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Author Topic: Gabby's art lessons  (Read 3793 times)

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Offline Gabryel

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Gabby's art lessons
« on: November 15, 2018, 06:38:11 AM »
So I started wrinting some starting tutorials, explaining some stuff that is going on in your brain and what it means to our art. It might be a bit boring but if you wanna give it a read, I'd be happy to her your thoughts about it!

Part 1
http://kitsuneko.kringelkatze.de/2018/04/13/learning-to-draw/

Part 2
http://kitsuneko.kringelkatze.de/2018/04/26/learning-to-draw-forms/

I'll post the rest too when I have translated / written it :)
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. (S. Hawkins)

Offline Ryan

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Re: Gabby's art lessons
« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2018, 04:58:40 PM »
These are very good lessons. I am most interested in what you have written with Part 1. But that's mostly because I have Aphantasia (lack of visual imagery), haha.

As to why some are unable to draw accurately from what they imagine, I can only put forth some hypotheses in contrast to my experience. It's not solely the visual part of the brain that draws, it's also the fine motor system that does, among other unknowns. What this can mean:
  • You have imagery of the sort of lines you need to draw, but lack the fine-motor tuning to reproduce them. You want to draw a line angled this way, but your hand draws it another way. You want to draw a line at a certain length, but draw it instead too long or too short. In other words, the calibration is poor.
  • Overestimating what can be put onto the paper. Depending on the size of your drawing, there is only so much detail you can put down. The beginner is unable to translate unnecessary detail onto the paper in these cases.
  • Many objects take on very complex details in terms of shape and silhouette that likely require high familiarity with motor memory to draw. Noses, eyes, mouths, and especially hands, come to mind. Depending on the style you are using, this may vary. I make the inference here that it is difficult to enforce the hand to make the absolute precise movements to draw these objects at high levels, if the motor routines were not already present.

The way I view things is visual imagery appears to be a device for inspiration, a guide (which is in line with what you said). Or a way to plan what the artist wants to express, composition, etc. However, there are other parts of the brain that also pull a lot of weight when drawing. I believe this is the case due to my experience. I have utter confidence in myself when I say I can't draw something, because I recognize I am not practiced with it and see the correlations to quality that result from practice more strongly. Others may still think they can draw in such a scenario because they have visual imagery of said object. But, the other parts of the brain that are used in drawing are being ignored.

Offline Suuper-san

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Re: Gabby's art lessons
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2018, 05:47:49 PM »
@Ryan First I've ever heard of Aphantasia. I would imagine everyone has it to a degree. Art-wise it certainly feels like I do :P
seeing your artwork, though, I would never have thought that. I imagine you've worked hard to overcome that.

1-the motor skills is certainly a problem. For me, it's more that I don't notice I've drawn it wrong until too late in the drawing, so lack of attention to a badly drawn line.
2-I would imagine beginners struggle to add detail though, at least that's what happened to me.
3-this is also true. drawing kanji comes to mind. Even if I can imagine exactly the character I want, I cant draw it through lack of practice. over simplification of complex shapes (as well as loss of scale) in the memorization step can cause this as well, for hands and the like.

Quote
there are other parts of the brain that also pull a lot of weight when drawing
Yup, 100% true. at least when I'm building up an illustration from scratch I often don't visualize it at all, but use words and emotions, to spark a visual cue.
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Offline Ryan

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Re: Gabby's art lessons
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2018, 03:05:51 AM »
@suuper-san
With the detail thing it's more that since they aren't thinking at first what can be put onto the paper, they run into problems. For example, there is a limit to the darkness value you can achieve on paper with graphite, which generally means you have to keep the lights in your drawing lighter so that the darks stand out.

So while the beginner probably struggles to add detail in itself, I think they are also likely to over-reach and try too add to much detail when the good decision would have been to have considered a simpler conception from the get-go. You will see this in manga sometimes, but faces are often drawn with no noses or mouths far away. It's part of creating depth, but also accepting what is too small to draw with your tool.

Interesting about the kanji thing. I'm certainly only able to draw some of the more complicated hiragana with practice as well.

You would be surprised how often artists tend to be on the upper-half of the scale in between aphantasia and hyper-phantasia. Just my experience with my peers and classmates. People are certainly surprised when I tell them I have it, though.

I think I have been able to overcome it through a strong sense of depth on the paper I developed, among other things. I also don't think I would be where I am right now in terms of skill if I didn't study art in university, or didn't have a lot of free time. When you're forced to create illustrations and artwork you learn a lot. It's strange because I seem to have grown more from it than my peers which don't have aphantasia. I still have a ways to go, though. I believe if you put a lot of effort into making pieces over time you would have a hard time not making significant improvement.

For myself, as time has gone on I have become less and less focused on being original and taking instead more from others. Sort of like a vampire. An aphantasia vampire that sucks the creativity out of everybody else  ;).
« Last Edit: November 21, 2018, 03:10:03 AM by Ryan »

Offline Suuper-san

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Re: Gabby's art lessons
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2018, 09:06:38 AM »
Ahh that sort of detail. Ok I get what you mean.
yup those hiraganas are a real pain being squirley and all. I probably have to focus more on them than kanji to get them right haha.

the free time is a totally valid point, that's why I'm starting to improve so well as I'm putting all my spare time into art now. yeah as long as you are putting in effort you would definitely find it hard to not improve, even just a little.

haha well I'm quite similar in that I like to try and copy other artists styles, and while I complain about not having my own style, I don't really do much to gain one, and keep copying other artists :P
« Last Edit: November 26, 2018, 03:16:19 PM by suuper-san »
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Offline legomaestro

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Re: Gabby's art lessons
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2018, 06:15:08 PM »
Oh I've seen these before, but yeah they're always great. They're nicely illustrated and quite practical. My subconscious brain is truly a bastard in hiding its secrets of knowledge from me. Gotta train my conscious one.