THE SCIENTIFIC ARTIST

Please Come and See me in my NEW HOME!

2008-07-24T11:22:00.003-04:00

...As has been evident to any readers who still visit here, I decided to stop posting here, and instead I've created a new, comprehensive site, for blogging and galleries and so on.

I hope to post some new"Scientific Artist" type material there, too.

So, please adjust your bookmarks, and come over and visit me HERE!

Crowded Thoughts

2006-06-05T22:10:00.000-04:00

I was looking over old work---always an interesting exercise---and came across the black and white art I did for DC's "Legion Worlds" miniseries. The panel shown here was from page ten, and it prompted a few thoughts about problem-solving, making choices, and creating the suggestion of depth.

I'm not sure this image is the best one I could pick to illustrate my topic (because there are a number of things I'd now change) but since it's my work, I know it, and remember enough about it to be able to explain it, so that's what I'll use.

The script called for me to draw a vast crowd scene in an alien stadium, introducing the general scene as well as the fact that the game being played down below was a 3-dimensional floating sort of enterprise. There also had to be floating scoreboard and cameras, falling snow, etc, etc. In short, the kind of thing that can be pretty challenging. I realized that in order to be able to present all this without the image being hopelessly busy, the camera angle had to be chosen carefully.

Consider the problem of presenting the crowd. Too distant a view, and all the figures would be too small to be of interest; furthermore, none would be close enough for some to be identifiable as alien, which is something I had to show. On the other hand, too close a view and the figures would fill the frame, obscuring the more distant figures and details and therefore killing any sense of depth.

After some experimentation, I settled on what you see here: a few foreground figures, hit with light, close enough to see that they're aliens; then a quick slide into silhouettes and darkness, and continuing beyond that to the figures just being suggested by random dots. Having the foreground figures stand up helped block just enough of the background so as to simplify the drawing task--ie it eliminated having to draw dozens of fussy midground figures---yet still left enough gaps which left visible the details in the distance.

Packing the Suitcases

2006-03-30T10:03:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning thinking about drawing.

The main idea, for some reason, was this: that in drawing, one must simultaneously keep in mind both the general and the specific---a sort of juggling process, one of many pairs of opposites which must be held in balance and reconciled as you proceed.

As you draw, you assume a god-like power of creation. You create small details, as well as the larger structures which those details fit into. Or to put it another way, you balance both the macro and the micro; keeping one eye on each, as it were, as you move along.

You must somehow become comfortable with both views of the world, and with the “world” which you create on paper, in order to succeed. However, everyone has a natural disposition, it seems, which can sometimes be obstructive; a tendency towards “detail thinking” or towards “structural thinking”.

If you forget about one, or obsess too much about the other, trouble often comes. Imbalance. That’s what I’ve found, looking back on pieces of artwork which I now see as failures. Too much detail, without enough creative effort first on the structure which holds it all together, and you get a rambling unfocused assemblage of pieces-but-no-glue. You emerge from a morass of details, step back and assess, and to your horror you realize: the thing’s not hanging together as a whole. Then you chop it, change it, wrap bandages, or even throw it out and start over, sadder but wiser…

And on the other hand, if the drawing has lots of structure---broad design thinking---but lacks in convincing detail, then it doesn’t “sell” itself to the audience; it’s never quite believable enough. It’s too general. And you arrive in a similar place: realizing that the thing’s just not working, not as well as it could. Perhaps this is an easier problem to fix than the first. You can add detail, sometimes, on top of a structure that works, but trying to retrofit the structure into a mass of unarranged details is an exercise in heartache.

It’s kind of like those Russian stacking dolls: the smaller ones will fit into the larger ones, but not the other way around. Or taken another way, it’s like packing your car’s trunk, or closet, with a group of suitcases of various sizes, and trying to have them all fit in: you learn to place the big ones first, then sequentially fit the smaller ones into the gaps left, until you’re done.

