Teach me to fish!

[Nadesican]

The saying goes "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

Well, that's kinda what I'm looking for. I have a sketchbook here (in my sig) that's got six pages of what I would consider as "Mediocre" progress, at best. I did a lot of what I called "studies" at the time, but I've found that when I look at an actual model, my studies help me very little.

So rather then ask for a mentor, I ask of you guys to help me teach myself. What makes a good study? How do I learn the MOST from a study, and apply it to an actual model?

Thanks in advance!

[pepps]

hey,
i thought i´d share my ideas on it.

i´ll quote mark winters here: "One sketch from life. I'm looking for your ability to translate what you see into a 2 dimensional representation using either line, value or color. I don't want you to create an iconographic representation of an object. Draw what you see, don't draw what you know (or THINK you know). The ultimate purpose of drawing from life (as far as I'm concerned here) is to feed your library of knowledge with resources that can be recalled later when you can use it. Do your best to really learn from these exercises. Internalize what you are doing so you can apply it later. LEARN while doing these sketches from life. Don't just try to make a nice pi'ture. INTERNALIZE it."

the idea, as i understand it, is that when you draw from mind you need to see what you´re about to draw. Like when you want to say something, you already know what you want to say, and thus choose the words, the same way when you draw, you want to see what you want to draw, so that you can choose the marks you need to make in order to draw it. Life drawing and studies come in help, when you need to shape your immagination in a more realistic way. When you study a head, try to visualize the head in you mind, see in with yor eyes closed as you copy it. This way, anytie you´ll be drawing a head from mind, you can remember this REAL head you´ve previously drawn, and confront it to the one you´re drawing from you mind. You will see in your mind what does a real head look like, and use it to correct your drawings.

Think it this way: you know how a circle looks like, you can see it in your mind. This means that whenever you´ll try to draw a circle, you´ll see the picture of a real circle in you mind, and you´ll try to adjust what you draw, to the image in you mind. The more accurate the image of the circle is in your mind, the more accurate will be your drawing. right?

now, apply the same process to drawing the figure: if you draw a person, you´ll try draw something that matches the image of this person that you have in your mind. Since the human figure is far more complex than the circle, chances are, that the image in your mind is not 100% correct, or realistic. The less realistic the image is in your mind, the less realistic it will look when you draw it.
The goal of studies is to create images in our head that are realistic, and reproduce as good as possible what you are studying. This way when you´ll draw it from yor mind, you´ll already have a pretty realistic image in your head, and you´ll be able to use it to draw something new, from your mind.

Our ability to draw is nothing more than our ability to think, and to see. You tell your hand what you draw according to what you want to draw; and what you want to draw is based on an image you have in your head. When you don´t have an image in your head before drawing, you´re mostly scribbling without any specific goal.

to recap my ideas: you do studies in order to learn how things really look in real life. You feed your brain with images tha you can then use when you´re drawing from your immagination.
it is important that you do your studies right, otherwise you´re putting half-right informations in your brain, and that is not as usefull as having 100% right informations =)

also you want to copy what you see as it is. Don´t guess, don´t draw what you think it´s right, or what you think to know. Draw exactly what you see; you´re trying to learn something, and it´s important to take things as they are. (that the whole reason why you´re doing it afterall!!)

hope this helps,
if you want me to clarify something just ask.
also you might want to check THIS (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=138183) thread for more infos and inspiration. =)

cheers!

[Mindbendermind]

Well, I'm becoming a fisherman at the moment, learning basic shapes and tools. Feel free to drop by my "Drawing basics" thread if you want to get in the same boat :-)