Drawing: More important to catch the general idea, or to copy as exactly as possible?

I know that all of you would scream now: "of course copy as good as you are able to!" ...but I often find myself relatively un-improved after trying to copy photographs or real life milimetre after millimetre. In short: I maybe wouldnt know how to sketch a certain tree from mind, even if i had drawn it before millimetre after millimetre. You (I?) maybe emphasise too much on lines, and not on the general outcome, of lets say, the leaf.
But maybe im just not heeding proportions and stuff enough.
As always, its likely to be the happy medium again.







Why is she still looking so male?

copying millimetre by millimetre will not help you, understanding the world around you will.

...I sound like a hippy, but i'm right.

The trick is not to have the drawing look exactly like the real thing, but to have it look right, so that when somone looks at the drawing, they instantly recognise what it is (Assuming not abstract\modern art.)

One really good example of this is proportion and perspective. Last year during Vis-Com i was drawing a 3D Logo that involved a running man. After taking several pictures of running men from various angles to use as my base, i carefully measured up and drew an accurate in-persepective running man, and immediately noticed that the arms looked kinda funny. After checking over again and again to make sure the proportions were correct, i couldn't work out why it seemed to look wierd. Mathematically it was perfect, but artistically it didn't look right.

After alot of experimentation i found out that i actually had to lengthen one of the arms by a siginificant portion and heavily alter the perspective, the result was physiologically incorrect for the average human being (very much so, one arm was nearly 7' longer than the other.) but when you looked at it, it 'appeared' correct, thus it worked well.

I later studied this in my psychology class, it has to do with the way the brain alters what you see in the world. In a picture, the brain knows that it's real, assuming a quick check confirms that it looks and seems real, so it ignores any minor faults, as it knows there can't be an error in the proportions or perspective. In a drawing however, it knows that there can be errors, and so it does not overlook the minor errors it would have with a photo. In the above case, my brain's memory said that a person's arm shouldn't look like that when in that position, so it brought it to my attention, but when i took a photo of a student in exactly the same position from the same distance away, my brain knew it was a photo and must be correct, so it ignored the fact that according to it's memory, the arm was wrong, because it must be right.



If you ignored that gigantic chunk of text i just wrote, which i'm sure many of you will, read this bit instead, it's the meat of the post:

Art is about suggesting detail (or emotions), not creating detail. Look at many masterpiece paintings for example, if you look up close, you'll notice that the details you thought you saw from a meter away arn't there anymore, it was an optical illusion. You're brain saw 3 carefully placed lines and, because it expected to see the folds in a gown, it put the extra details in all by itself. People do this, and with art, less is often better. Don't try to draw every wrinkle, instead suggest the wrinkles and the watcher's mind will do the rest all by itself. Remember that you are drawing for people, not for machines, people don't care if it is perfect down to the last detail, what they care about is if it looks right.

Yeah, this seems very right to me. Thank you for your comment. But one thing is still left unanswered: How to produce those illusions, our brain automatically converts into "detailed" paintings? I guess, this is the true challenge, and again only the very skilled will be able to draw less and achieve more than any copy machine could. A few lines placed in a drawing can either destroy it completely (and maybe you will never discover that these lines were the great problem that destroyed the whole pics outcome) or make it feel right.
I often read in art books (especially in books from Betty Edwards) that you should never simplify things, rather draw them in all their detail, and in consequence you will be able to draw them yourself. But more and more I get the impression that drawing something always means to discover the few simple "secrets" that make out the item. Then Betty must be wrong, because using a few characteristics to achieve the result was always her nightmare ;) (maybe because it degrades art to a common study/labour, everyone could do with knowing a few tricks?)

Someone could also say that there are different ways to approach the same problem, and no one is truly better than the others, but we all know the truth, right? Pheo > Betty, duh.

Who is Pheo? Oo

Me.

Everyone has their own style, some people do indeed find it easier to draw in every little detail while doing their art, but people who are capable of doing this are generally the minority. There's far more good art out there which suggests the illusion of detail than actually puts the detail in there, so either there's fewer people who do that, or their work isn't as good on average.

Also, by simplifacation, different people mean different things. I mean reducing the amount of detail so as to create a more effective illusion of detail, Betty may well think that when she says simplifacation, she's talking about cartoons, which are another form of simplifacation.

As for how to draw less to achieve more, i can't help you there, it's something a really good art teacher might be able to help with, my only suggestion is to go check out an art gallery or two and look for paintings which seem really detailed from a distance and arn't up close, then take a look at how the artist did that.

The thing you have to remember with Art is that nobody is wrong.

Of course people are wrong in art.
If the teacher tells you to draw a 2d perspective of an old factory, and you draw an elephant, thats wrong. An elephant does not equal an old factory.

If you wanted to draw an anatomically correct horse, and its not anatomically correct, its wrong. You set the parameters, and if you fail to achieve it, its wrong. Isn't it?

I knew somone would miss the point entirely and say something like that.

So yeah, you've missed the point entirely.

No, I got the point. If you draw a certain way, that certain way isn't wrong. It's just you're style and way of thinking, and there is no way that can be wrong.

Alright, i correct my previous post, you didn't miss the point, you were just being an obnoxious idiot.

How about this...

No, it is not important to copy something exactly. If you want someone to recognize something, try doing caricatures of everything you see. That way, you'll learn what it is that make something recognizable.

A man icon on a bathroom door is easily recognizable as a man.

Basics>specifics for when you're learning, and fundamental to doing well even when you have progressed beyond a beginner stage.

Hope I've helped,

icbm1987

P.S. Doing caricatures of men and women should help you figure out the differences in facial structure between the two.

Contrary to popular belief there is a right and wrong in art, there is good and bad. Just beacause some people like to eat crap and may infact find it arousing, doesn't mean that a chef crapping in all of his food is a "style" and should be hired.

All this talk is hurting my brain. I just do it and see what happens...

I have to agree with what Erwt said here, in both posts. Don't overdo creating theories.

It also depends on what you want to create. You can't take one vision as a standard for all art or ways of creating.. stuff.