Ten years ago Neil Gaiman gave a brilliant commencement speech which became knows as the “Make good art” speech. It’s on YouTube. It is thoughtful and funny and wise and not just for artists. Go watch it.
But he was talking to graduating art students who are presumably already good at making art. They just need to go forth into the world and keep doing what they already do and get better.
What about those who are just starting out and who are not at the point of making good or even consistent art?
Last night I watched livestream of the countdown to the end of the Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter. For a good part of the two hour live stream, the artist Steve Argyle was the special guest. He is the artist for one of the books included in the Kickstarter, and he spent a fair amount of time talking about process, and much of what he said doesn’t apply only to drawing and painting.
Someone asked for advice about learning to draw when you can’t even draw a straight line. I was not surprised when his recommendation was to just draw. Accept that it will be frustrating, but just start drawing. Do a little bit each day. If you try to do some big marathon session, you will only be discouraged and quit. He also recommended drawing the same subject – person, object, pet, landscape, whatever – over and over and over. If you do, you will keep discovering new things about that subject, which I thought sounded really cool (as well as making a lot of sense).
Someone asked about reference, and he mentioned that insects were some of his reference for armor drawings. He wanted something more organic.
Then he talked about about figuring out how to draw something in the first place — how to even get started transforming the idea in your head into lines and shapes on the page. He referenced the artist Iain McCaig as the source of this approach. McCaig has some YouTube videos but also interviews and classes. His particular art isn’t quite my thing, but his enthusiasm definitely appeals to me. He reminds me a little bit of knitting designer Stephen West as far as making challenging undertakings fun and accessible to anyone and everyone who is willing to take the chance and put in the effort.
Argyle recommended breaking down what you want to draw into components. Write all of those down. Then look around the room (or wherever you are) and pick out random objects. Write those down. Take elements of those objects and apply them to the thing that you want to draw.
For example, say you want to draw a dragon. What does your dragon need? Horns? Wings? A breath power (which I am assuming means fire but I am sure could mean other things)? Tail? Scales? Four legs?
Great. So you look around the room at random things – a fish sculpture, a can of energy drink, a lamp, a coffee mug. Then you take elements from each thing and use those to make a part of the dragon.
The fish sculpture is curved and smooth but kind of scaly and iridescent, so you use those elements for the horns. The horns don’t look like fish, but they are iridescent, smooth, and curved, with a bit of scaled texture. Maybe the scales are only at the base of the horns where they meet the head of the dragon.
Then the textured looking graphic design on the can looks like shark skin, and the font looks kind of torn, so maybe the wings are a little worse for wear and have more of a thick, heavy skin than any scales.
And so on.
I think there are lessons in there for writing stories.
It was all fascinating. I would have happily listened to Steve Argyle for two hours.
Click this link to visit his web site.
Be inspired. Start drawing. Even if you can’t draw a straight line. ESPECIALLY if you can’t draw a straight line.
Small Town Hermit 