It’s common, and easy, to start with details, thinking of them first, losing ourselves in them. We first encounter life this way, as children. We don’t fly over the landscape as does a bird, and see the larger wholes, from afar, presented to us---we’re down on the street, moving along, we have to figure the bird’s-eye-view out for ourselves as we get older. In daily life we see an endless procession of details, all from our limited vantage point, and we sort through them looking for order and arrangement and meaning---looking for the larger structures.

In creating a drawing, it’s the same thing, just moving in the other direction: from the general to the specific.

It takes another kind of thinking, a sort of abstract vision, to perceive the larger structures at work behind the many details provided by the vision of our eyes. While drawing, one must balance both perceptions. This hidden aspect of drawing helps keep it endlessly fascinating.

For the Love of Line

2006-03-05T13:57:00.000-05:00

I love lines. And lately, I miss it them on the big screen: I miss the magic of caricatured lines-in-motion.

I admire 3D animation when it’s done well, by Pixar and others. But to me it still lacks something. For a long time I puzzled over this and couldn’t quite explain it to myself. What was the absent element?

Finally, as obvious as it sounds, I realized that they have no lines. It’s not that these films are no longer something vaguely defined as “2-D”; it’s more exactly that they have no outlines.

Lines. Good old outlines. They took them away, and added a whole bunch more lighting and rendering and usually unnecessary camera movement, and called it “3-D animation”.

Yes, in creating this brave new creature, they threw away the lines, locked them in the garage, to cower ignominiously, ignored. They ripped those weak, spindly outlines away from the forms they enclosed; forgot about them. Dropped them.

At least, they dropped them from the final product. But the artists themselves haven’t forgotten them; you look at all the “Art of…” books released in conjunction with 3D films, and you can find endless beautiful outlines. The artists still know the ultimate power of the line: and often, in my opinion, the art in those books is more engaging than the actual films themselves. Personally I often look at a piece of art in one of those books and say to myself, “I wish this was in a picture book, or a comic, or a so-called ‘2-D’ version, drawn just as it is here, in all its graphic simple beauty!”

Lines. I love them. In all their simplistic, no-tech glory, I love them nonetheless.

Outlines: lines around things, enclosing shape and suggesting forms. Stipple lines. Hatching lines. Pattern lines. Pen lines, brush lines, marker lines. All the endless sorts of lines, straight, sinuous, pointed, long short, and broken…

They have a pure distilled-down magic. Suggestive and symbolic, they don’t exist in reality. They promise and prompt and then let the imagination of the viewer fulfill the rest, actively bridging the gap. They engage the mind!

In the hands of many past masters, such as Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Bill Peet, Ken Anderson, and so so many others, we were treated to the unfettered glories and suggestive powers of the line, whether still or in motion. On the big screen, we tasted the singular delight of caricature-line-in-motion. And the amazing spectacle of the background layouts in 101 Dalmatians, with their raw, naked lines, brazen and unashamed.

It’s a specific flavour, a graphic taste, that can be gotten no other way, and when you know and love that flavour, you have to have more of it. You watch classic films such as The Jungle Book, or for that matter The Iron Giant, for their story and acting and character, of course; but beneath that, you watch and enjoy the beauty of caricature-line-in-motion, for its own sake. It adds enjoyment as a language all on its own.

I have nothing actively against so-called “3D” and films made that way…but I miss them, the good old outlines, and the worlds they conjured...

A Small Insight

2006-02-26T00:31:00.000-05:00

For what it's worth, here's something I realized tonight about drawing, while drawing.

Too often one can draw at a speed dictated by the mind. For example, if the mind is racing and agitated, then often the hand follows and draws at a frantic pace, in disjointed bits and pieces which reflect, on paper, the mental state.

Or the reverse: sluggish mind, sluggish hand. In both cases the results can be unsatisfactory and disjointed.

Noticing this, one can attempt to intentionally counteract it. When the mind is racing, the hand can be slowed down, the drawing done with attention and deliberation and nuance. Or, when the mind is slow and feeble, set the hand free and draw much faster, without pondering and watching. This may shock the mind and bring forth more clarity.

