From time to time I have taken on somebody to mentor as an artist – usually based on a need for instruction and a lack of ability to get it elsewhere. I have had good success with my teaching philosophy in terms of the students having a greater understanding of visual “truth” than they would have had otherwise. My approach is not a “fast track” and it requires strenuous effort to make gains but the end result is there is less of a ceiling on how far you can go with the work over the course of your career.
I have found very few places that teach the way I do which is based on the apprentice style philosophy and practice of the old masters – one school I would highly recommend is the conceptart.org atelier.
You can learn these things by yourself – after all I have, but it took me being completely removed from everything I found familiar and thrust into a situation where nothing I already knew mattered to get me to rebuild myself and forget the “tricks” I had spent years accumulating.
Without further ado, I present:
How I teach art
The primary goal of art should be to communicate effectively with the viewer.
In the course of my artistic wanderings I have learned a few things that I think are important and which I would like to pass on to anybody who reads this. First and foremost, I think "seeing" is a vitally important skill that is often overlooked. As young people most artists are taught to look inward, only thinking about personal expression and not worried about the outward appearance of the world around them. While this approach has much merit I think it neglects an important truth. Because our perceptions are based upon our five senses we cannot escape identifying with the tangible physical world. Any and all art that we see or we perceive is based upon our perceptions of the tangible world. Therefore if we attempt to make up our own reality we essentially divorce ourselves from all of our physical tangible experiences in this life, very few people are capable of making that leap... most of them have been on some variety of mind-altering drugs.
So the problem of seeing is one of perception, or more distinctly the ability to perceive in-depth. The depth of our perception is very shallow in general; we all hear the stories of a blind person who can begin to hear much clearer upon losing his sight. The reason this happens is the removal of the distraction the lost sense (sight) once posed, now faced with less distractions the other senses are free to become much more deeply attuned. To become good artists we must force our vision to become much more acute -- essentially forcing our body and mind to behave as if we have lost our other senses to the benefit of our sight. This requires much practice and a critical eye. The goal of the student should be to reproduce what he sees as accurately as humanly possible. While I do not advocate photo-realism as an artistic style of merit, I do find that has value as a teaching tool. Especially for those artists who are concerned with storytelling, after all telling a story requires a firm grasp of reality to force the reader to "suspend disbelief". There is no way that I know any better system for learning what reality appears to be than by drawing it as it is. Stylistic diversions are all well and good and I highly advocate that you develop your own in time; however style in-and-of itself does not have much merit… it is simply the vanity of "I".
Being a spiritual man, I find a great deal of joy in the opportunity I have as an artist to explore in-depth the wonderful creation of God. I believe that we were created in our Creators image in-as-much-as He being the ultimate creator is reflected in our actions as artists. I believe to be a creative person is to express your appreciation of the divine. Once one gains a deeper appreciation of this reality that was so well constructed by our God, it leads one to put much more thought into how we represent it in our work. This is particularly true of the human figure, which is commonly considered God's crowning achievement. The form of man is indeed miraculous machinery. But much like learning to disassemble a car and learning what all the parts are will not help you drive faster, learning the minutia of muscles and bones will not necessarily aid you in being able to see the broad bigger picture when working with the figure. Which is truly the important thing, after all very few people will come up to you and say "your pectoralis major muscles are looking mighty good today." We are considered a whole organism regardless of the parts. Individual pieces may pose significant challenges however the real challenge is putting it all together and making it work as a whole. With that said I wholeheartedly endorse studying anatomy texts as much as you can, just be clear that what they are discussing is a simplified & idealized conceptualization of anatomy parts... real-world anatomy rarely looks like anything you'd see in anatomy texts. And the larger issue of how the whole body interacts with itself and forces acting on it are left mostly to the student to decipher in their own studies. What they teach is useful only in-as-much-as theory behind the practical application of life drawing, not as a substitute for the real thing.
