Ron Kempke
Somewhere under the rainbow
I am not a monkey. This is a caricature of my cousin but the engineer's cap is mine and I wish he'd return it to me.
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Ron Kempke
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1d
added comment inDemo - Difficult Poses - Part 1
As interesting as this approach is in itself, can you elaborate how it would be used for finishing an illustration?
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1d
This is an analytical approach aimed at understanding what's there. It's not as focused on creating an immediately rendered figure (if that's what you mean by illustration?).
However, I do have plenty of videos on my YouTube channel that might help show this complete process. Here's a couple links. One is sped up and another narrated. Hope this helps.
If I'm missing your question entirely here please just let me know.
https://youtu.be/pqHbUWmQODw?si=6leD9PvG2sw1kcVW
https://youtu.be/2H2NNpnN8a8?si=cGtaQcCgLVtdsjSx
Ron Kempke
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20d
I'm hoping you're eventually going to take us through the entire drawing process, from the beginning gesture marks to the final drawing, so we can see how the final is created from the gesture. I've never been able to make that leap, so I'm hoping you can clear it up for me with a step-by-step demonstration.
He's got the Figure Construction course that starts with gesture and he builds up from that to rendering.
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20d
Hey Ron, this course just goes through gesture and not my entire drawing process. I have a number of videos on you tube that would show that for you though.
Asked for help
I wish you'd put as much effort into explaining as you do entertaining, like equating the horizon with the viewer's eye level, how and why it can change and how that change affects the perspective. That's a very rudimentary observation that usually precedes any form building. I apologize if my criticism is premature but I think your chalk talks were much more informative.
Hi, Ron!
I come from formal Art Academy training where art is turned into a science, and at the end of the degree students become very radicalized; some despise it completely, others forget why the do art and lose their mojo. Marshal's approach to this course is to keep us engaging with the formal learning but in a creative, intuitive way. I notice that he would post a vague homework to get the students to do something, with no deep explanation (which makes me feel uncomfortable). Then he would post the actual explanation with a more in depth clarification of what is expected. As a student my first urge is to blame it on the teacher as 'sloppy teaching'. I vent it out, get over it, and just do it. I can see the self awareness value coming out of these: Get to work with almost no understanding. These uncomfortable exercises with open endings turned out the most valuable lessons on critical, self analysis thinking.
His approach to this course is challenging to the way all the other courses of Perspective are done, and this why is so valuable to go through it. He talks about it in the Draftsmen Podcast if you need that extra understanding on the logic to the madness. Anyway, I totally understand where you are coming from and wanted to give you a pat on the shoulder. At the same time I trust Marshal and his extensive knowledge on the subject of teaching and learning, and I am in for the ride regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me feel. That means I need to stretch myself and give it try. Sometimes I get nothing out of some homework, other demos are just brilliant and get me excited about tackling a particular approach. Regardless of my internal resistance, I vowed myself to play full in, even when it gets uncomfortable. I hope my sharing helps a little bit with how you are feeling right now.
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25d
Hey, Ron! The course builds up your understanding of the concepts behind perspective and how those affect objects, and why. With those in your toolkit, you'll then dive into applying those on a larger scale with a full scene that has complex considerations like vanishing point being determined by the viewer's eye. Think of it as learning to rotate the box before placing it in an environment.
When we already have that knowledge as you do, it can be hard to rewind to a time before we knew that and sit through fundamentals. But revisiting those when we get the chance can unlock new understandings for us sometimes. Marshall planned this course to teach beginners in a way that sets them up for a deep understanding of perspective and this is the order he determined.
Here's an image that was previously shared on this course page that takes you through the lesson group plan. You can see Eye Level in lesson group 9, leading into the more complex Picture Plane in lesson group 10.
Ron Kempke
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2mo
Michael, how do we learn to express our ideas with lines and shapes? Is this a skill artists possess innately or is it something they've had to learn and, if so, how and where have they learned it? I find this aspect of gesture drawing to be an unlearned foreign language, so maybe I'm delusional to believe I could someday communicate ideas and emotions through drawing.
BTW, I've had a long career as a working technical illustrator which has probably influenced my confusion with communicating feelings through drawing because I've associated the act of drawing with reporting tangible facts. How do I unlearn that mindset if that's what's required to express with gesture?
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2mo
Hey Ron, great questions. Don't know if I have the capacity to answer them here. I guess it just depends on how you choose to see drawing. I see line, shape, and value as components of a language. As such, while some may posses an innate familiarity, the rest of us develop proficiency in being visually literate with said formal elements. From there the question is to what end do you use it. You already concede that drawing communicates tangible facts. To me this is an idea about what you see and how you choose to convey it. Gesture in the way I discuss it here conveys tangible facts about the body and it's design through rhythm and asymmetry.
Maybe it's a matter of how we frame it?
Dermot
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2mo
Asked for help
Marshalll, great lesson.
I for sure need this !
Here are some of my attempts.
My lines are terrible messy sorry, but I have to draw something.
When drawing the card boxes from blobs, I found my blobs were too small or the wrong shape.
The sellotape dispenser had me lost when working on
simplifying it with blobs.
I feel I compromised the purpose of the blobs!
Help!
Please.
:)
You're never going to learn how to draw boxes unless you actually set one up and draw it from many different locations. This is the only way perspective is going to make any sense to you too.
Ron Kempke
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2mo
Asked for help
It may be due to the camera angle but, when I use your suggestion of rapidly comparing your drawing to its reference, I see the drawing as being slightly stretched vertically compared to its reference. Are you seeing that too on the video?
When I was a student, this type of distortion was a common issue for those of us who didn't begin a drawing with an envelope that established the overall proportions of the image. What are your thoughts about using measured envelopes as a beginning, as Raphael Ellender teaches in his book, Basic Drawing?
BTW, Andrew Loomis offers a "visual survey" on page 88 of, Figure Drawing For All It's Worth, that's kind of similar to your "inside to outside" method of measuring.
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2mo
I have no idea what you mean by envelopes.
Ron Kempke
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2mo
Asked for help
I think it's interesting (and frustrating) to see how far off most of us are on our first attempt. Beside your rapid eye suggestion, are there any other exercises you can recommend that will help develop a hypersensitivity to minute differences, because most of us seem to lack that ability?
Ron Kempke
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2mo
Asked for help
Thank you so much for making this method crystal clear. I believe it's the same method that Harley Brown uses to produce his images.
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2mo
I love Harley Brown and I could only hope that this is similar to the way he works
Ron Kempke
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2mo
Asked for help
I have two questions:
1. Are you drawing sight size?
2. How do you know you won't run off the paper when you get farther away from your starting point?
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2mo
No I am not sight size. I’m drawing from the inside to the out is the better way to look at it and that’s why using some type of graph even if it’s minor to know where to begin helps a lot
@aakerhus
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2mo
Asked for help
Trying another one were I try to think about it as "I'm about to slice through the subject" ( Poor froggy :( ) I think it looks good, but I don't feel confident about it.. Don't really know if what I do counts as cross-countour or if I am just enhancing the forms you allready are seeing in the reference, I guess it is a little bit of both?
Copying is easy. Draw it from another point of view to see if you really understand it.