Perhaps this is why it's difficult to make a hard-and-fast rule about the speed at which one should draw: it depends on what works best in conjunction with the pace of the mind, at the moment of drawing.

Thanks for all the interesting comments about "Holding the Brush". I will post a small followup of thoughts asap, although the comments covered everything very well.

Holding the Brush-1

2006-01-04T10:06:00.000-05:00

Two shots of slightly different ways to hold the brush while inking...just from looking at these images, what do you think is the difference? Which position (if any) is superior, and why?

Followup thoughts posted soon...

New Posts

2005-12-22T15:36:00.000-05:00

Apologies to those who've been checking in here, for the lack of fresh content...frankly, creating content for this blog is a lot more time-consuming than for my other two blogs---not hard to guess, right? However, I am working on new material and hope to have some posted soon. Again, thanks for visiting and...see you soon!

Head Games

2005-11-02T01:54:00.000-05:00

There are endless variations to the human head and face, and in some cases real people can have highly exaggerated features, almost like a cartoon. It’s fascinating and great fun to people-watch!

Here are a few (of many possible) ways to analyze heads…you can use these approaches to generate new ideas, or simply to go over your existing drawings and determine whether or not they’ve fallen into repetitive ruts.

Pencilling, Inking, and Non-Repro Blue

2005-10-25T14:52:00.000-04:00

Since I mentioned it on my “Rocketfiction” blog, a number of people have e-mailed me to ask about my method of printing “non-repro blue” onto art board. For anyone who hasn’t heard of this, it’s a very helpful shortcut which is allowed by improvements in desktop printers. I didn’t invent it; as far as I know many people in comics and illustration routinely use some version of the method outlined below. There are many variations of it…here is mine.

Let’s say you have a drawing (ranging from a scribble to a rough to a more detailed drawing) which you really like, and want to ink, but it’s not on suitable paper for inking and putting down lots of black; or perhaps your sketch is drawn too small and you want to ink it larger; or, you have a tiny series of thumbnails and you want to blow them up to comic page size, tighten them up, and then ink them. In the “old days” you might enlarge your sketches and get them onto art paper by several different methods, all of which were time-consuming: you could “grid” them up, or use a photocopier and enlarge them and collage them and then trace all that through your paper (if it was transparent enough, that is); or, you could buckle down and just re-draw the entire thing from scratch.

But in all of those cases, you spent a lot of time, and risked making unwanted changes to the rough you loved, perhaps losing some of the “magic”…and if nothing else, by the time you were ready to ink, the inking would be at least the third time you’d drawn the entire thing! Talk about repetition!

With the recent advent of improved desktop printers, you can now get to the inking stage much more quickly. Here’s what I do: I first assemble my rough material in Photoshop. If it’s a single illustration, “assembling it” might mean blowing it up to a larger size for ease of inking, as well as re-positioning any elements that bother me. This stage might include making a head larger or smaller, or fixing the eyes, moving a limb, or even in an extreme case chopping out a foreground element entirely and moving it relative to the background. If it’s a comic page, you might change or rearrange panels, using layers to make things easy to adjust. The computer affords the possibility of making any and all changes necessary to get the drawing to the point where I’m comfortable inking it.

A thing to note, at least in my own personal approach to this, is to concentrate more on getting the major elements in place in a broad way, rather than fussing with the smaller details and nuances of the drawing. I’ll save that sort of thing for a later stage---I find that if I bog down too early in drawing details, the illustration can become boring, and it then makes the inking stage too much like tracing. I like to leave just enough drawing to be worked out in the inking, so that I have to draw as I ink, not just unthinkingly trace lines and shapes. Of course the flip side of leaving this gap is that you always have to stay with the work; a lapse of attention, ie lapsing into mechanical “tracing-inking”, means you can quickly botch the piece up.

