I test out my new headphone/mic combo for my ipod and talk about my latest creative attempt: a beginning drawing class where I have to allow myself to suck. Square one, baby.
It’s short, it’s unedited, it’s attempting to be daily, and it’s free.
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5 Responses to ISBW #126 LITE – Drawing Class
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Incidentally I’m not a writer, I started listening to this podcast after I finished to all of Geek Fu. It was around the time I started a drawing project which was basically just me drawing a few figures from pictures every few days. Despite the fact that this podcast is about writing the advice for betterment really did same reliant to what I was doing. To get better at writing you need to write, to get better at drawing you need to draw. Same concept really. I spent a lot of time before the project not drawing and looking at other people’s art, lamenting that I wasn’t as good as them.
I listened to this podcast a lot while drawing so I was glad to hear you were taking a class. I hope you’ll post more about what happens in subsequent classes as I would be very interested to hear more of what it’s like for you.
I find it odd that your teacher just had you draw from nothing in a beginners class through. I’ve taken beginner classes and they always started with a lot of exercises and objects or modules to draw from. Hell, even the more advanced ones do that. To just tell the student, draw, on the first day, never happened to me and I’d be kind of annoyed if it did. It’s not really a useful way to go about it in my opinion. Maybe she was just trying to figure out the basic skill level of the students but even that could be found out through a still life drawing…
Anyway, good luck with future classes.
Tips for drawing.
1) buy a sketchbook, something small and portable and bring it everywhere. When in line at a post office, instead of texting, or talking on the phone, DRAW. If you happen to be doing nothing and the trees look really cool, DRAW. On the bus, and someone is sitting in an interesting way, DRAW (but wear sunglasses, cuz people feel weird when you stare. Also, this gets you to draw faster and better)
2) If you don’t feel like taking out your sketchbook, LOOK. I learned how to draw hands because I would stare at my hands in every angle I could… on the toilet. (you forget a magazine every now and then) Or even imagine a pencil, and use that pencil to trace every line you see.
3) Why do you want to draw? Do you want to draw “just to be creative”? That’s very lofty. I could write a string of a million words and none of it would be a novel.
I learned how to write because the characters that I designed needed to do something instead of standing around and looking cool. For you, someone who is already creative, let it aid your writing or suppliment it. Maybe you could write a children’s story and then illustrate it. Maybe, for fun, instead of trying to figure out what a character or setting looks like, you could draw it. You might find a happy accident or there might be something interesting about your drawing that you could’ve never imagined in words, but now that its drawn, you just need to describe it.
drawing tips:
When I’m bored but can’t think of something to draw, I’ll go on Flickr, type the first word I could think of and draw the most interesting thing I see on that page. (this exercise lead me to getting an Eisner Award Nomination… Neil Gaiman was my presenter ^_^)
Watch people draw. There are lots of drawing tutorials and tips out there. He might be intimidating for you, but idrawgirls.com has some great tutorials, if nothing else, its fun to watch. Even old Bob Ross stuff. It takes away the “magic” and “mystery” of an artist. Subconsciously it makes you say “I could do that”
Copy other people. Copy what you like. TRACE! At the begining, there’s nothing wrong with tracing and you’ll learn things that don’t make sense with words. Bookmark artists you like. Go on deviantart, follow those artists updates.
A suggestion for any drawing class or workshop– sit next to the best artist. 1) You could see their technique. 2) you could ask them about things when there’s a break. 3)At one figure drawing session, I was getting sloppy, then this guy sat next to me: http://paulwee.blogspot.com/ I said to myself, “I better get my act together” and did a drawing to be proud of.
But, just draw. Look at other artists. Your work doesn’t have to be Michaelangelo. You might be more comfortable drawing like Zen Buddhist Monks who try to depict the image with as few brush strokes as possible. Or maybe something more shape and color oriented like Mary Blair.
Good luck.
I enjoyed the couple of podcast episodes that I listened to. I’ve sybscribed to your RSS so I got something to listen to while drawing.
BTW, I wrote the last comment in response to another podcast where you mentioned you were taking an art class. I thought this podcast was it.
Anyway, one thing to remember about drawing is that its about LANGUAGE, visual language. Read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, I highly suggest chapter 2. You haven’t studied a tree long enough with your eyes and haven’t learned how to communicate it the way you want.
A lot of drawing is getting over the part of your brain that takes visual information and compresses it into easy symbols. Symbols like the written word or the sound of a word.
I don’t care if someone else thinks I am drawing an awesome tree, you can *always* suck at something when you compare yourself to the wrong person. We need to remember that everyone was horrible at things once, and no, I’m never going to be Cheyenne Wright, but it’s ok to draw what you draw – not what someone else draws.
I’m sure that the “people who were already good at drawing” were still taking “Beginning Drawing” because you can never go over the fundamentals too many times.
I admire you for taking drawing! I need to find somewhere I can take creative writing.
How fun!
I realize I’m way behind on commenting on this one but that kind of thing happens when your computer crashes and you have to repair it yourself from parts found across the internet.
Anyway, I’ve taken a few art classes and each one has started with the teacher telling you to draw something, strangely enough, usually a tree or tree part. This is a simply a way of gauging what progress you may have made on your own so that the teacher can have an idea of how far everyone needs to travel in their pursuit of artistic excellence.
The only problem I see in what you did Mur, was that the teacher asked everyone to draw a tree and in response you drew an entire world.
A tree is a tree, not the rings of hell it grows in (above?) and not the animals that live within it. It’s just leaves, limbs, trunk, bark, sap, roots, etc. Some trees have smooth bark or plate-like bark or rough, deep bark. Some have limbs that are thin and willowy, while at least one kind has limbs that have to grow their own trunk and root systems just to support their own weight.
If you haven’t already progressed too far beyond that exercise, I’d suggest you try it again. This time once you’ve drawn the tree, walk away from it for a few minutes, maybe have your husband spin it so that it’s upside down or sideways, then come back and look at it all at once and see if you find anything that you could have rendered better or added more or even less detail to.
There is nearly infinite detail and variety in a tree and exercising your ability to see and choose what parts of it to depict is also a great way to improve your ability to imagine and depict the nearly infinite ways that the written word can be used to create a single scene.
To this day, even though I can draw most things I imagine, with some effort, I still occasionally break out a piece of paper and draw a tree. Just a tree.
I hope you’re still taking the class and, hopefully, enjoying it. Let us know how it’s going.