A quality of a drawing can be drastically increased by just observation the object in real life opposed to drawing the image from what you know of it already. According to Dodson, "If, however we try to draw these mental images, we quickly realize that we don't have nearly enough information about shape, proportions, contour, or texture to do the job with much precision or character." (Dodson 20). What Dodson is trying to say is, if we refer to what we already know of the image we lack the information needed to make the image look precise. This is highly apparent in the image quality of the apple drawing I've done.
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| An apple drawing from purely memory |
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| Apple drawing using an actual apple as a reference |
It's far more effective to draw an object with something as a reference than to draw the object by memory. The mind can't hold that much information to make a image look convincing; it's the eye's jobs to follow each little detail in the image, the hand can readily follow (Dodson 21). By taking the more efficient pathway to drawing a picture, that image quality would substantially go up. It's very clear to see that adding something small as a reference could change the quality of the drawings.
It's very apparent that the second image, with the apple drawn with something to observe is much high quality than the one purely drawn with memory. The shape is more defined and has more "character" than the apple drawn from memory. Drawing using something as a reference can improve the quality of a drawing by providing details that memorizing that image wouldn't provide.
Question: Could the concept of having something to look at opposed to purely memorizing something be applied somewhere in your life? If so, what is an example of one such occurrence?
Hey Huy,
ReplyDeleteI found your blog post to be really interesting because I kind of had that same goal in mind of being decent at drawing. Drawing is just a skill that seems pretty cool to have and not many people are able to create such cool pieces of art.
My question would be, do you think you are improving in your drawings as you practice and are the results getting what you expected?
Hi Milo!
DeleteThank you for your feedback. To answer your question, i have to say most of the time when drawing, you never know what the end result will be. While drawing you just have a general idea of what you want your end product is going to be and you work off of that basis. More often than not, the end result would either end up being something totally unexpected or a complete failure depending on the direction you take with your drawing.