When the rough assembly is ready to be printed onto final art paper, I save a new file of it in Photoshop, flatten the layers in the file, and enlarge it to the needed dimensions, usually allowing for “bleed” around the edges. Usually I change the resolution so that at the larger size, the resolution is about 150 to 200 pixels per inch. This is enough for printout onto the art paper. I then convert the file from grayscale to CMYK color. After that, in the “channels” palette, I delete the black, magenta, and yellow channels, leaving only cyan. Next, I want to fade the cyan so that the darkest cyan is no more than about 12-20%. In other words (and here I am speaking of a rough consisting only of linework, not tones), all the lines in the image will end up roughly about 12-20% cyan. There will be nothing other than those light blue lines, and white paper. You ink over the light blue lines with black, and when you later scan the art in “bitmap” mode, the scanner will not pick up the blue, leaving only the clean black.

To fade the cyan lighter, I quickly make a new layer on top of the sketch in the “layers” palette, fill it with 100% white, then fade the opacity of the layer until, testing the blue with the eyedropper tool, I have the percentage of blue which I want.

One note: you have to experiment and find what works best for your particular printer and scanner and paper. With my setup, and my personal taste, I find that a 12% cyan works out perfectly, because it is just dark enough to still see clearly on the art paper, but light enough to be easily drawn over, and not show up on the scanner.

With the blue adjusted, I then print out the image onto art paper. I have an Epson 2000 inkjet printer, which accepts reasonably thick paper and also larger paper sizes---so I can print out onto, say, Strathmore 2 or 3-ply paper at 11 x 17 size. There are surely many similar printers which can print large and accept thicker art paper.

Once the image is printed, I often lightly go over the drawing with a regular HB pencil, tightening up any areas of the drawing which need it; as noted above, I still leave it loose enough so that I have to draw as I ink. The goal is that leaving this bit of unpredictability keeps the drawing alive…

Once inked, I erase any grey pencil from the board, then scan the art in bitmap mode at a minimum of 600 pixels per inch, often higher depending on the job…

That’s about it: took a while to explain in words, but once you’re in the routine of using this method, you’ll find it saves a huge amount of time, while increasing your creative options.

Constructive Thoughts

2005-10-24T17:48:00.000-04:00

For years I've kept notes to myself--"sketch-notes", you might call them. Below is an example. I always found that the very process of attempting to explain to myself, in my own words, what I was trying to do, clarified the subject in a way that merely reading a book about art did not...

I fixed the type because the original was scribbled and hard to read. More soon...

Head Extensions 3

2005-10-12T21:01:00.000-04:00

Another example, with a bit more detail about projecting the lines. As I mentioned before this is a great way to get to know your design, because it forces you to consider it in three dimensions; and therefore also a good way to find flaws in either the specific design, or in one's regular approach to drawing (in this case) heads. In this example, I tried to keep the head fairly simple, for the sake of clarity.

Head Extensions 2

2005-10-09T03:02:00.000-04:00

These are more examples of the method I posted about earlier: how to build other angles and views of the head (or any other object for that matter) after starting from one view. In the first example below, I started with the profile, but you could just as easily begin with the front view.

The main thing is to try to get some control over proportions, placements, and angles of the features, rather than having them vary widely from view to view. Of course, in this day and age a computer could generate all sorts of views of a head once the model was constructed, but as I posted earlier, it's very instructive to build up these views by hand, because you quickly become very familiar with the exact details of your design.

Drawing Exercises, Theory, and Practice

2005-09-27T23:27:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-26T14:48:00.000-04:00

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!

Object-Tracing

2005-09-22T00:21:00.000-04:00

Every artist has heard of tracing: tracing a photo, or perhaps tracing another artist’s work, for learning’s sake---or worse, for theft. But, here’s another fun kind of tracing that comes in handy from time to time: what I call “Object-Tracing”.

