I hope the picture makes you laugh, but also think.  🙂

 

As I continue this journey to get better acquainted with digital art, I am also re-discovering my short comings.

Ever since I started drawing as a child, I have had an innate eye for perspective, and a pretty decent grasp of color and composition (intuitive, not taught).

BUT…I  STILL cannot draw a human head or face from scratch to save my life. No matter how many different drawing shortcuts or how-to’s I read or watch and try to put into practice, what I produce looks like Picasso on a bad hair day. (With apologies to Picasso.)

Rather than just paint or draw still life and landscapes, I also remembered some advice from another avenue of my life:

Play to your strengths and work around your weaknesses.

In this case, using reference pictures/paintings/drawings saves me from consternation and irritation…and lets me learn in my own way to become better. Many of the better YouTube artists talk about this as well.

The picture shows in an exaggerated way how the difference bites me. For some reason when I try to draw/paint a face or human head, my brain shuts off and refuses to compute on its own. But if I have a reference to work from…I sketch away, able to follow lines I see in the picture and things come out looking roughly like what I’m trying to accomplish.

AND, if you can’t sketch (which I can), doing rough tracings of what you need will help you practice.

Everyone is different, and the ways to create something are as varied and interesting as any other type of art. (Just ask a writer…oh wait…yeah… heh heh.)