at least you have the cognitive capacity to be proficient or even skilled at the visual arts.
Hi Chris!
I feel like this article has helped me get form in a way that never quite made sense to me before, and Im glad for it!
Ive been drawing for years, but Ive always struggled with form. I have a condition I really only see out of one eye at a time, and because of that I’m generally really bad at depth perception. Like, in real life, not drawing, though it happens in drawing too.
I guess in general Im really not that great at “seeing”, or at least not as well as the average human. I worry that this will make it a lot harder for my to interpret the language of form.
Im sure if I really worked at it I could still be able to translate form in my drawing, but I guess my question is do you have any tips in just seeing form?
I sprung this “trap” a few months ago. Nothing was working. All my drawings were looking weaker and weaker.
You can see first hand when studying from reference. Example, drawing a portrait from a photo: You draw the perspective of the head slightly different from the photo, just a few degrees off. Now you’re get caught up in forcing accuracy to comply, but things break down because you’re drawing two things at the same time but neither is your “drawing”.
When this hit me it was like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t making drawings, I was make imitations of reference images. I started using the 80/20 rule when studying. I resolved to make “drawings” instead of studies. 80% eyes on my drawing, 20% eyes on the subject, and even then deliberately pausing before continuing to draw making sure that I was inventing the shapes myself (from my head) and not being a slave to the reference. When I look at reference now, it’s only inspiration, not instructional. This bled into my personal drawings instantly and it’s been a whole new world since.
Is this what you mean Chris? When I read your post today it felt familiar, but not sure if I’m getting your point right?
Drawing two things at the same time meaning: the reference and your version of the reference. A drawing is something separate from both of those things and can only truly be made while not looking at reference.
So there’s no difference in a personal piece and a study if you do it right. I get there’s technical dexterity to drawing what you see accurately, but that produces exercises and not drawings and those are two separate disciplines.
I read this post before a few months ago and the one after it but I still feel like I don’t fully understand. Theres a lot of great info here but I unfortunately just got so intimidated by the wall of text and amount of things to consider that I honestly lost confidence for a month after reading it. I’m battling 14 years of bad information and instinct here and I wish there was a “don’t do this, do that” approach to the advice to indicate if what I’m thinking is actually whats helpful. The advice here IS solid, just not displayed in a way that makes sense to me yet.
I read this in the morning on the way to work and it’s all I could think about all day. I’ve always been feeling constrained by all the “rules” I’ve been taught by tutors and somehow that put so much stress on every single stroke in my work to be “perfect” according to “the reality” that always leads to creative blocks and huge stress. This article right here feels like the carte blanche I’ve been looking for to defy all those rules. Thank you so much for telling me off in a way hehe Brilliant article!
I needed to read it. Thank you
thats dope. i love people thinking like this, its refreshing in a sea full of dust. i suffer alot with drawing and still i cant bring myself to stop, theres this urge, its weird. i have this desire to be able to like what i draw. i get really, really depressed often with it. get told to stop often, because “you shouldnt do what makes you unhappy”. currently im at a course and the teacher is not too enthusiastic, i dont know. i feel bad for being nearly forty with these 13 year olds nailing it (i know you shouldnt think like this but yeah). i taught myself with the nicolaides method, i love that guys way of thinking but im not exactly dabbling in my figure drawing course where i all of a sudden should draw “analytical” and my stick figures look terrible because all ive learned is to sense the gesture and jump in. i know what you mean in some weird way i guess. im always baffled how i can make beautiful things with just playing around without reference just drawing by some inner compass. then i get a reference and i just cant get it right. but im not sure if im wrong here. my instructor hated the shit out of nicolaides and said hes just an art therapist for hippies, kinda really ignorant because he makes you study the basics but just in an intuitive way. but yeah, i still want to finally master perspective.
Well this has changed everything for me. I used to think drawing from other perspective.. thank you very much for this elaborated guide, although has been a long time since i first read it I find it so helpful now that I have more than 10 years devoting myseflt to drawing.
I had a difficult time understanding this concept at first. After reading different perspectives in the comments, it clicked. At least, I think it did! In my mind, I imagine drawing something like kind of like a topical map with real shapes that overlap to create a form.
For example, I imagined a bubbling, goopy liquid dripping over an edge. I drew overlapping tear drop shapes to give it a bubbly outer shape and circles within as a light reference. From there I was able to fill in shading to create a better form.
That was an awesome read.