Object-tracing is simply that: tracing any small object which is of manageable size. You choose any point of view you care to, orienting the object at whatever angle you wish, then sticking to it. As shown in the image, you hold the object in one hand, while tracing its rough outline on the piece of paper beneath. To ensure steadiness, the object can be rested on the paper. Obviously, you can’t move the object, or your head, while tracing the outline! If you do, it won’t work because the outline will not be consistently from one view. Also, it helps to close one eye, because if you are close to the object the stereo view from your two eyes can make it harder to determine the exact outline.

Once you have a rough outline, it’s usually fairly easy to fill in the rest of the drawing by eye, following the indications suggested by the silhouette.

Why do this? Well, I started doing it as a time-saver, back before digital cameras were readily available. It was a quick way, especially in advertising work where the deadlines are extremely short, to get an accurate drawing of an object in perspective, when a photo from the specific angle desired was not available. So, for example, I’d use this technique to draw a tilted steep-angle perspective shot of a beer bottle in this way, or a model car, or a skull model I have on my shelf. Other examples include drawing a cell phone, a small porcelain coffee cup, and small pair of scissors. Any small object that can be easily handled can be traced in this way.

As I said I started doing this out of sheer expediency, to make the deadline and get an accurate-looking product shot for an ad rendering. But I soon noticed something interesting: that it was a tremendous way to observe silhouettes, to learn about their exact nuances. Of course later, in cartooning, you may change and exaggerate some elements of the “true” silhouette for artistic purposes, to make the outline communicate better; but that was not the point. By doing object-tracing, I found I was forced to carefully study and record the exact outline of an object, not what I imagined it to be, which was often the case when setting an object up and drawing it by sight, not tracing it. In the interval between observing an object or model, and then moving hand to paper and putting down a line, the mind and imagination and habit could easily alter things, so I was setting down on paper not exactly what was there, but what was imagined or altered by imagination.

Object-tracing on the other hand, as dull and non-artistic as it is in a certain way, removed this interval, and thus removed any personal distortion from the process (again, though, you can’t move head or hand-and-object, or the results won’t be accurate at all. With a bit of practice you get good at it.) In this way I accidentally discovered that it was a great way to study silhouettes, because you are forced to draw only the silhouette: the object blocks the rest, so you can’t draw inside the form until the object is removed.

In turning a small object such as a toy car, drawing it from many angles, drawing it from closer and from further, you can discover for yourself many small facts about perspective and perspective distortion. In a way this can “bring alive” many things in perspective and the study of the silhouette which, when written in an art book, can sound kind of dull and boring. You can even start by tracing a cube, thus learning the true angles of a cube as it turns in space, committing these angle to memory.

A couple of small notes: of course this is the same as projecting the silhouette of an object onto a wall with a bright light, but that method enlarges the outline to such a great extent that it is difficult to trace. The beauty of this method is you can do it quickly and quietly, without equipment. Secondly, even though digital cameras now are readily available, to the student or artist who wishes to study the silhouette, this method is far more instructive (not to mention, still quicker) than shooting and printing out and then tracing a digital image of an object.

How to Improve?

2005-09-14T23:15:00.000-04:00

A few notes to myself on improvement:

To improve at drawing you have to change the way you think and act. That in turn changes the way you perceive--which in turn changes the way you think and act. A cycle of improvement begins.

Too often you impatiently want to make huge leaps. As in many things, a wiser course is to make small incremental improvements, rather than try for instant revolutionary change.

Examples of changes you can make:

• If you never redraw anything, learn to redraw, flip the drawing, improve it. Trace it on the back, then turn the paper over and erase the original drawing on the front and redraw the drawing again. Or trace it on successive pieces of paper if you like. Or draw with three different colors of pencil, trying to improve the drawing each time, having a clear reason for why you’re making a change.

• If you always draw and think in terms of lines, learn to draw and think in terms of forms and masses. The same for shapes. You need to think/draw with all three together (lines, shapes, forms). You can see this in the great artists. There are exceptions of course, such as drawing intentionally in a “flat” style, or a style with no lines, etc etc.

