[ceenda]

Did you know you could make $4000 ...
he he, only joking.

Actually, I was doing some stuff in Photoshop for about an hour or so. Then, I thought about flipping the picture round so that it was mirrored because I wanted the characters to face the other way.

When I did this I instantly noticed all the mistakes(like shading and anotomical errors) that I had made in the picture.

Often when people critique your stuff it's often hard to tell what they mean, but by doing this it's like seeing the picture for the first time.

Just thought it might help a few people.

[Rinaldo]

Hey thats a pretty good idea.


I think it has something to do with the conscious and subconscious parts of the brain. That's why learning to draw by copying stuff upside down is so good. It bypasses your conscious mind, which gets in the way because it always has strange ideas about what something looks like.
copying upside down forces you to percive things for what they are, ie. abstract negative and positive shapes. It throws away prior preconceptions about shape and form. It's kinda like when you say a word over and over again and you start to forget what it means. The same thing happens when you are drawing. I think it all comes down to the way we turn abstaration into meaningfull organization. If you look at anything, its just abstract shapes that are essentially meaningless, only we have come to recognize and name them, giving them meaning. Flipping the picture throws away all the work your head was doing to make sense of the drawing, this at the same time dispenses with anything that the brain was wrongfully making sense of. Leavin you to see it more precisely.

Or something :\

I know this is a bit Philosophical (not to mention sketchy and a bit incompleat), but it's supprising how much relevance this kinda stuff has to art.

Hey, "perception is the only reality".

[Rinaldo]

Yeah "Drawing on the Right side of the brain" is a really good read for artists of any calibur.
there's also a follow up book (can't remember the name). They have exersises of sorts, and before and after shots, where people who couldn't draw to save their lives go to being pretty competent within a couple of months.
It deals more with drawing from life and it doesn't teach you anything about anatomy, but it does get your proportions up to speed in no time.

I've never really had the time to go through the whole book, but I'm thinking of doing it soon.

I would recomend it to anyone starting out, becase the number one problem that I see from less expeianced artists is wrong preportions, or a flattening of the image becase they want to do stuff like draw eyes front on all the time and stuff like that.
They don't really understand what they are drawing is abstract and they want it to look like an "eye" as opposed to a bunch of abstract shapes. You will still need to learn anatomy and do all that stuff. But it will give you a head start. One will gain these skills anyway just by drawing for years and years. but even pro's sometimes have these sort of problems


It would be interesting to hear what people like Fred have to say about this sorta thing.

[Slicer]

Oh..I�m not alone about the thing to forget what the word is only because you have heard it to much.. =)

Maybe that�s why I never remember my homework? =)
Or maybe it�s just because I�m plane stupid.

[Violent1]

It's all explained in more detail
in the book "Drawing on the right side
of the brain" from Betty Edwards.
It's all about that you can persieve
lines more exactly when you dont know how to
catigorize what you're drawing.
When viewing the object you are trying to
draw, the analytic, catigorizing left
brain would make you believe a
person for instance has to look like
this:

( Dont ask, I CAN do better than that.)

I've done it once or twice in school but
dont do it if you've been evily drunken
the night before coz it's pretty confusing



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I am Cornholio! Bring me Toiletpaper for my Bungholio

Violent1

[ceenda]

Rinaldo : I'm going to try that upside down drawing technique! Thanks for such a detailed reply, you seem to know alot about it.

Violent1 : Thanks for your bit too . I read a review for that book somewhere but have forgotten what they rated it like. Is the book any good? As I have heard alot about this kind of thing.

Slicer: It's even worse when that word happens to be your password.