To that end I recommend intensive and extensive drawing of live models and/or photographic nudes. I believe one can never get too much practical time with reality when it comes to the human figure. The goal that one should keep in mind when drawing the figure is to try to see as clearly and deeply as possible into the subtleties of what makes a human being look like a human being. What I mean by this are the subtle rises and falls of the contour of the three-dimensional form. These are usually defined by value but can sometimes be defined by contour line as well and so we must study both principles. After all the human eye is invariably drawn towards edges which we commonly refer to as the contour line, and one cannot deny the power of light to define the form which we commonly refer to as value. So truly all we're really looking for is edges and light, which really have very little to do with muscles and bones. In my opinion there is no difference between drawing a rock or a tree or a person, all objects contain the same ingredients of light and edges. And so that is where my focus is as a student and teacher.
Draw the figure from as many different angles as you can possibly find reference for, and from as many different models as you can find. Only by studying the way light and edges change from model to model and from position to position and you begin to develop a knowledge base of what gives the appearance of reality, which I term "believability". When dealing with fantasy it is important to create a sense of believability to sell the reader on the fantasy as a real thing. In illustration the most important object you're likely to draw on a regular basis is the human figure and more particularly the face. With that in mind I would spend the bulk of your artistic training on those things, mastering the face first and foremost and the form of the figure as a primarily important object in your studies.
If you can draw the human figure well you are very likely to be able to take those same skills and draw anything else that you might want to very well with limited practice.
The question of how much work is needed to gain an understanding comes up sometimes, and the answer is not easy -- a lot of it depends upon you. But I would say that it is a good goal to draw at least a thousand figures from life or photographic material before you consider tasking yourself with anything additional... remember though, the point is to gain a deeper understanding of the light and the edges even unto photographic reproduction. As a matter of fact, I myself have often set forth the goal to try to create a painting or drawing that is indistinguishable from the photo in every way just to expand my ability to do so. I have never yet succeeded, and I don't really expect to, after all I am only human… but the process does teach you about how much you are not seeing if you don't observe carefully.
I have spent in excess of 100 hours on several different pieces with expressly that goal, and while these pieces were often impressive to others my joy in learning was far more impressive to me. So do not be afraid of spending a long period of time on an individual piece of art. It is indeed encouraging to me to know that in art I have found a nearly inexhaustible well of learning opportunities -- there is no good reason to be bored as an artist. As it is sometimes said "Art is long and life is short".
I have found very few places that teach the way I do which is based on the apprentice style philosophy and practice of the old masters – one school I would highly recommend is the conceptart.org atelier.
You can learn these things by yourself – after all I have, but it took me being completely removed from everything I found familiar and thrust into a situation where nothing I already knew mattered to get me to rebuild myself and forget the “tricks” I had spent years accumulating.
Without further ado, I present:
How I teach art
The primary goal of art should be to communicate effectively with the viewer.
In the course of my artistic wanderings I have learned a few things that I think are important and which I would like to pass on to anybody who reads this. First and foremost, I think "seeing" is a vitally important skill that is often overlooked. As young people most artists are taught to look inward, only thinking about personal expression and not worried about the outward appearance of the world around them. While this approach has much merit I think it neglects an important truth. Because our perceptions are based upon our five senses we cannot escape identifying with the tangible physical world. Any and all art that we see or we perceive is based upon our perceptions of the tangible world. Therefore if we attempt to make up our own reality we essentially divorce ourselves from all of our physical tangible experiences in this life, very few people are capable of making that leap... most of them have been on some variety of mind-altering drugs.
So the problem of seeing is one of perception, or more distinctly the ability to perceive in-depth. The depth of our perception is very shallow in general; we all hear the stories of a blind person who can begin to hear much clearer upon losing his sight. The reason this happens is the removal of the distraction the lost sense (sight) once posed, now faced with less distractions the other senses are free to become much more deeply attuned. To become good artists we must force our vision to become much more acute -- essentially forcing our body and mind to behave as if we have lost our other senses to the benefit of our sight. This requires much practice and a critical eye. The goal of the student should be to reproduce what he sees as accurately as humanly possible. While I do not advocate photo-realism as an artistic style of merit, I do find that has value as a teaching tool. Especially for those artists who are concerned with storytelling, after all telling a story requires a firm grasp of reality to force the reader to "suspend disbelief". There is no way that I know any better system for learning what reality appears to be than by drawing it as it is. Stylistic diversions are all well and good and I highly advocate that you develop your own in time; however style in-and-of itself does not have much merit… it is simply the vanity of "I".