• If you always draw "out of your head", learn to use photos in your work--wisely. Learn to research your subject, to get appropriate reference. The internet makes it very easy.

• If you always draw from photos, throw them away and learn to draw and invent "out of your head". Be free and imaginative---for the moment stop worrying about "accuracy and correctness".

• If you don't know perspective, study it. If you think you know it, learn it better.

• If you usually draw fast, try slowing down, and vice-versa.

• If you always draw “tightly”, then try drawing in a looser fashion, and vice versa.

• If you always draw large, then try drawing tiny, it can be very revealing. Again, the reverse also applies: if your habit is to draw tiny cramped little things, try drawing large.

• Similar to the above, if you habitually draw with tiny thin spider-lines, try drawing with only thick bold lines, and fewer of them too. Or the reverse. Surprise yourself!

• If you always draw only in short bursts—for a few minutes---try pushing yourself far longer. Draw for an extended period of time: push past your normal “fatigue point”. You may have a breakthrough---a magical “second wind”, just like a marathon runner.

• If you never sketch, learn to sketch, keep a sketchbook. Conversely, if you always sketch and never sit down to finish anything properly, force yourself to focus on one image and finish it as well as possible, even if you aren’t happy with it.

There are many, many more such changes you can devise for yourself. Only you can figure out which ones apply to your particular set of habits.

The main thing is this:

FIGURE OUT HOW TO FORCE YOURSELF INTO LEARNING AND IMPROVING. You have to do it yourself. No class, no book, no teacher, can do it for you---they can only point the way.

It’s strange to realize that you have to study yourself as part of your learning--study your own ways of doing things, your own good and bad habits, and then trick or force yourself into changing the problem ones into something better. Study what you do each day; is it enough? Keep and date your sketches over the course of years…then look back through them one rainy day. You will instantly see where you stand. If you look back through your old drawings and can see exactly what is wrong in them, and what you would change to fix them, then you know you have improved. On the other hand, if you look through them and find them all to be just wonderful, it’s possible you have stalled.

Lastly---which artists do you study? How do you study them? Who else could you look at? Break the pattern. What you spend the most time looking at? That is what you tend to end up drawing like. It is useful to study and compare as many different styles as possible.

If you do some of these exercises sincerely, they may be painful over the short term, but in the long term they can be joyful, because there is no joy like improving.

Perspective Tips 1

2005-09-12T09:31:00.000-04:00

This is a really useful method for constructing perspective guidelines when the vanishing points are off the page, too far to be reached. It comes in handy in all sorts of situations, and can save a lot of heartache and complication (such as using long rulers to reach distant points, which in turn means you have to tape your drawing down so the points don’t move relative to the drawing, etc, etc).
Using this method keeps everything contained on one page, freeing you up to just draw, rotate your drawing if necessary, and not worry about long rulers clanging to the floor, tape coming lose, and all sorts of other aggravations.

Simply put, once you set up your basic angles and horizon line, as shown at the top, you then “in-between” the lines in whatever frequency you want or need to guide your drawing. If you only want to do a rough sketch, you might only draw three or four perspective lines, even perhaps positioning the lines by eye (ie subdividing by first drawing the middle line by eye, then in turn subdividing each half into two, and so on). If you want great accuracy, you can subdivide using a ruler to measure very exactly, and rule more lines to follow.

A couple of things to note: the lines which you generate will be spaced evenly across the flat surface of the paper. They will not be successively closer together as they go away into the distance, the way a checkerboard pattern spaces more tightly on a floor as it is seen in perspective.

In other words, don’t rely on these lines to show spacing in depth (foreshortening), just use them to guide the angles of your lines.

Secondly this method will work if the horizon line is off the page and even not visible at all; in the example shown in the image, the horizon is in the picture, but the essence of the concept is simply how you generate in-betweens once you have two “starter lines” sufficiently far apart.

