View Full Submission View Parent Comment
11:48 PM, Monday February 20th 2023

Yes, the scale of our drawings is very important for defining how much texture we should focus on, a fish swinming on an ocean is an object, a wall made out of fish is a texture, in that same manner we want to focus on the imperfections on top of the surface we're drawing which allows for cast shadows to exist and thus for us to conmunicate that texture in our work.

In other words, we should only try to add texture, when the textural details are large enough to be perceived at the distance we are drawing the object from. If we are too far away, the details become so small that they will not matter for describing the shape anymore since we would not perceive them anyway, even if we looked at the actual object from the same distance?

This is not necessarily true, because since Drawabox is interested in helping you build your sense of spatial reasoning this means that for your work you'll need clear reference pictures which depict the forms in the structure you wish to draw clearly. This means that often your reference will be at a close enough range that texture can still be perceived - and it's still possible to capture texture in objects that are slightly further away and it can still be useful for the viewer, but we run into a certain problem when doing this for our work and that's the limitation of our medium coupled with the limitation of our reference picture. We are using for the most part an A4 page coupled with a 0.4-0.6 fineliner, this means that any detail that is smaller than this will be difficult to capture, which if your reference is zoomed out means most detail. The other problem we face is the limits of our reference picture, looking at an edelweiss from far away, similar to the one in your work will make it difficult to analyze the small cast shadows shapes because the picture itself might not give you enough information, be it because of the distance, or the quality of the picture.

So for the purposes of Drawabox, which is to develop your sense of spatial reasoning in cases such as this you have two options, the first consists of either choosing better reference pictures which are at a good enough range and a higher resolution which will allow you to see the cast shadow shapes more clearly, even from further away, or finding a different reference picture alongside your initial reference, one which more clearly depicts the texture and cast shadows present in the kind of structure that you want to draw - similarly to how you'd find a different reference in order to add edge detail and texture to your leaf structures back in the leaves exercise - or undergo texture, which is completely fine as texture is completely optional for this lesson.

9:14 AM, Tuesday February 21st 2023

Alright, I think I got it. Thank you again for taking your time to explain this in such detail.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Michael Hampton's Gesture Course

Michael Hampton's Gesture Course

Michael Hampton is one of my favourite figure drawing teachers, specifically because of how he approaches things from a basis of structure, which as you have probably noted from Drawabox, is a big priority for me. Gesture however is the opposite of structure however - they both exist at opposite ends of a spectrum, where structure promotes solidity and structure (and can on its own result in stiffness and rigidity), gesture focuses on motion and fluidity, which can result in things that are ephemeral, not quite feeling solid and stable.

With structure and spatial reasoning in his very bones, he still provides an excellent exploration of gesture, but in a visual language in something that we here appreciate greatly, and that's not something you can find everywhere.

We use cookies in conjunction with Google Analytics to anonymously track how our website is used.

This data is not shared with any other parties or sold to anyone. They are also disabled until consent is provided by clicking the button below, and this consent can be revoked at any time by clicking the "Revoke Analytics Cookie Consent" link in our website footer.

You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.