drawing help??
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/w2m0un/drawing_help/
2022-07-19 06:46
NvrdoGrey
So all my life I've been able to duplicate images onto paper - cartoons, people, etc pretty well. As I've gotten older I've often attempted to draw off the top of my head and simply cannot or it comes out looking like I've got absolutely no skill, and I'm literally gaslighting myself when this happens like "you can't draw if you need to look at something from start to finish to do it" and it's very frustrating for me and fuels the blockage of my flow.
Is there any reason for this? Am I doomed to needing reference my entire life to create art?? Does anyone else have this problem?
It's like my brain doesn't register drawing if I don't have something to base it from
Uncomfortable
2022-07-19 18:50
The use of reference is not a bad thing - but it's very, very common for students to focus only on reproducing images exactly as they are, on reproducing the 2D image in front of them, on a 2D page or canvas, without ever actually understanding the way in which the thing they're drawing exists in three dimensions. This results in that sense that one is stuck only ever drawing from references, because they're used to allowing those references to dictate the entirety of what they draw, rather than using the references as a tool to help you in make your own decisions.
Like I said - this is common, and there are many people in your situation.
Now, this subreddit is actually reserved for those working through the lessons on drawabox.com, as explained here, so I'd recommend that you ask this question over on /r/learnart or /r/artistlounge to get a more varied set of points of view. That said, Drawabox is a course that is geared towards specifically tackling the issue you've called out. To help students understand how the things they're drawing exist in 3D space, and to help them develop their spatial reasoning skills, so that they are not stuck reproducing a reference image exactly as it is, but rather are more capable of making adjustments and changes based on what they need, to create their own pieces rather than simply copying the compositions of others.
The course is free, but it's quite demanding, and isn't the sort of thing that can be completed in a day, or a week, or a month, though I do recommend that you give Lesson 0 a look. It explains everything the course explores, everything it doesn't, and generally how it is designed to be tackled. That should help you decide whether or not this course will address your concerns.