Third note: this method can be very useful to “reverse-engineer” a series of perspective lines from a photo, or from a drawing in which you started by eyeballing the perspective but now want to impose a bit more formal order on.

Lastly, you can also use this for three-point perspective. But in that case, as with the example here, the success of the drawing depends on the crucial initial relationships between the elements you start with and from which everything else proceeds: the horizon line and the two (or three) vanishing points. Depending on your setup of these elements, your drawing will look more less convincing.

So how, you ask, do you learn to create a convincing setup of angles to start from---how do you know what “looks right”? In my opinion the easiest and most effective way is to sketch from life, concentrating for this purpose on cubic forms, until you internalize the amount of foreshortening to use, how the angles should look at the corners of a cube at a given position, how all this changes depending on whether or not the viewpoint of your drawing is close to or far away from the object of the drawing.

Head Extensions

2005-09-10T12:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a simple way to have fun with drawing heads.

Start with a profile. Profiles are easier to draw than intermediate views such as three-quarter views, because you don't have to deal with a lot of depth and overlapping problems. Instead, you can simply concentrate on creating an interesting character. You have fun and choose the proportions, angles, and type of the various elements that make up the head.

Then perhaps you want to see this head in three dimensions. Rather than jump ahead and guess what these other views would look like, you can spend a few minutes building them using this method. That way, you reduce the chance of errors. It only takes a few minutes and a great bonus is that you really get to know your design.

Choosing an angle, you rule parallel lines, as many as you want. Each should run from a key “landmark” such as the hairline, tip of the nose, mouth line, etc.

Then you just draw your views, using those ruled lines to locate the “height” of those facial elements in your new sketch. If you need more information you just go ahead and rule more lines across from the profile, to your sketch. In the example shown, I have chosen to draw two front views, again to keep things simple. One is an upshot on this head, another a down shot. You can also project three-quarter views but it’s a bit more complicated.

In drawing the two extended views, I used a center line placed at a right angle to the parallel ruled lines; this was to keep track of the widths, to make sure both sides of the face were more or less even in width, by measuring with thumb or ruler out from wither side of that center line.

Of course this method doesn’t take into account the effects of perspective; but unless you are very close to the character those effects are minimal. However as I mentioned above, it’s a great way to learn your character, and get yourself in the habit of thinking and drawing three-dimensionally, considering form instead of only line and shape.

It’s often surprising if you first go ahead and draw your version of what you think will be a certain view, and then go ahead and actually construct it according to this method. You can easily be way off. So, you can in this way discover flaws and mannerisms in your approach to drawing heads.

Lastly, this technique can of course be applied to any three-dimensional object you have to draw, so it comes in very handy. It’s also very useful to use this to formally create a three-view (or more) “model sheet” of whatever you’re creating, but I’ll write more on that another time.

Note: the tuft of hair at the top is missing from the upshot...that's simply a mistake.

What’s In a Name?

2005-09-08T22:08:00.000-04:00

First things first…you may or may not be wondering: why is this blog titled “The Scientific Artist? Perhaps you are thinking “that sounds like a contradiction in terms! What’s so-called ‘scientific’ about art?”

The name comes about for a number of reasons. Among them is a personal one. I was once referred to by that title, no doubt somewhat mockingly, by a former comic book artist. At best it was a name given with a mixture of scorn and perhaps some small percentage of puzzled approval as well. But it was clear to me that the labeller in question did not understand me, nor share my artistic goals, nor my lifelong interest in what you could call (for lack of a better term) the “scientific” side of art. I was looked upon with a mixture of bemusement, fascination, and a large dose of incomprehension.

At first I was bothered, but upon reflection I decided to wear the name as a badge of honor, because it’s possible that it was a name well-chosen after all.

For there IS a lot of science and scientific thought in art, and behind art, lurking in the background; far more than we think. Hence a second reason for the name: this blog is for all those interested in “the science of art”, who aim to be “scientific artists”.

