Learning to Draw From Imagination

[BlueHabit]

Lately I have been working from life and photography training my eye for value. I have started to work from imagination, but I would like some structured guidance on how to proceed.

I have worked from imagination a bit on my own, and I usually begin by:

1.collecting as much reference as I can that's pertinent to the subject matter.
2. Silhouette drawings until I get a rough concept to develop further
3. Line drawings with basic shading to describe form.

I also plan on ordering Imaginative Realism How to Paint What Doesnt Exist by James Gurney. Any additional tips, books etc would be appreciated. I continue to plan my regular life/ photography value studies to continue to train my eye and develop a mental index of images for imagination.

Here is an example of one of my latest value studies



Thank you

[cloudcan]

It sounds like you're on a good track to me, I'd just suggest collecting the reference AFTER you have your rough ideas, so that your ideas aren't restricted to the ref you can find

[dose]

Don't neglect perspective. It's an important piece to drawing from both imagination and life. In fact, looking at your sketchbook it appears that your work from life is missing a solid understanding of perspective.

You have an edge with your familiarity with 3D modeling. A lot of concepts translate nicely to drawing. For example, it's often useful to draw everything in relation to a bounding box, which dictates the perspective of everything within it. Incidentally, this is the main reason for constructive drawing techniques that simplify the figure into simple geometric solids- not to make them look like the solids but rather to establish and clarify the perspective. It also gives you a hint as to what to expect for shading. Also, a good early test is whether or not you can even draw a simple bounding box from any angle in reasonable perspective.

It can also help to model heads, torsos, and hands to help solidify your understanding of those objects in 3 dimensions.

The focus you've had so far on shapes will benefit you, but it will help to complement that with more 3D understanding of what you're drawing. Understand the 3D construction of things from life then translate it to imagination.

There is much more but this is my quick 2 cents. Hope this helps

Tim

[BlueHabit]

@Dose,

Thank you very much for the informative reply. Yes I do need to spend much more time with perspective thats for certain. I did want to clarify that I rarely update that sketchbook (forget to update) and as a result some of my earlier very low quality life drawings/perspective are showcased.

[Charlie D]

Take part in one or two these

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=74


Or post some work from real life study or imagination in the appropriate section for critique.

You will probably learn more from a few critiques than thousands of copied photos.

[insane lemur]

when you draw from imagination the main thing is to beable to rationalize every step of the way- I would suggest memory drawing to really get used to this. Go look at a simple scene and rationalize why every shape appears the way it does (through interactions of light, form, and materials)-then go try to reconstruct from memory! Do the same thing with images that you visualize in your head. Drawing in your head is a very good practice, as is closed eye drawing.

When you closed eye draw its likely you'll start getting cev's of what you are drawing in a few minutes of doing it- its amazing how real the visuals your unconscious provides! So try to figure those out and rationalize them too!

[BlueHabit]

Go look at a simple scene and rationalize why every shape appears the way it does (through interactions of light, form, and materials)-then go try to reconstruct from memory! Do.
!

Thanks for your reply. What you are getting at is simple construction of a complex object such as this horse below, or loomis anatomy drawing? Other suggestions welcome, thanks everyone.

[Lithriel]

From the study you posted it seems to me that you are hand-tied to reference. However, you do have solid execution of values and I think you could do great stuff if you can break away from ref.

I have found that to successfully draw from imagination, one must have a solid foundation of perspective (specifically proper ellipses in space- here's a tut on eye level that mentions this principle- eye level tut) and a solid knowledge of lighting. Otherwise, it's rather hard to imagine how everything will look. Construction drawing is a great place to start. I recommend drawing shapes as if you could see through them, using lines to show how the form fits in a spacial plane relative to the horizon.

I wish I knew a great book to recommend when it comes to lighting. I gleaned what I know from several college art courses and experience over time. I am just barely getting to where I can make up scenes with decent believability. The main advice I can give is treat everything as if it is a plane in space and think of how the light would hit that plane. Also, know the difference between cast shadow and form shadow and don't be afraid to render hard cast shadows. This has helped my work immensely!

[Deadlyhazard]

From the study you posted it seems to me that you are hand-tied to reference. However, you do have solid execution of values and I think you could do great stuff if you can break away from ref.

