Drawing Exercises, Theory, and Practice

Some thoughts about drawing exercises: in my opinion the best ones are those which you devise for yourself, or adapt from existing ones, or even follow verbatim, with no changes, IF you first see precisely the reason to do them. If you do them from understanding, that sort of exercise will have the most meaning to you, and hence the best results. However, if you do an exercise “by rote”, as an unthinking follower, as if repeating a magic saying that will automatically generate a result, then…there probably will be little obvious result.

What do I mean by “drawing exercises”? Simply put, they are any drawings done for the sake of learning rather than for expression or communication or creating a final piece of artwork. This might include life drawings, drawings of models of any kind, drawing from photos, sketching in a public place, experimenting with media of various kinds, the notorious “contour line drawings” and “color charts” art schools are so fond of, and many, many possible others.

It’s next to useless to do any drawing exercise out of a “sense of duty”, like dutifully taking medicine, or food for that matter, which you find detestable in flavour but which you think might be good for you. That’s starting with the wrong attitude and from the wrong place. Yet, inexplicably, people sometimes do life drawing in this way, by rote, as if the mere amassing of drawings would make any ultimate difference. Better to find an exercise which you enjoy, which you can do enthusiastically and out of love. Then it will not seem like drudge-work but be pleasurable. That exercise can then serve as a “beachhead”… a small piece of territory which you have acquired and genuinely made your own, from which you can gradually expand outwards and conquer more land.

If you are involved in the devising of your own art-experiments, you will naturally be tremendously interested in their outcome! Then, the results will stay in your memory, and affect your artwork for the better. Conversely, if you do an experiment or exercise “because you are told to”, because “the book said to”, ie artificially, because you “think you should for your own betterment and because _____________[insert name of favourite artist] always does it”, or “because the teacher assigned it” (as in, “I only draw in my sketchbook because teacher told us that in order to graduate we have to do three drawings a day in our sketchbook”), then you probably don’t understand why you’re doing it and thus will get little out of it. You are in a follower-copyist kind of mentality, not that of free-drawing entrepreneurial explorer of new lands. And if you are the sort of person who likes to buy and read a lot of art theory books, you even stand in danger of perhaps becoming “ a drawing theoretician”.

What is “ a drawing theoretician”? It’s a person who knows all the theory inside out, in terms of being able to expertly relate it verbally, reciting it chapter and verse, but can’t actually put it into practice. So, for example, this makes it possible for an artist to be able to relate all about “tangents”, but still have tangents everywhere in their artwork!

Or another example: years ago I had an assistant. He read my notes and bits and pieces of some of the other art theory books I had around the studio. Soon enough he could speak the lingo perfectly: always on about “VPs” (vanishing points) and “HLs” (horizon lines) and so on. But to look at his drawings, nothing had really changed: his understanding of and execution of perspective was no different, which was to say, perspective was more or less nonexistent in his drawings. So what was the point of having a bunch of fancy words circulating around his noggin? They weren’t connected to understanding. Why? Because he practiced very little: he rarely put pencil to paper to put these theories into practice, test them out, and make them his own.

Some artists I have met, noticing this “drawing theoretician” phenomenon, unfortunately then reject all theory and shy away from it compulsively, fearing that they will become a dreaded “drawing theoretician”, as if regular contact with drawing theory would result in the contraction of this terrible disease. This seems to me like throwing out the baby with the bathwater and shortchanging oneself, to mix my metaphors; and also sounds suspiciously like an excuse for not activating the intellectual side of one’s faculties. Perhaps too many artists had bad experiences in grade 9 being forced to study algebra or who knows what, and this talk of “drawing theory” sounds like a similar torture. So they avoid it altogether.

To avoid this danger, if you read a lot of theory or devise many of your own, you have to also practice drawing relentlessly. This unearths so many new questions and illuminates the theories so well, that they then become internalized, they are made your own, not just something that was read in a book or copied. If you have theories and try them out on the test-bed of your own artwork, you will soon see which are true and which false, and then revise them accordingly.

Another danger of studying theory: self-paralysis. Instead of being a doorway which opens new possibilities, too much immersion in theory may paralyze one with confusion and self-sabotage, often because the intellectual side of one’s brain is watching and critiquing before, during, and after one draws. Again, to forestall this happening, all you have to do is draw constantly as you study theory, alternating one with the other, and trying to keep each in its own compartment, or at least, keep each one on its own separate leash. So, for example, you may draw fast and intuitively, from emotion, without analyzing; and only afterwards, or upon a later viewing of your art, put on a quite separate hat and analyze, from theory and feel, what is working and what isn’t.

With practice, you can keep the compartments separate, and even during a drawing look at it from the theoretical-analytical viewpoint, making suggestions to yourself, without totally discouraging yourself and bogging down and losing spontaneity.

I should mention too that there’s an opposite danger to “the drawing theoretician”, and that’s what you could call “the over-practicer”. These individuals shy away from theory, but have a dogged but misguided belief that sheer volume of compulsive practice alone-without any reflection or theory mixed in-will surely lead to great progress. From time to time one can glimpse such types in life drawing classes; often they have mountainous piles of large swoopy charcoal drawings, and have many years of them back home. They are experts at practicing and practicing and producing that certain type of drawing, which seemingly becomes an end in itself. Sometimes these drawings are pretty nice, too. But then if you ask them to draw a comprehensible figure out of their head, without any reference, they cannot really do it. To me that shows a great disconnect: lots of practice, lots of raw data has flowed through their eyes and hands, but since it wasn’t connected to enough theory, their minds didn’t catch and hold it; they didn’t store enough of that raw information, haven’t internalized it, and hence can’t access it and make use of it creatively, for their own purposes.