Being a spiritual man, I find a great deal of joy in the opportunity I have as an artist to explore in-depth the wonderful creation of God. I believe that we were created in our Creators image in-as-much-as He being the ultimate creator is reflected in our actions as artists. I believe to be a creative person is to express your appreciation of the divine. Once one gains a deeper appreciation of this reality that was so well constructed by our God, it leads one to put much more thought into how we represent it in our work. This is particularly true of the human figure, which is commonly considered God's crowning achievement. The form of man is indeed miraculous machinery. But much like learning to disassemble a car and learning what all the parts are will not help you drive faster, learning the minutia of muscles and bones will not necessarily aid you in being able to see the broad bigger picture when working with the figure. Which is truly the important thing, after all very few people will come up to you and say "your pectoralis major muscles are looking mighty good today." We are considered a whole organism regardless of the parts. Individual pieces may pose significant challenges however the real challenge is putting it all together and making it work as a whole. With that said I wholeheartedly endorse studying anatomy texts as much as you can, just be clear that what they are discussing is a simplified & idealized conceptualization of anatomy parts... real-world anatomy rarely looks like anything you'd see in anatomy texts. And the larger issue of how the whole body interacts with itself and forces acting on it are left mostly to the student to decipher in their own studies. What they teach is useful only in-as-much-as theory behind the practical application of life drawing, not as a substitute for the real thing.
To that end I recommend intensive and extensive drawing of live models and/or photographic nudes. I believe one can never get too much practical time with reality when it comes to the human figure. The goal that one should keep in mind when drawing the figure is to try to see as clearly and deeply as possible into the subtleties of what makes a human being look like a human being. What I mean by this are the subtle rises and falls of the contour of the three-dimensional form. These are usually defined by value but can sometimes be defined by contour line as well and so we must study both principles. After all the human eye is invariably drawn towards edges which we commonly refer to as the contour line, and one cannot deny the power of light to define the form which we commonly refer to as value. So truly all we're really looking for is edges and light, which really have very little to do with muscles and bones. In my opinion there is no difference between drawing a rock or a tree or a person, all objects contain the same ingredients of light and edges. And so that is where my focus is as a student and teacher.
Draw the figure from as many different angles as you can possibly find reference for, and from as many different models as you can find. Only by studying the way light and edges change from model to model and from position to position and you begin to develop a knowledge base of what gives the appearance of reality, which I term "believability". When dealing with fantasy it is important to create a sense of believability to sell the reader on the fantasy as a real thing. In illustration the most important object you're likely to draw on a regular basis is the human figure and more particularly the face. With that in mind I would spend the bulk of your artistic training on those things, mastering the face first and foremost and the form of the figure as a primarily important object in your studies.
If you can draw the human figure well you are very likely to be able to take those same skills and draw anything else that you might want to very well with limited practice.
The question of how much work is needed to gain an understanding comes up sometimes, and the answer is not easy -- a lot of it depends upon you. But I would say that it is a good goal to draw at least a thousand figures from life or photographic material before you consider tasking yourself with anything additional... remember though, the point is to gain a deeper understanding of the light and the edges even unto photographic reproduction. As a matter of fact, I myself have often set forth the goal to try to create a painting or drawing that is indistinguishable from the photo in every way just to expand my ability to do so. I have never yet succeeded, and I don't really expect to, after all I am only human… but the process does teach you about how much you are not seeing if you don't observe carefully.
I have spent in excess of 100 hours on several different pieces with expressly that goal, and while these pieces were often impressive to others my joy in learning was far more impressive to me. So do not be afraid of spending a long period of time on an individual piece of art. It is indeed encouraging to me to know that in art I have found a nearly inexhaustible well of learning opportunities -- there is no good reason to be bored as an artist. As it is sometimes said "Art is long and life is short".