In the experience of some few gifted artists, those natural geniuses, I suppose it may never be necessary to bring the science of art to the surface of the mind, to comb through it looking for clues and new understanding; they are the ones who say ” I never think about it, I just do it, and I don’t know exactly HOW I do it, and I can’t and won’t explain it to you. I just DO, that’s all. Why think about art?”

All well and good; but what about all the rest of us, students and professionals alike, who are dissatisfied, and want to improve? What do we do? Do we just madly scribble away, with a feeble grin on the face, aiming to gain and improve by mere volume of drawings and a heart full of “hope”? “If I fill 20 sketchbooks, then I’ll be there?” Do we wait for that magic day when enlightenment will descend upon us at one fell swoop?

Not good enough. For what do we see around us which improves, by itself, without conscious intention and structured effort, by the mere passage of years alone? The artists who see that passing time guarantees nothing realize the necessity for the presence of “science” in their art: intellectual effort, study, a methodical approach; the separating of the true from the false, the study of the natural principles around them , and so on.

Scientific method
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Scientific methods or processes are considered fundamental to the scientific investigation and acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence. Scientists use observations, hypotheses and deductions to propose explanations for natural phenomena in the form of theories. Predictions from these theories are tested by experiment. Any theory which is cogent enough to make predictions can then be tested reproducibly in this way. The method is commonly taken as the underlying logic of scientific practice. A scientific method is essentially an extremely cautious means of building a supportable, evidence-based understanding of our natural world.

What if we approached art in the same way---if we built our knowledge and practice methodically, instead of constructing random manneristic assemblages: a bit of Lee here, a dash of Kirby there, dose it with some Mignola, and Timmitate to your heart’s content…

For me the way of “The Scientific Artist” is the only pathway I see which will help me improve, and “find my own style”. Morever it will give steadiness, and that is vital as a commercial artist---you have to produce every day, not just on “inspiration days”.

Why should artwork be an escape away from the so-called “intellectual”? Often, artists seem to pride themselves in their lack of any kind of “intellectuality”. Many, especially in these times, seem to see art and the creation of artwork as only an emotional exercise. The belief seems to be “with sufficient emotion, the art will come”. Again, fine and good if they believe that. But I say this: why not both head AND heart? Each has its place and will act in due course…and each needs the other, in art as well as everywhere else. They knew this in the past; the painters and illustrators from even 100 years ago, let alone further back, demonstrated an average level of craft unmatched today. They combined rigourous study with great emotion; each accented the other. A close study of past masterworks leads to the conclusion: these artists not only felt deeply, but thought deeply as well.

The halls of art schools are filled with students, year in and year out. How many clearly realize that in order to improve, time spent making many hundreds of overly large drawings with thick charcoal sticks is not enough by itself, nor is merely paying the tuition fee; that multiple piercings are not enough, nor voluminous dark clothes and tattoos and funny little caps with small brims and the latest eyewear. Understanding is bought more dearly than that, and the mere surging expression of emotion is not enough either.

How many realize that, if they wish to improve, in reality they are all “scientific artists”, and must be, whether nor not they acknowledge it?

I know, I know---perhaps this does not seem “individual” enough to them, to join the anonymous ranks of those scratching and clawing their way up the craft-slopes of “Art Mountain”, to follow in the same footsteps as those who came before. They’ve always been told that to be an artist one must at all times and everywhere be Quirky and Different and Intuitive and Unpredictable and Emotive and…and that Science has no place in art, and besides study is dull, and you only need to know how to spell if you are a bookworm or librarian…

Despite it all I persist in thinking there are some others out there of a different stripe, and so this blog is for those of you who also want to wear the label proudly: for all you Scientific Artists out there. You know who you are.

First Post...Welcome!

2005-09-07T03:02:00.000-04:00

I've created this blog as a home for my thoughts on the craft of drawing and design. A while back I created a series of articles for Draw! magazine containing my "art theories"...people seemed to like them, so here is a place where I aim to post more!