The best theory and theoretical understanding evolves out of practice, and vice-versa. In the world of science, for example in the testing of jet planes, the theory was and is tested in practice, the results of which successively modify the theory, until a harmonious and effective balance is arrived at. So it can be for the artist: theory and practice held in balance, each augmenting the other.

But in no case can theory ever be “ a successful drawing generator”; knowledge of theory alone guarantees nothing. The gladiator-arena that is the creation of new each drawing is still the important thing, and once the doors of that arena close behind you and you step forwards into the field to do battle, you are on your own...and that’s the fun of it!

*PS: The image accompanying this post? Just a strange drawing from an old sketchbook…I think I was enjoying a certain brand of marker I’d just bought…

Thoughts on Cover Composition

From time to time, I may do slightly different posts, such as this one: my friend Warren Leonhardt, animation storyboard artist, e-mailed me asking for input on his comic cover art, shown above:

Hey Paul,

Just wondering if you could (one day) make a fast crit of this mock-up I did for kicks.

I pencilled, inked and coloured it in a 17 hour workday. First time taking an image to completion (at least in a mock-up); first time using Photoshop to colour anything - just winged it using the 'Draw!' tutorial in issue 9...I figured on trying to make the deadline as 'real' as possible, just to see how far I'd get...and there's a few mistakes, for sure. I'm trying to zero in on my most consistent ones, using 'sounding boards' like yourself, if you feel like it.

Cheers,
Warren.

And here’s my answer, lightly edited for the blog:

Hi Warren,

Sorry about slow response...

You did pretty damn good if that was yer first time with Photoshop...good for you!!

Overall it is very fine and impressive.

I'll only focus on quibbles, since you asked for my opinion...that's all it is, opinion, I think that this is already way better than a lot of published covers I see out there.

Anyway: here it is. I'm writing a bunch because this stuff interests me… usually I like to critique a rough, not a final, since then the advice has a chance to be used. But anyway…

Overall I think the storytelling of the cover, while reading well, could still be enhanced a little. For example, it looks to me like the story shown is that a couple are at a lake, they’re on the dock drinking beer, and then a skeletal pirate zombie arrives and chops off the guy's head, and is now scaring us (the audience) but chasing girl, who's next to be threatened.

If it's meant to be a cottage/lake setting, I can't tell if those three dark masses behind, on the water, are islands with pine trees or some kind of slime masses coming out of the water...they need to be drawn more clearly—carefully drawn silhouettes would convey a lot. Also, I find having three separate masses, and centering the middle one under zombie, too eye-catching. It’s a background element not important enough to deserve that amount of attention.

Did the zombie pirate just come up out of the water? Then probably, to tell that part of the story clearly, he should be dripping and more slimy...makes him scarier and gives it immediacy, ie that he only moments ago popped up out the h2o. (I didn't show the water in my little attached sketchie, thought of it after I drew it!!)

I like the sword and its rustiness, but if the blood is fresh on both sword and dock, which I imagine it is, then it should be much brighter...only "old blood" is dark. Conversely, the girls pants are bright red and thus eye-catching, but the pants are not really important. So to draw the reader's eye to the sword and blood and tell the story, you should in my opinion make the blood the bright red like the pants, and make the pants the dark red---switch them.

I don't find the blood spatter convincing on the body...could be mistaken for chest hair or something...you can find clear photo examples on the net to give more exact guidance on the pattern.

If the pirate is about to chop her next, he should be clearly looking at her. Since you don't have eyeballs to point with on the skeleton, its whole head might have to be pointed straight at her to show he's looking at her. Right now he's looking at camera but why would he stare at us? He vants the girl!!

If they were in mid-beer drink on the dock, which is a good storytelling detail because it shows they were suddenly interrupted, maybe you could have a spilled can in there somewhere.

Then: on the compositional side, see my quick sketch. I think you can push the perspective a lot more in order to create more drama. You want to direct the viewer’s eye to focus on the pirate, the most scary thing, while still circulating around the page and highlighting the other key elements. So maybe it would help to have a lower overall angle, more upshot on the pirate, a steeper perspective on the deck. The radial lines (fan-shaped) found in steeper perspectives give more dynamics, more energy, than flatter angles. It might be a nice idea to get the camera in a bit closer, so we are right in the action. Also, right now the three masses as visual shapes (ie girl, zombie, dead guy) are too equal, which is dull and static. Probably girl should be moved out a bit more and up and bigger...right now she looks too small to me. In my opinion you don’t need to show all of her---the space to the left of her is distracting, it kind of traps the eye. It wouldn’t hurt to show her neck veins bulging, since she’s up next for the zombie’s sword.

I haven’t shown it in my quick rough, but more dramatic lighting or even a rim light on the pirate, would probably heighten the drama a lot.

My suggestions are only a quick take on this and not at all presented as the only “right” one (there’s no such thing)---it’s intended more to show other possibilities.

Thanks Warren, for graciously agreeing to share your work!