( okay Soo basically the something wrong I feel about it not me using ref, but it’s me using a ref of someone’s artwork and just basically redrawing it )
I feel like I don’t improve much because I always use reference, and when I try
not to it’s just suddenly hard to draw like I don’t know what to draw, whenever I’m in school and wanting to draw, all I could ever draw is an eye and it’s not even good at all??
It’s a lot of differences if you looked at it and I’m not impressed by myself because I’m only good* at art whenever I looked at reference, and it really bothers me…
Using references is how you improve, and it will always be useful because there will always be gaps in your knowledge. The more you use references, the more you will improve your internal visual library i.e. you can more readily draw on memory to construct things from imagination. Some experienced artists use reference directly for their refined works e.g. taking photographs to recreate or to guide them.
So no - it’s not bad that you rely on reference. But do try to do things mindfully - with thought and purpose. For example, do studies using reference, then put the reference and studies away and try again without them - from imagination while the learning is still fresh, then check back against your references when you’ve finished. If you repeat that at intervals you will reinforce the learning and make it easier to recall.
Using reference to copy the artwork is not helping yourself.
Using reference to fill blank spaces in your understanding is what you want.
You can draw what you see? Your drawings look like the things you are referencing? But your own drawings are looking weird? Congratulations you fell in the trap of using references to copy.
It is fairly easy to fall into this trap. But you improved. why? Because it looks weird to you. That is clear evidence. Now comes the difficult part. Learning. Why does it look weird? How should it look? If you notice something is wrong fix it. That is how you learn. And use a reference to fix it. But do not copy, understand.
Using guidelines is also important for improving your artwork. If you see an artist who doesn’t appear to use them, it may be because they’ve done it so many times that it’s been imprinted in their “mind’s eye”.
Yes, draw what you see (that’s your reference) and after practicing a lot, you’ll begin to be able to draw from memory. It’s also good to study composition too. (I should follow my own advice, lol).
I’m really wondering were this “don’t use references” mindset comes from that beginner artist often somehow get. I saw this a lot even 20 years ago.
Our memories often betray us, references are good to check if we are remembering things right. As it was already said, using them to just copying them, will not help much, it only makes you better at copying. Use them to fill in the blanks.
Another good advice I once got was to always use real photos as reference if possible, even if practicing cartoony or anime stuff. If you use drawings and paintings, especially stylized ones, you never really get a feeling what the artist left out and why something still works, and things can look awkward. Especially for cartoony styles, even when they’re simple, the artist usually puts a lot of thought (conscious or not) into how and how much something can be simplified and still can be recognized as correct. If you learn from already simplified drawings you will skip that step and will have a hard time learning what you can leave out and why. Looking at real animals helped me improve drawing cartoon animals by a lot. The same for humanoids.
When I started drawing I learned from Mangas a lot, it kinda helped to get the style I admired at the time but it always looked weird until I started to use real humans as references and just applied the style.
I think many people confuse “using a reference” with copying another artist’s work.
If you make no compositional changes to the part that’s being referred to, that’s copying, not using a reference. In my opinion, that’s where the “don’t use references” guidance comes from.
Copying can be a valid teaching tool but the resulting work needs to be called a study. It was not inspired by the original artwork, it’s an artist’s copy of that work.
Wanted to touch upon a few things. The comment about using real stuff for stylized drawing
this used to rub me the wrong way, because I read it as “anime stuff inferior”, but that’s really missing the point. The stylized end result (whatever stylization it may be) will always be the gold standard if you are pursuing that style, but knowing “the real world” broadens your horizon so much more. So I say now, study both, although probably start with stylized to “ease you in” as stuff only gets more difficult from that point onwards.
And regarding the references, I wanted to comment on the copying aspect. Copying is not always bad, for example, some artists encourage copying because they put up their work as training aid in the first place. However, even during copying you can optimize your learning for different goals.
You can practice observation, to accurately capture what is before your eyes. This is a very valuable skill for any artist, but it won’t help you draw on your own or “from imagination”. Those other abilities will get better, yes, but the point of diminishing returns will be early.
You can also copy with the approach of (re)constructing and arriving at the same result by building from the ground up (mannequin/atari, guide lines, etc.). This is much more difficult, but will translate into the ability to draw slightly different poses, or on your own in general.
I did a lot of copying with the focus on seeing, and now I need to go back to studying the construction to make progress.
