These quick sketches are terrible but they're good enough to make the point that I have in mind, which is that most people draw the wrong thing when they go out sketchbooking.
If you draw people as individuals you'll end up as often as not with cliches: the middle-aged guy with a gut, the fat woman wearing tight clothes, the guy nodding off while he tries to read his newspaper, etc. That's because ordinary people people look pathetic when you draw them in isolation. They're glazed over from shopping or working. Your catching them at their worst.
Where people come alive is in conversation. That's where they become psychological and fleshed out. Take the fat woman. When she's talking she's no longer just a stereotype, she's a human being with a point to get across. She's more interesting.
Now the problem with this is that but people don't stay still when they talk. You have to draw your memory of what they looked like, which is hard, and an instant later you're diverted by the next pose. It's not a good way to turn out pretty drawings, but if you're lucky you might capture an interesting moment.
17 comments:
Brilliant observation. You captured some interesting teeth, too. I think they are leading the woman around.
Agreed, but i always have the problem of feeling embarrassed when i draw people in public cause they inevitably look at me like they know what i'm doing and they want me to stop it =/
hmmm life needs a pause button
great sketches very alive
Your list of sketchbook cliches is spot on
If i see one more online portfolio with sketches of old men sitting on park benches
Doesn't it depend on your intent when sketching? Maybe someone wants to work on quick gesture or pose or faces or anatomy or funny gags or blah blah blah. Sketchbooks aren't suppose to be for everyone else. They are for you and you alone. Only fairly recently has the "sketchbook" become something else and NOT a sketchbook with all mistakes and experimenting. Now its sadly being marketed by many as a regular "art book" for sale which is misleading people into thinking these nice clean "sketches" are unaltered, unedited and unshopped. You can check out any convention or Bud Plant catalog and see for yourself every artist and their mom with a "sketchbook" for sale, undoubtedly altered and not in true sketchbook form. A true sketchbook will have tons of bad drawings, doodles, unfinished stuff etc. which is the whole purpose.
Telling someone how they should use there sketchbook is like telling a person how and what to write in a diary. For the most part, I believe sketchbooks are a visual diary and up to the artist on how they want to use. I would agree a wise use would be to capture moments or interactions as well, but only if that is what the artists want to work on at that particular time.
Eddie, a lot of people seem to take your posts as the definitive and end all answer to things and I know that isn't your intentions. You even wouldn't agree with everyone being "yes men", would you? With all due respect, why do all the people commenting here feel the need to agree with everything said most of the time. Real cartoonists see the world through their own eyes and find a way to comment on it in a unique way that suits them.
do a post on KLiban eddie! hes great!
sigh im sorry, just delete everything, you really should enable comment moderation eddie
Anonymous Kliban Guy: If you don't stop spamming my blog I'll have to put up comment moderation. I don't want to do that because everybody, including me, likes to see their comments right away, after posting them.
ok ill stop, you think you could do a post on Kliban in the next few months though?
I get performance anxiety whenever I try to draw in a bound art-store sketchbook, like Eternity is looking over my shoulder, saying "don't screw up, this is going on your permanent record". I've never actually filled one. Maybe it's a fear of commitment.
I like to use pads of typewriter paper.
Kliban once said that you shouldnt try to sketch to impress other people and he was right
I agree with what Anonymous #3 is saying regarding sketchbooks. (Lots of Anonymi here, by the way - we need a system to tell them apart!)
I think one should draw whatever presents itself at the time in whatever manner one chooses to. If you're in a situation where people are sitting around for long periods, like on a bus, train, or in a foodcourt, you have more opportunity to do a more detailed study of pose, clothes, attitude, etc. However, if one is just watching people as they drift by fleetingly, or maybe two or more engaged in conversation with each other, then taking mental snapshots in your mind and recreating those impressions like Eddie has shown here may be the way to go.
I use the zoo as an example of taking different approaches to drawing depending on the particular animal. For instance, if you're watching the big cats, they have a tendency to pace back and forth in their enclosures. Because of this repetitive action, I find I can do fairly good rough studies by catching them on every other pace going either to the right or to the left. The monkeys and marmosets jump around in their cages so quickly that they lend themselves to a series of quick, loose gesture drawings rather than more finished studies. On the other extreme, alligators and tortoises stay quite immobile for long periods of time, enabling me to do more detailed studies of structure.
I reckon that drawing people in different environmental situations offers up equally diverse challenges and that an artist should take whatever approach that seems right for that moment.
