FALLOUT » LifeDrawing VS MindDrawing

Often, when I buy a big hard-cover sketchbook, I’m intimidated to even draw in it at all. Instead, I do most of my drawing on scraps of paper, and glue these into the sketchbook, using it more like a scrap book. I buy sketchbooks with the intention of drawing from life but instead I mostly fill them with doodles, things drawn from out of my head.

When it comes to drawing realism, I have always admired people I have worked with who can pull plausible images out of their minds without resorting to reference. Even when the subject matter isn’t some fantasy-land or goof-ball cartoon, I enjoy seeing a personal stylisation that informs drawings of the “real” world. I think that has made me want to be capable of the same. But I realise that part of the reason that people can draw from memory or imagination is that is that they have spent the time puting images INTO their heads first.

I can be sloppy about using reference too… Though not always out of pure laziness. I have learned that I draw better caricatures from memory than I do from looking at a photograph directly. Memory seems to record a shorthand record of a person’s dominant features and attitudes; a good place to start in doing a caricature. Seeing myself as a cartoonist rather than an artist gives me a bit more licence to exaggerate and fudge the details…

I suppose that the reason I started drawing in the first place was that it was a form of escapism. It wasn’t about representing reality but coming up with an alternative. Anyway, as much as I enjoy doodling from my imagination, I have been thinking that I need to more often feed it it with some reality; life drawing or sketching from life, or even copying images from books and magazines, is something that I need to do more of… in order to find that balance of personal style and plausiblity.

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I’m always meeting people who do more stylized or cartoony work who say they can’t draw realistically. I don’t really believe them though. It seems more of a case of some misplaced modesty or something! There is no way you can be a good “cartoonist” I believe, without having a firm grasp of representational drawing ( as you are drawing something even more difficult, which is an exagerated abstraction of reality). Having done both myself, I can honestly say I could never design a cartoon character, or do a caricature without first knowing realism. Seems to me that drawing is drawing. People who draw well have photographic memory of shapes and objects and can turn those in space in his/her head. It’s the same dynamic whether the artist chooses to exaggerate or not.

Benton>> I agree with you 100%. A knowledge of real-life is what cartoons or stylisation and exaggeration are all based on. How can you exaggerate something unless you’ve observed it first? What I have realised though, is that in my case I haven’t been doing enough of the observation part, lately. That “photographic memory” and “turning in the head” part that you mention is getting rusty…

I wish I had a photographic memory. Benton pretty much said what I was gonna say, except he said it better than I would have.

Since I moved to the bay area I have rediscovered sketching from life. I didn’t keep a sketchbook for a long time but now, I take it with me most places. I think it helps too. It’s Enrico’s sketchcrawls that got me back in the groove.

John>> Yeah, I wish I had a photographic memory too… I have worked with some people who seem to have it; they can just draw without any under-drawing, almost like a printer printing out a photo… Me, I have to scribble around to FIND the drawing. I’m like an EXPLORER not a printer. I wonder if there are exercises to improve VISUALISATION?

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