hi there welcome to my studio my name is Siobhan this is Art Skills Online this is
where i post videos related to figure drawing and specifically how you can develop your own
expressive and dynamic style of drawing through drawing the figure
i post videos every week about my process or about tips and tutorials for developing your technique
so if you're interested in figure drawing then consider subscribing so that we can stay in touch
so today i want to talk a little bit about the differences between drawing from photo
and drawing from life recently in one of my online drawing groups somebody asked the question
is drawing from a photo the same as drawing from life and a lot of
people were saying that if you're drawing from a video of the model
where the pose the model is filmed for the entire pose then that's the same as drawing from life
for me though even if you're drawing the model from a video where it's timed the pose is timed
fully throughout you're still really only drawing the flattened 2d version of the model
and that just can never be the same as drawing from life as being in the same room
but that's not to say that drawing from a photo is better or worse than drawing from life
it simply means that it's a completely different experience you might actually
end up with the same drawing more or less if you're drawing from a photo as drawing from life
but the way you get there the way you arrive and your whole process of drawing is completely
different in both approaches and that really comes down to two main considerations the first one
is that drawing from life is actually much more difficult than drawing from a
photo a photo is easier because things are already flattened out in a 2d visual plane
and so that means it's a lot easier to judge things like proportion and scale and shape
when you're drawing from a photo you're already drawing from a very defined composition you don't
really have to worry about composing your image on the page you can just simply match the model
or match the pose in the picture plane to your drawing and for beginners that's often one of the
hardest things to do is to try and compose the full figure to fit onto one page another reason
why drawing from photo is easier is because you can take your time the photo isn't going anywhere
if you're drawing from a video you can pause it and just spend as long as you want on that pose
and also you don't have to contend with things like the model moving if you are in a live drawing
session and you know you're really getting into your drawing and you're making great progress
and then suddenly the model breaks the pose or starts talking that can be super frustrating
another challenge that often comes up in a live figure drawing class is that you
just don't get a nice pose or you don't get a nice view of the pose
so all of these things might sound a bit silly but they are actually very real challenges that
are there all the time if you've ever been to a live figure drawing class you'll know exactly what
i mean you really have to try and push through all of these and make a drawing in spite of them
the second reason why drawing from a photo is just a vastly different experience
is because when you're drawing from life you really have to use gesture in your whole body
to try and draw the pose that you see if you've watched any of the videos on this channel you'll
know that i place huge importance on gesture as being you know the core of your approach to
figure drawing and when you're drawing from life this is really really important drawing from a
photo more often than not you're sitting down you're only really drawing from your wrist or
forearm whereas in a figure drawing class you're standing up you're drawing on a much larger scale
when you're standing up you've simply just got a lot a lot more access to your own energy
and that's something that has a huge effect on the dynamic quality
and the confidence in your line work
so since march of this year i posted videos of figure drawing where i've used
online resources such as new masters academy and line of action and i realized recently that this
year was actually the first time that i ever drew the model from photo up until this year i've only
ever drawn the model from life and i think i avoided drawing from photo reference because
i thought that it just wouldn't give me the kind of result that i was looking for
with my drawing style but i have to say it's been a really interesting experience to learn
and understand the difference between drawing from life and drawing from photo
and i would say that drawing from photo has actually really helped me to improve my drawing
because of these differences that i've been talking about so there's no distractions i
can spend as long as i want with the photo i don't have to worry about scale and proportion too much
and that's allowed me to actually focus on the areas of my drawing that were
lacking a little bit and those were technique and structure and anatomy so taking away some of
the challenges and difficulties that are kind of inherent in drawing the figure from life
has actually helped me so much this past year in my own drawing so for me both
approaches to drawing the figure are equally valid equally important drawing practices
it's much harder for me to capture the dynamic quality of the model or the
gesture when i'm drawing from a photo but at the same time drawing from a photo has allowed me
to actually focus in on trying to correct my anatomy scale and proportion and focus on my
technique
so an analogy that i like to think of to distinguish these two ways of approaching figure
drawing is to think of a musician say if you're a musician and you're recording a studio album
in the studio you've got complete control over your equipment your musical instruments
everything is pretty much under your control and that's kind of like drawing from a photo
you know you can have as much control as you want over some of the variables
say you wanted to go outdoors and play that album live for in front of an audience or
like a concert or a gig or something you know you've got a lot less control you don't have
control over the weather you don't have control necessarily over your audience and you know things
could go wrong in a live setting and that's like drawing from life that's the way i think about it
anyway it might be useful to you or helpful to you for you to think about it like that
so i hope this video was helpful and has sort of cleared up some of the distinctions around these
two ways of approaching figure drawing please let me know in the comments below what you think
if you've got a preferred way of approaching your drawing if you prefer to draw from photo
reference where you've got a lot more control or you prefer to draw from life where you don't have
as much control over your subject and over sort of all of the variables so let me know i'd love
to hear your thoughts thanks so much for watching this video if you haven't subscribed already then
please do that so that we can stay in touch and i'll look out for you in the next video
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