I am surprised to hear you say this, Eddie.
If "ordinary people look pathetic when you draw them" (as you mentioned), then the artists hasn't done his job as a competent artist... which is why they need to keep working at that in the sketchbook.
I bet Pete Emslie could take a very bland ordinary person and make them not look pathetic or at least embellish the pathetic-ness-osity ( is this a word?)of them to make them interesting and visually dynamic.
To me that is the greatest challenge, to make a ordinary person somehow interesting and not bland. To say it cant be done is admitting defeat in skill and creativity.
Years ago I had a character design teacher tell me that it wasnt possible for me to design this particular type character with certain non physical traits (as given in the assignment guidelines). That told me he wasnt willing to think outside the box (he was older and stuck in his Disney product designer ways). I challenged his notion of impossible and found that he was too conditioned to his idea of what design should look like. Obviously there are good and bad design, but there are plenty of alternative solutions if you can depart from that defeatist,"cant be done" way of thinking.
Sketchbooks really have no rules and shouldn't (although keeping all drawings loose and free from expectations would be highly recommended). They are where the seeds of thought, creativity and exploration can be planted without fear or concern of what has to grow from them... or if you have to grow anything at all.
I often disagree with what Eddie posits here on his blog. : )
When I do, I don't mean it as an insult or a slam and I sure hope he doesn't see it that way(I don't think he does-he likes debate and argument). That said, I know from experience that it's hard not to feel a twinge when one writes something--anything--and someone takes issue with it. Human nature at its best! ; )
So when I do dissent I do try to do it in a manner I hope isn't too strident...or anything. Even so I've noticed at times that some readers take umbrage on Eddie's behalf, as if the only comment should be a totally positive, "yeah! absolutely!" sort of thing. Which is a shame, really. I know the "yeahs!" are sincere, but so too can be the "hmm, nope!"s, and yet it's seen as a nono to post them.
In this case I very much agree with whoever the guy is who writes about the value and importance of a true sketchbook that doesn't try to exist or be filled for anyone but the one artist who uses it. That's a vital point in this day and age of seemingly perfect, intimidating sketchbooks.
But on the other hand, as I read it Eddie is just pointing out a thought of his own, a "statement" that reflects his own opinion, not really insisting so much as observing.
And now I'll flip yet again and say that, yes, there's a problem to state "most people draw the wrong thing when they go out sketchbooking". God, it's hard enough to carry the thing and get over the nerves of comitting pen to paper without "is this the "right" or "wrong" subject/style/thing to be drawing?" To me the problem is in not drawing at all! Too often the case!
Another person might offer that the trouble is in even using a "real" book to draw in; that we'd be better off drawing on scrap paper and napkins(and that works very well for some people--takes the onus off of The Drawing).
Anyway, it's all very interesting...jjust thought I'd toss in my two cents.
-----> BTW, I tried to tune in KXLU this evening while in my car but the reception was horrrrrible! I could barely make out something about...about Wheaties? And who had the tinseled laughter in the background? Kali?
I get a lot of mileage out of people walking into Target and sitting in the cafe. That's where I am about once a week. What? Free refills on my Coke!
Anyway, there are a lot of people in their own little worlds getting their carts or food. I have a lot of solo sketches and they show me a great deal. But I draw them wanting to find broad cartoony ways to bring their hidden thoughts out. If you are thinking "Damn that Earl at the office! If I have to hear about his mongoloid kid one more time..." your face reflects that. Even if it's just a slightly pursed mouth and your brows drawn closer. Even if it's technically a neutral face it is still on there. Same goes for someone who got some soda on their hand or someone who realizes they have CHERRY Coke!
That said... I've done a lot of those, and I was feeling tired of it. Then you came along Eddie! And tonight you've given me a swell idear! Not Gospel, and not the be all end all... But hell, sir! I hadn't thought of it and you have. The idea has brought my sketchbook back to life for a while.
If you do start a temple with an adjoining Animonastary I'll shave my head for you and I'll hold Anonymous #3's hand while you trim his locks.
Hi Eddie, that's a good theory... I usually sketch people from a cafe window, and there's a bus stop and a small kiosk across the street. Here the poeple is usually standing in isolated, but somehow those who are in small groups are harder to sketch. Perhaps we focus in the individuals to grasp the pose and not in the groups?
BTW that comment an Ominous did about sketching on typepaper is exactly what I feel. Cheap paper means a lot of drawings! Good quality paper usually leave me cold feeted.
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