General to Specific?

[Cyrus]

One thing I realize I've been having trouble with is rendering the form once I've made the general shapes of the drawing(I don't do it like this all the time). It seems I usually end up working on the basic forms of the picture more than anything else and take entirely too long to finish, or don't finished at all. I might just be impatient. :^^;:

Right now I basically see it as going from big shapes and getting smaller and smaller as you go, any thoughts?

[hito]

that's pretty much it. Large to small.

Whether you approach it with shapes, planes, volumes... The small pieces interlock to form larger pieces by sharing a general direction of their facing or how they react to the light source.

Things will take longer when you start workign this way, but you will get faster and better at seeing, interpreting, and discarding unnecessary information as you keep practicing.

[danteort]

Yeah, however long it takes you to get the general shapes right is however long it needs to take. There's no point in rushing to finish since you'll just end up with something messy in the end. Take the time to get the general shapes and proportions correct, and then begin refining.

Drawing isn't something that needs to be rushed. It takes patience and the right attitude. One of my figure drawing teachers, when she was teaching people to sight, said that if it took them the entire class period (3 hours) to get only four angles correct, then that was perfectly fine. However long it takes to get things perfectly right is how long it needs to take.

[Cyrus]

Thanks for the input, I'll keep at it.

[mentler]

Let's not get confused here. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rapheal, Rubens ,and so forth and so on, did not spend a great deal of time on a drawing. One the one hand there are master draughtsmen who do drawing in a few minutes or a few hours. On the side of the coin you have your illustrators and renderers who can work on a piece for an enormous amount of time, they think they are drawing but they are rendering. Once you lose the spontaneous emotive aspect of the drawing it starts loosing life, if it had any life to start with. Most of the people that render miss what drawing is about altogether. Drawing is putting your soul your feelings and your emotions on paper. Drawing is your response to what your drawing.
Drawing is for the spirit and painting is for the senses.
Now back to your origional question i.e. large to small ~ that is the classical approach to drawing. I try to locate the spine and the linear rhythms of the pose, attach the rib cage then the pelvis. I usually at this point add the rectus abdominus and the erector spinae muscles. then I attach the leg that is bearing the most weight (the stressed leg)
then the other leg (the relaxed leg) next I treat the arms a one continuous unit across the top of the rib cage. The last thing I draw is the head.
Seems to work for me.
I put the head on last because it moves the most as the model relaxes into the pose in the first few minutes>

[Cyrus]

I definetly agree with what you're saying.

I can get the general shapes of the picture fast enough, but I'm assuming one would have to slow down at least a little once they get to the smaller, more detailed parts if they are trying to do a detailed picture, which I imagine is how some drawing can take hours as you said. I think my problem is that I can't seem to get pictures rendered any further at a certain point(where it obviously could be done more).

One thing I didn't mention before but probably should have is that this is much more the case when I'm using charcoal or washes; are there any tricks or tips for getting more detail/control with these kind of tools?

Anyway, I'll keep that process you mentioned in mind, I need to do more full-body studies anyway, thanks.