Hi everyone!
I should talk to you about an important thing in drawing: keeping a sketchbook.
We all tend to underestimate this practice and make few entries in our sketchbooks, or worse, never take them with us.
Yet the greatest artists all give the same advice: keep a sketchbook, it should follow you everywhere, become an extension of yourself.
Your friends should be surprised, even worried, when they don't see you with it.
It's a common misconception that professionals don't need to practise because they're good enough, but in fact the opposite is true: the more experienced an artist is, the more he practises and the more he gets into the habit of keeping a sketchbook. He's full of sketches and doesn't know what to do with them. And that's why he gets good at it.
The drawing competence involves two point : The first is the understanding of physical principles, such as the effects of light, volume, perspective, anatomy...
But once you have mastered all these theoretical aspects, you have to learn to coordinate your body, which is the second point.
We have all experienced that frustrating moment when you see your model in front of you and you are motivated to draw it, understanding really well how to represent the subject in our work.
But that's it, you've drawn it and it's really bad.
There is a gap between the understanding in the brain and the coordination with the hand.
You have to learn how to draw on a sheet of paper, and not necessarily with the most fun exercises (I could develop them here another time).
And so, the more you practice, the better you become. It's that simple. Only if you have the time and the determination, of course :)
When you're sketching, don't try to make beautiful drawings. Try more to understand the subject and see the volume in it.
No matter how satisfied you are with a sketch, you have to understand that after 6 months of practice you'll look at it and say, "Did I really do that terrible thing? and that's in fact so cool.
For example, take a look at these sketches I made of Nala above. These are the first ones I did, and they are bad. I mean, there is no sense of volume, no detail. It is obvious that I have a poor understanding of my subject and that my lines are almost random.
But months later, look at these. It's like a kind of sculpting; my first attempts were really naive, and then I go further in detail and precision in my sketches, rendering a more realistic Nala - but with the same time spent on the sheet.
And that's an another important point : yes, we could all make a good drawing if we spent more and more time on a sheet of paper. But the interest of sketching is that we have to capture an idea in a few minutes or even a few seconds.
If you can get a good rendering in 10 minutes, after 6months of practice you could do it in half the time, and so on.
"What can I draw ?"
Anything. A small object on the corner of your desk, the woman crossing the street, your parents, your cat,...
Try to vary your subjects to train your brain on as many things as possible (which I don't do enough of, I tend to draw Nala too much, but at least I'll be able to draw lead dogs easily in the end :)).
If you do a lot of subjects on a regular basis, you will build up a database in your brain that you can pull out whenever you want for any kind of artwork.
Most of the time I don't have time to draw Nala because she's moving. But that's the game. Sketching is like photographing live models. It's moving and it's not easy, but it's much more interesting and lively than just drawing still lifes all the time.
My mistake in sketching is to draw too little. It is really difficult in terms of accuracy. So, I think that the next sketchbook that I will buy will be bigger. But not too big, because that might discourage me from taking it with me.
The sketchbook should be always pocket-sized.
If you don't have a lot of reference subjects around you, you could also draw some images from the internet. This is less efficient because it doesn't train your 3D skills (you're going from a 2D image to another 2D image, rather than doing the translation work from a 3D reality to a sheet of paper).
But it works really well as a supplement, as we can find many more subjects to draw on the internet than in our area.
For example, the references of the people below come from films.
I hope you found it inspiring and that it made you want to keep a sketchbook too. 😊
See you soon for more creations!