Lastly, do keep in mind that all professionals always have multiple references at hand to help them with their artwork. It’s just the things they look for in references are much more subtle or specific than what a less experienced artist would need.
From what I see, the whole “using references is bad/cheating” is a HUGE beginner’s trap. I found that using references does show some things that you wouldn’t find out without using references and its really difficult to draw stuff just from your memory. I watched this video that although talked about tracing, I believe the same general information can also apply to using references, Ever seen I loosened up about using references, I have been saving references (mainly from pinterest and instagram) onto a USB drive so I have something to look at without relying on memory.
Most people don’t have a photographic memory and different abilities in how they can imagine things
References are a way to keep our memory fresh for things we know and help out with things we have little experience with.
Like I see my cat every day and have him for 20 years now but I couldn’t paint him from the top of my head. I could paint a cat but there are just too many details about a specific cat to remember. I use ref sheets I prepared for my own characters I created, to be consistent.
As you travel further on your artistic journey you will eventually come to a point were you start using less references for some things you already did 1000 times but start use references for other things you then do.
The journey isn’t the same for everyone, some people reach that point in a year or others like me take 10 years. It also depends on how much time someone can spend for practicing, it isn’t the same for everyone.
Mann… well that means I copied someones art
Soo Like basically I just redraw someone art in my ugly art style, u can’t even call it art style lol
It’s hard to learn by myself and I don’t know where to start, well thanks for this I’ll try not to redraw someone’s art again sorry for the mistakes! And sorry if I disappoint you guyss
Don’t cry, a study is not a bad thing and many people do it. And you can learn to do things you’ve never done before. When you can copy something perfectly as part of your study, you know you’ve acquired a new skill. There’s nothing wrong with that, you just have to remember to call it study. I don’t suppose anyone is going to kick you in the bottom for using the wrong word because you didn’t know it.
Personal style comes from indulging in the ways you enjoy depicting things. Don’t worry about it, it’ll just happen.
The doing a study and an original trying to apply what you studied is very good advice. When practicing pay attention to what you’re struggling with then tackle one little thing at a time. When studying another artists’ work ask yourself why they did a certain thing in a certain way. The asking questions is the key part of learning here.
Don’t try to make the perfect artwork and study everything at once, it’s the quickest way to get overwhelmed. Just focus on proportions, or line work, or structure or whatever and give yourself the room to get everything else wrong.
That comfort zone thing? The nice thing about it is that when you practice something and absorb that knowledge you’ll hardly get it wrong again. You’ll find yourself spending less and less energy into getting this one thing right and eventually you won’t even think about it, it’ll come out looking good without any effort from your part.
So the everything else wrong part will shrink and shrink because it’ll get automatically right. Relax and take a step at a time.
You can redraw others’ artwork. That’s not a problem. Just be sure to credit the original artist. Here are some ways you can title this kind of work (let’s pretend there is an artist named XYZ):
“XYZ’s spaceman in my style”
“Study of XYZ’s work”
“XYZ study”
Some of the best artists throughout history learned by copying the work of artists who were more skilled than they were.
I started off my artwork journey by copying reference pictures: I recreated a cool looking video cover onto paper with coloured pencils (good ole Dominion Tank Police), I drew the Starship Enterprise from a calendar I had; I drew famous faces from pictures in magazines. It’s how you learn.
If you do a person or pet portrait, or sit and paint the landscape infront of you, it’s nothing BUT copying from reference. Heck, when you do art courses they put a live model in front of you and the goal is to copy what you see from the reference model as accurately as possible. So in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with using references at all.
The only bad thing would be is to copy someone else’s art and pass it off as your own original idea. But there’s still nothing wrong with practicing by copying a piece of art you like and saying “I recreated so-and-so’s picture for practice…”
After so long you will remember how to do the poses, faces, anatomy and colours etc so you can start to create art from memory. Even then you may still want to use a references to check what a character looks like, or what the lighting would be etc.
It’s a complete myth that all ‘good’ artists sit down and create masterpieces completely from their own heads.
If you feel super frustrated tired and disheartened (burned out?), relax a bit and take some rest.
Rest is a critical element of acquiring complex aptitudes.
For example, touch typing 15 minutes à day for a month (7.5 hours) and resting the rest of the time will take you much (much much) further than touch typing 12 hours straight in a single day (not even mentioning disgust and injury)
