Greetings Artisan!
Why does learning to draw have to be so hard!?!
Personally learning perspective was one of the hardest challenges I faced with my own art.
But not for the reasons I first thought!
If you have been trying to improve your Drawing or Illustration, you have no doubt struggled with perspective in some way shape or form.
And itās trueā¦ if you want to draw and create art that has a lot of solidarity and structure, you need to master perspective.
Especially if you want to draw buildings and backgrounds and man made objects!
A panel from Pinocchio
Yet learning perspective can feel like the least artistic thing on the planet.
You have probably had someone tell you that perspective and rendering and studying your āfoundationā is important.
Many artists really struggle when it comes to learning this technical side of art.
Recently someone asked how much technical perspective was really needed for artistic development. Specifically, do we all need to study books like āHow To Draw' by Scott Robertson.
So I talked about this idea on a recent Art Ritual Video
You can check it out here:
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In this video I compare 'How to Draw', with 'Framed Perspective Vol.1', another great resource on learning the more technical side of perspective.
How To Draw by Scott Robertson & Thomas Bertling + Framed Perspective Vol.1 by Marcos Mateu-Mestre
One of the key ideas I talk about in this video is that:
The more technical your study, the more artistic your practice can be.
This is one of those counter intuitive ideas that is easy to miss in the beginning.
And it unlocks a lot of truth about how we learn to drawā¦ and where learning in a more technical way can help.
I want to go over this idea to unpack the basic concept. And also share some tips on how to mix in technical drawing study with your overall development.
One of the key ideas I talk about in The Line and Color Academy is that we need to practice applying our knowledge.
Doing endless technical studies of anatomy or perspective or renderingā¦ or anything, will only get you so far.
Progress shot from The Art Ritual 24
At some point we need to apply theory and knowledge to our actual work.
To put it to use!
So letās keep that in mind as we discuss the importance of that same technical study.
One of the biggest problems that students and beginners face with art is something I struggled with as well.
When I began learning to draw I was just drawing for fun. I was sketching in my books at schoolā¦ I was not really even thinking about it as a skill that could be learnt.
I would draw fantasy characters, monsters, heroes, romanceā¦ stuff from my imagination.
Progress shot from The Art Ritual 24
I knew my art could be improved. But it was only later on that I started to understand there was craft involved.
I started to understand that you could actually learn how to draw buildings properly. That there were names for the different muscles. I would occasionally crack open an āAnatomy Bookā or a book on Perspective and marvel at the strange mysteries within. It looked like workā¦
But I learnt that people who were good, had gotten good via study. That was the first true lesson.
Whenever I went to learn the technical side of art though, it felt like math. It felt like I was no longer doing art at all!
And this persisted. Even when I eventually committed myself to the craft of drawing as a professional, for a long time I really didnāt feel like a āproper artistā.
I didnāt really understand most technical perspective.
And the truth was that I actually didnāt want to learn it.
I liked being more āartisticā. I liked the more creative aspects of drawing. And it always felt like learning perspective was going to change me into a more technical artist.
So for quite some time I wrestled with this duality, and it took a toll!
On the one hand I knew this knowledge would help me. But on the other hand, Iā¦for lack of a better wordā¦ āhatedā doing it.
Over time I eventually learned the basics of perspective (1, 2 and 3 point perspective, how grids work, the tricks for dividing or multiplying space) and it really transformed my art.
An early example of my attempts at incorporating perspective into a painted scene.
But I would still struggle with more complex objects and scenes. I could feel there was still a lot missing!
One of the things I did notice thoughā¦ was that I had not turned into some overly technical artist.
I really didnāt feel any different. I just knew how to draw buildings!
I wasnāt really thinking about perspective at all. But somehow my drawings were better. They had more solidarity.
And when I eventually recommitted to learning perspective on a more technical level, I noticed exactly the same thing.
And I have seen the same transformation happen with students.
In the beginning we imagine that to learn perspective is to always have a ruler handy to smash out some vanishing points. That we need to start with a grid and become square and boring.
But the way we learn to draw is much more magical than that.
You seeā¦ it wasnāt just that I didnāt morph into a ruler wielding, box drawing lunatic. I actually got more creative.
I thought even less about perspective.
The more I learnt, the easier everything became.
Final stages of my drawing from The Art Ritual 24
These days I rarely draw with a ruler, and I guesstimate most of my grids and perspective. Iām pretty sloppy to be honest. But my ability to guess has improved exponentially.
Which leads me back to the main point:
The more technical your study, the more artistic your practice can be.
The more you study the boring, dry, uncreative aspects of art, the more you are able to internalise them and draw without even thinking about it.
This is completely counterintuitive, but it does make sense.
Like riding a bike, the physical skill of drawing is subconscious. We donāt really think about every mark we make.
A panel from Pinocchio
With every stroke of the pencil we are calculating form, structure, physics, material, gesture, emotion, story, design, composition, contrast, where the object is in relation to the viewer, where the light is coming from, where the reflected light is coming fromā¦ everything. Itās not possible to be technical in such a setting. It has be done on a subconscious level.
So the good news is that you can learn technical perspective and it will not make you into a mindless technical automaton.
Also, you will be able to draw more things, and be more creative, and think even less about perspective!
The problem is that actually learning it is boring!
A typical perspective demo from a live in person bootcamp class.
So what can we do to help make it interesting?
Two things will help here:
- Firstly - only do a little bit of technical study at a time. Think 15-30 minutes a day of perspective exercise. Sometimes you need to go deeper and spend all day practicing something. But as a rule less is going to be more.
Why? Because we learn when we sleep. And itās important to really take your time with these concepts. And if you burn out your focus you are not learning effectively. And if you get frustrated itās easy to lose momentum and start disliking process.
- Secondly - You need to apply it. This means that you need to find some way to also practice drawing stuff you actually enjoy and applying what you have learnt.
Good tips here are to think about the intersection of technical drawing and stuff you really like. What are some projects or themes that will allow you to get excited about sitting down, but also require technical perspective to pull off?
From my experience the problem students face is that much of technical perspective education focuses around industrial design and drawing things like spaceships or cars or architecture. And because itās educational, it tends to be dry and lacking exaggeration or character.
Your job is to add the character!
Like drawing fantasy characters? Draw some wooden wagons. Draw some orcs building a siege tower. Draw an elven castle in the treesā¦
Make it interesting! (for you)
If you add 5 or 10% of extra perspective into your art piece by piece you will slowly get more comfortable with the ideas.
Steps from the Lion Riders Illustration from my Drawing Scenes in Line and Color course.
Think about how the concepts of drawing-through and creating accurate ellipsis around a common minor axis might help you draw a cool hat!
Practice drawing in the horizon line for all your characters. Think about where the viewer is in relation to your awesome new monster design.
The reality is that there are an infinite number of ways technical perspective can help you draw organic forms or cartoony characters. Once you get better you can even start to add exaggeration or squash and stretch to the forms.
Itās a long journey, and getting your head around the technical stuff is a huge challenge, but if you can make it fun and figure out how it applies to your own style and subject matter, the process can actually be pretty enjoyable.
Tim
If you haven't lately:
Check out The Line and Color Academy:
One of the best ways to apply fundamentals is to expand the rough drawing phase of your process. Having a stage in your process to ask the questions about horizon lines and ellipsis can make all the difference. I like to call this the construction phase, and itās something we learn to do in The Line and Color Academy