Thank you
I am very amazed at what this post had to offer, I did not feel mad when I started reading nor when I finished reading it, I rather felt very satisfied and enlightened by it, jaja. However, I have many a great deal of questions and also thoughts on it as well and concerns as to if I understood it correctly, from what I could interpret, one of the first steps to drawing is sperating reality from drawing, that is the fact that what we are drawing is not real, but rather we are simply creating the illusion of it through forms which are in turn created by shapes and lines. in a technical sense, we are just drawing forms on paper which th audience can interpret as a certain thing or object, and that shading Is in it of itself a shape that creates the illusion of form. if such is the case (I may be completely off the charts on what you were trying to get through, so I please ask that you critique me if I got the wrong message), how should one approach drawing? If I as an example should draw a car for instance, I would still keep in mind the fact that I am creating an illusion of it through forms and not creating the object, because at the end of all things, the car in it of itself is not real?
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I… do not think I understand. Reading this post feels like being throw off a boat into the ocean and being told to learn swim by swimming, when I have no idea what water even is. Even if I do manage to figure out what works, how am I supposed to figure out why it works? I know next to nothing about making art at all, and I feel like everything is just going over my head, because I don’t have the basic vocabulary or foundation to understand this
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This is something I had to read. As soon as I finish work I’ll go home and try to practice drawing or I’ll do it before I go to work. My frustration often causes me to be discouraged because I’ve been too obsessed with drawing what I see instead of learning the core concepts.
I found myself laughing and enjoying myself while reading this because it sounds like my dad when I was learning to program and about to start my career. You learn by doing and understanding the core concepts. All good skills take time and more importantly, putting in the work. Great post I loved the tone.
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Drawing is exactly like writing code for a machine.
The machine is our normal vision processing system (which I will call NVPS from now on), and its syntax is shapes.
Got it.
ooh, as a programmer this analogy strikes a chord
Me: okay I’ll try that final exercise and see how it goes
*draws a circle overlapping a square* *stares at it for several seconds*
Me: What makes it look like these shapes are overlapping instead of just different shapes on a page?
*stares more*
Me: I mean, if the edge of that square weren’t lined up with the other edge of that square, even though I can’t see the side that joins them, it could just look like something random
*mentally traces the side of the square that’s hidden behind the circle*
Me: …
Me: it’s my brain
Me: …
Me: motherfucker
The uniqueness of this blog is due to the author’s narrative skills. It’s an experience rather than only knowledge.
Honestly, this blog did not help me. It’s confusing, and I don’t get it at all. I thank Chris for writing it, however, because even though it didn’t help me, it definitely helped some.
Every person is different, and not everyone will understand one particular thing. Plenty of artists have benefitted from exactly the things Chris warns us to stay away from. The reason is because they didn’t just give up and go on Hulu.
Above all, remember two things, no matter what helps you best:
1) There is no failure
2) Do not get too obsessed with the process of doing something “correctly”, just do it (especially if you follow YouTube tutorials).
What an interesting read! There was only one thing that made me think: “there is a difference between how drawing works and drawing things”. Does this mean that knowing how drawing works does not mean that we can draw – and vice versa?
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Well… I found this by looking for “Why is my art still bad?” or something on Google, and this is WAY deeper than I expected.
I was always bothered by the fact that books and art teachers are way too academics (proportions and other things need to be really accurate), it kinda makes sense but at the same time it’s not fun to draw if there’s no freedom in it. All this time I tried really hard to replicate the forms I saw on my books, but I didn’t understand them. Now I think every line had a reason to be and I can’t wait to get aboard this journey to find out what it is.
To be fair I always thought about checking my old/bad art to see what was wrong with it, I was just…scared of my own mistakes I guess. Even tho it’s probably the best way to learn.
Thanks for opening my eyes, I will go back on my feets and give it another try!
I do like how you make it sound like learning to draw will get people out of their ruts. I’ve found that in life you get to pick a treadmill to run on, but at the end of the day, we’re all still just running on treadmills…
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I appreciate the passion behind this post, but I think it’s important to remember that everyone learns differently. Watching process videos on YouTube can be a great way to understand techniques and get inspired. Combining different methods, like reading guides and watching tutorials, can help you find what works best for you. Learning to draw is a journey, and there’s no one right way to do it. Keep exploring and practicing, and you’ll improve over time!
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Read this post through to the end if you want to learn how to draw. YouTube process videos should not be relied upon since they frequently cause annoyance. Rather, concentrate on comprehending the fundamentals of drawing: how you perceive and grasp three-dimensional reality using two-dimensional images. This guide isn’t about teaching methods; it’s about shifting your perspective on sketching. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. It indicates you’re headed in the correct direction if you find it difficult.
Regards
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