Quote:
Originally Posted by vivaldirules
Okay, fair enough that you don't know the mechanisms involved. But how about the mechanics of it? How much time have you spent drawing in the last month? Have you been reading or asking advice about it or have you just been experimenting? Do you find yourself thinking about images and how you might draw them when you're doing something completely unrelated? If so, how often does that happen? I take it that a number of skills have came to you quickly (e.g., programming, guitar, poetry?, etc.). Is that true of most things you pick up (lets exclude girls for the moment)? Are there things that you've tried to pick up (again, no girls) that you've felt came particularly slowly for you? I'm just trying to learn here and appreciate your indulgence.
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Well, shucks. I get totally absorbed, to the point of merely "going through the motions" in everything else (work, eating, sleeping). So with guitar, I bought one and played about 6 hours a day, day after day, until I could play the few songs I set out to play. No lessons, no books, just me and a guitar and some basic instruction on how to form specific chords.
Drawing, yes, I draw morning, noon, and night lately. Zelda's given me some good advice and pointed me to specific techniques. My daughter draws and has some books, but I haven't had the patience to force myself through them. I read through them, don't do the work, then go off with pencils and pads and doodle and sketch through lunch and during work breaks and in the evenings. When I look at things now I'm semi-consciously noting shapes and lines and shadows. It's cool - you don't see something, you see the voids around it that give it shape and substance.
It's "ok, got it. People are basically made out of cylinders. Draw the main body line, pay attention to the shadows, then make the bare minimum of marks to capture the shapes... go".
Learning has always come easily for me, to the woe of many teachers. I never did schoolwork... going through the rote of answering the same questions over and over seemed more like punishment for learning than a technique for doing so. However, I don't have "stick-to-it-tivness", as I've heard it described. Once I know I can do something, I don't feel the need to do it. I stopped writing for a few years because I was publishing everything I wrote, so, what was the point? Same with guitar. I reached a certain point, knew that I could dedicate more time and improve, so why do it, when I could spend that time doing something NEW? I'm sure I'll reach an "ok, that's good enough, I get it" point in drawing so will stop drawing.
I look forward to a point in my life when I don't have to work and can spend my time doing a number of things at which I'm reasonably proficient and enjoy doing.
@Geoff: Oh, I AM a genius, if you want to go by completely flawed, out-of-date, Anglo- and Western-centric "standards" of measure. I bet most of us here are as well.