I have found that to successfully draw from imagination, one must have a solid foundation of perspective (specifically proper ellipses in space- here's a tut on eye level that mentions this principle- eye level tut) and a solid knowledge of lighting. Otherwise, it's rather hard to imagine how everything will look. Construction drawing is a great place to start. I recommend drawing shapes as if you could see through them, using lines to show how the form fits in a spacial plane relative to the horizon.

I wish I knew a great book to recommend when it comes to lighting. I gleaned what I know from several college art courses and experience over time. I am just barely getting to where I can make up scenes with decent believability. The main advice I can give is treat everything as if it is a plane in space and think of how the light would hit that plane. Also, know the difference between cast shadow and form shadow and don't be afraid to render hard cast shadows. This has helped my work immensely!

This is good info -- thanks. Drawing/painting from imagination seems much more confusing than doing so from life and it's also confusing where to start.

[Lithriel]

You are most welcome Deadlyhazard. Let me just add- many new people just learning only want to draw nice figures or creative monsters and they don't stop and think about the castle in the background or the artifact in the subjects hands. You aren't going find exact reference for those things if you want to be original so construction drawing is essential. I find sitting down and getting out my ruler and working traditionally to map out how an airship should look in perspective to be a long tedious task (this is just what I was doing last night at midnight for a client), but if I didn't do it, it would be obvious I didn't know what I was doing and it would look wrong. I use construction drawing often for any piece that has objects or environments. Art directors will spot your mistakes so you'd better take the time to make it right. It's hard to convince new people to take the time to learn "boring" things like perspective when they want to jump right into monsters and heroes but it makes all the difference.

[Chris Bennett]

From the image you attached it is apparent you are only mapping areas of tone. You are doing this extremely accurately and with great sensitivity but you are not paying the slightest attention to a sense of volume and construction. That is to say, you are not grasping it as a 3D volume in your mind.

The only point of drawing from life is that you increase your repertoire of forms and how they put things together. By increasing your repertoire of forms you increase the number of ways you are able to build from imagination.

The ability to render tone in the right place when looking at something has nothing to do with this. It is only by internalising the forms before you and spitting them out into a realised code of understanding on the paper that you furnish yourself with the material to build direct from imagination.

Thus: Drawing from life should be a decoding of the infinite forms in front of you into something that is digested by your understanding.
This process then turns itself upside down when drawing from the imagination: A re-coding of your imginative understanding into the infinite suggestibility of the image you are creating.

[kitfox]

Riven Phoenix has a video course on drawing the figure from your mind. I recommend taking a look into it. I'm currently working on course 103. Here's some thoughts on drawing from imagination.

To draw something realistic from your mind, completely without reference, you need a lot of knowledge on the subject. To remember the extensive amount of things, you need to create a memory management system. The way Riven Phoenix teaches is by 'inventing'. You create a blue print in your mind for your subject, and for each part within your subject.

First you need a basic wireframe to fit your invention into, eg. a stick figure that defines proportions. You need to know what your invention looks from all sides, front, back and side. Even from top and under if it's relevant to your subject. Then you can start refining your initial idea by studying each different part of your invention, eg. the skull, torso, pelvis. When you learn a new part of the subject, you add it the main idea by drawing out all the old parts as well. You need to draw your invention out at each stage the same way you learned it the first time. This way you repeat your invention in your head to the point it becomes obvious how it looks. By drawing each stage out you also create a library of drawings for your subject to refer to, if you ever forget how you constructed a subsection of your invention.

After you've got the blue prints in your head, you can simplify your ideas for drawing your subject. The more familiar you become with your invention, the less you need to use the guide lines for construction you use in your blue prints. You can also break free and change your invention if you want to since you remember original idea anyway. Distort proportions, exaggerate relative sizes of things etc.

The process I use for figure drawing now goes something like this: start with a basic gesture system that defines the action, add basic proportions and landmarks, block in everything in basic shapes, erase lightly leaving anomalies of the sketch, work in contour lines with the knowledge of anatomy, add rendering to show surface anatomy.

Basically drawing from imagination just requires you to move the reference into your head and knowing how to construct a subject according to it on paper.