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Great Drawing skills - How important?

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#21

Being tall may give you a natural ability to play basketball. But I’m not convinced that being good at drawing requires a unique physical or mental attribute.

If you’re born with a healthy brain then there’s no reason why you can’t become very skllled at drawing. And like anything - the younger you start the better you’re likely to become.

The people that think they’re gifted at drawing probably just started drawing early in life. My drawing abilities decreased considerably later in life because I lost interest and practiced drawing less. Yet I know people that thought I was gifted with drawing abilities when I was a child. I wasn’t at all. I just used to get into trouble a lot and was grounded quite often. So I would simply doodle to pass the time away.

I would also spend most of my time at the back of class doodling on my books while the rest of the kids learnt about algebra and Henry VIII.

I predict in future that there’ll be far fewer kids that have drawing skills, because these days when kids are grounded they go play on their XBox’s!. :slight_smile:

I have several nieces and nephews and they couldn’t draw to save their lives.

“We got better things to do than be fiddling with stoopid pencils!” - Kids

#22

When I draw the human body, what I’ve learned to do is memorize general measurements and compare the location between relative parts. There are certain rules or boundaries of realistic drawing and sculpting. Only when you understand proper proportioning, depth, perspective, weight, then you can go out of those boundaries and get more creative, exaggerating what you have into something entirely different. All you really need is a variety of reference. If I have a guy I want to seem reptilian, resembling a snake or crocodile, I’ll pull open my reptile folder or hunt down some decent images to work from on web and incorporate certain features into the figure. In this copying, comparison and memorization process your skills develop to the point where less ref is required, you’ve stored that info in your mind.
I feel the same as jamespthornton, in that Zbrush is drawing! You simply rotate your tool to a key angle and draw there for a bit, rotate again and draw. The pushing in and out in Zbrush can almost be thought of as shading in a 2D drawing I guess. Zaphod has hit it on, memorize and make mental notes on what you see, save it into your brain’s folder. Everything else falls into place until you get to the point where you’re remembering how pores look on the nose compared to the cheeks or chin. And in that process you want to try and convey an enriched story of the subject filled with these often overlooked details.
Finally, having a concrete concept to start makes everything flow so much better. The concept doesn’t have to even be drawn out. You can write it out or even have all key details layed out in your mind. Visualize the end result and just as important, visualize the entire construction process and what you may encounter along the way. Solve those problems mentally before working yourself into a corner. All it takes is patience, persistence and practice! Though none of it is possible without the passion. This passion or interest in whatever craft is sparked sooner than others or not at all. Realize that the key to creativity is training yourself to be open minded and randomly imaginative. In becoming more creative you’ll find your interests expand into all known areas of life and ideas will form like stars within the realms and dimensions of your infinitely spacious imagination! :grimacing:small_orange_diamond:bulb: