I moved to England at the age of 18; I had to start working and support myself financially. Art at that time was just a hobby. What made me go back in my artistic path was a very serious and long illness. I had been working long hours for years as a waitress and it took a toll on my health, causing permanent damage. Talking with my husband and we decided that he had to change careers. We rearranged our lives, he bought me my first Wacom tablet and I started learning digital art. He was 25 years old.
Second anonymous, Window Keeper and Smurfswacker-- I agree that the general principles I described can be more or less extreme depending on the age of the people drawn (see my answer to Dominic above) as well as the style in which they are drawn. (Keep in mind that we are talking about drawing rather than painting; drawing always requires some abstraction and distillation-- no matter how many half-tones are used-- and that is where these differences I am describing tend to emerge.) Even the Famous Artists School material that I quoted notes in a later paragraph, "When we draw male and female heads, we usually follow certain ideal standards designed to make our men look really masculine, our women really feminine." I suspect that masculine v. feminine is a more relevant spectrum to discuss than the spectrum of beautiful v. ugly. After all, I don't think anyone is suggesting that old women or young children cannot be beautiful? Second anonymous, I would disagree with at least one of your two cents. Regardless of how "accurately" you draw a "real face," it is a quantifiable fact that women's features are generally smaller and subtler and that lines are less pronounced, at least until old age. That just plain gives anyone translating a 3D object onto a 2D surface less to work with. I also think that "cartoon faces" cover a lot of territory, from Daumier and da Vinci to Ernie Bushmiller and Bill Keane. Surely all drawing involves a judgmental process of selecting some features to highlight and some to ignore. As far as I am concerned, comic art and illustration account for the vast majority of the best pen and ink work of the 20th century and much of it does indeed deal with "real faces" so I think there is more to the issue than you suggest.
schoolism introduction to digital painting with andrew 18
Ever since the illustration market went into the indoor convenienc I, like so many other former illustrators, went to portraiture. About 90% of my work is of women and, although it sounds flippant, my approach is to do everyone as though they are having a "good hair day."Everyone has lighting and angles that best define their features and when you're painting pictures that freeze a moment in time, it makes sense to be careful about selecting the moment.I don't see it as much of a problem...then again, I have no problem with the concept of women being beautiful. When we have our dinner, David, remind me to tell you of the epiphany that brought me to this viewpoint.
Anonymous (which one???) and Bellatrys, I can't say I'm very impressed with the argument that being female on the inside makes you better at drawing them on the outside. (And the argument doesn't become any stronger with the use of words like "stupid" and "old canard" and "absolute bunk" and "ideological blinkers" and "lazy.") If it makes you feel better, nobody here is trying to "blame it on women just being all the same." I don't think there's an element of blame involved in this entire discussion, unless it is on artists (male or female) who have had a hard time mastering the subtler skills of drawing women's faces. Nor do I think this is a phenomenon limited to "someone who hasn't done very much life drawing." There are plenty of male artists who have made careers of drawing females (just ask the guerilla girls) and illustrators of the 1950s (an era which Bellatrys derides) such as Bowler, Whitcomb, Whitmore, Parker, etc. specialized in drawing and painting female faces for female audiences in magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Redbook and McCall's. Their economic survival depended on their ability to come up with faces that women would purchase (and they survived very, very well).Perhaps it would help disconnect the aesthetics from the politics and the socioeconomics of this issue if we talked about this in connection with children's faces. As some commenters have noted, it is difficult to draw children's faces because it is hard to put down a line. If we can all agree on that, then perhaps we can have a more apolitical discussion about whether there are any analogies to be drawn between children's faces and female faces.
"...I can't say I'm very impressed with the argument that being female on the inside makes you better at drawing them on the outside."That wasn't precisely the point I was trying to make. What I'm talking about is experience and familiarity with the subject matter in a way that someone else might not be. Women tend to be more familiar with female bodies because we have them our whole lives, not just for a few hours a week in a life drawing class and the same goes for men. (Of course it's not even across the board, since a great deal of art and photography is dedicated to the female nude or the idealized female form in general.)My goal here isn't to attack or belittle anyone, but just point out why I don't agree with the general dissertation that women as a rule are more difficult to draw than men. I've always found the opposite to be true and most of the other female artists I know have had the same experience. The difference being that more men tend to be professional comic artists and illustrators, so most of the literature is written by men for an assumed male reader. So the 'common sense' of this allegation is lost on someone who hasn't read these books and doesn't have this same perspective because for them, it's an alien concept. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claims, all I have are my own experiences and the anecdotes of other people I know. However, I don't think that makes my experience less valid than a statistic quoted in a book."There are plenty of male artists who have made careers of drawing females (just ask the guerilla girls) and illustrators of the 1950s... [who] specialized in drawing and painting female faces for female audiences in magazines."I don't think anyone's asserting that it's impossible for men to draw women well or vise versa, my assertion is that it takes more practice to do it well than (in general) for a person to draw a person of the same gender. Certainly Adam Hughes makes a good living drawing incredibly idealized women, but I know a lot of women, including myself, who appreciate his art because he really and truly understands female anatomy, he does very well with creating a distinctive personality for his women, and he uses distinguishing facial features for them as opposed to the boilerplate standardized ideal model that so many artists employ. I grew up reading superhero comics and as I got older i became more frustrated with the complete lack of distinction from one face and body type to the next. Alan Davis remains a good example of a superhero artist who, like Hughes, is distinctive because all his characters have distinctive facial features, expressions, and body types. I gravitated toward books he drew because I could identify far more with his female characters than I could with many of his contemporaries' because I felt like he was drawing a whole person and not the generic idea of what a woman looks like. The problem that I see-- and this is probably changing-- is that artists like Hughes and Davis stand out because these ideas are far from universal amongst the genre. [tbc]
Here is what I came up with. The line work and painting job are a bit poor for the moment. Nate will help us with those in the next few weeks so expect a new version soon. The bottom picture are explorations that I first did with pen and paper then cleaned up in Sketchbook pro.
If you are interested in painting or lighting you should definitely have a look at his blog, his work is exceptional. To me he is just as good as people with 5+ years of experience and he probably made those colour keys, two to three years after graduating.
Mike reflects on 2022 and highlights some of collaborations in addition to Patron supporters and listeners just like you. Jared Cullum joins the podcast to talk about his journey from graphic design to getting back to basics with drawing and then discovering watercolor. He talks about how his art has evolved based on a love of cartoons to watercolor, gouache and plein air painting. He talks about how some creative processes are like climbing a mountain and how it is best to tend to the part of the garden you can reach. Jared shares his tips and tricks are around the tools he uses day to day. His homework is top secret.
Mike takes an episode to reflect on being a creative over the last couple of months. He explores some of the challenges we experience and considers how to build a recipe for recovery for your creative practice. He then answers questions about creating mushroom ink and then painting with it and ends with what a short shutdown of Facebook and Instagram means for creatives.
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