How Much Do You Depend On Reference?

[Seth]

I was wondering, how much do you depend on Reference? I use it for all of my drawings. I can draw without reference, but my drawings always seem to be flat. I'm going on 10 years of serious drawing, and I was kind of hoping that now I would be able to get by without using so much reference. Not the case. I spend more of my free time scouring Books and the Internet for images then I spend drawing. Is that normal?

Am I depending too much on it? Is there a way I can wean myself off of using too much reference? To all you Pros out there who are more talented than me (All of the Forum ;) ) please shed some light!

Thanks!

[Rodney]

I'll keep this response brief by just sharing my personal experience.

When I was a kid (9 or 10 years old) I decided everything I drew needed to come from my imagination. I didn't think real artists were suppose to cheat and use reference. Wow what a mistake that was!!!

Later I read about a lot of various artists maintaining Morgues of references (photos, newpaper cutouts, copies of interesting designs and layouts) and I realized the error of my ways. (but old habits are hard to break!)


I use (reference) for all of my drawings.

Good on you.
It shows!

(Note: I've seen this especially in your recent work on display. I was just thinking about this the other day with the torque and twist on one of your character's bodies. It had a wonderful solidity to it despite her being 'a completely imaginary character'.)

[Ben Sword]

When I was a kid (9 or 10 years old) I decided everything I drew needed to come from my imagination. I didn't think real artists were suppose to cheat and use reference. Wow what a mistake that was!!!
For me that was every drawing I drew up to about 15 or 16 years old. If I had them all here right now the total would probably be about a million poorly drawn monsters.

[Adam R Davis]

I think the only situation where references are bad is if they're exclusively used for tracing. But then that's just my opinion. Otherwise I think references are a must... can't draw something if you have no idea what it looks like, right? My morgue has been Google image search the past few years, very handy to have.

[Rodney]

My morgue has been Google image search the past few years, very handy to have.

If the internet (and Google searches) had been available when I was a kid I think my dilemma would have been easily taken care of... finding good reference was probably my biggest difficulty so that made my belief in a reference-free workflow easier to subscribe too.

When looking at my early drawings it was easy to see I didn't know much about the things I was drawing (guns for instance were just big solid masses of immovable nothings).

With reference the mystery of how things are suppose to be articulated is revealed.

[OwenWelsh]

I greatly depend on reference, without it I have nothing to caricature.

[andrew sharp]

Not as much as I should 80 percent of the time I wing it and it shows. Time for a new years resolution more reference materials, for Dons course I did a bunch of studies on gophers and that helped alot even in kind of an abstract way learning shapes of body parts and personality of animals.

[Seth]

Thanks guys, I feel a lot better now. A lot of what you are all saying reminds me so much of myself. Especially those guns, Rodney! :) I know that a lot of artists use reference, but I got to worrying a bit because the latest book I've been studying about comic books mentioned that reference was important, but too much can stunt your imagination. I was afraid maybe that was me.

[Rodney]

Here's a high fallutin' thought or two...

There is always going to be some level of abstraction present in our work. Usually the more abstracted the less recognizable our drawings will be. Don often refers to drawings as symbols and I find that at the end of the referential spectrum those symbols fully caricature reality. For instance, two dots with an upward curved line underneath can represent a happy face.

There is going to be a reference point on anything we draw regardless of whether we place that reference there. If we don't put the reference there the viewer will. (Sometimes this is desirable... for instance when we want to manipulate the mood or create suspense we can blur recognizable features and hide references)

We control everything that gets drawn onto the page. Since we already have a direction in mind and want our specific ideas to be conveyed we might as well purposefully put something there that is sufficiently grounded to reality. Even in cartoons things should be recognized as proper symbols for the things they represent.

Where there is a level of expertise assumed of the audience it'll definitely pay to use reference. Perhaps the difference between a revolver and a pistol may be important in a story where pistols haven't yet been invented in a murder mystery... if the reference is incorrect it may spoil the illusion or send mixed signals.

Even the most fantastical creation must be grounded in reality or risk losing the intended reference points. If we want something to be recognizable, we must reference an original or risk obscurity.

(must be tired.... forgive)

[Phrogger]

When I grew up I drew mostly from imagination, and only a little from reference. I, too, thought that "real" artists didn't look at photos. Then I found out about artists like James Gurney who use every trick in the book to get their pictures to look right. From gathering photos, to hiring models, to building maquettes, he uses everything at his disposal to get the picture to look right.

But one important thing I learned (I'm sure you already know this): If you draw right from a picture with little to no changes, then it's not an original drawing. It's a drawing from somebody's photograph. (See the Shepherd Fairey debaucle (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/04/ap-accuses-shepard-fairey_n_164045.html) for an example.) Best to take your own reference photos if you can.

I think both are important to being a better artist. You practice from reference and from life, then you have it for memory recall when you need it from your imagination. Sooner or later you'll have to draw something you don't have reference for (a spaceship, an alien, etc.). But you can mix and match what you know to draw something new. The class I am taking has us do memory drawings, which I think is really an ideal way to practice this:

Take a picture and look at it for 1 minute. Then try to draw it in one minute. When you're done, look at the picture and trace over your drawing, correcting your mistakes.

[arif]

i think, Meredith process is so similar with how Don shows us how to use reference in his dvd tutorial `monkey see monkey do`....he demonstrates an owl and reads its profile...then he drew from his mind..then , create the character......

i always draw from my mind......all the poses and feelings i have put on my characters.........i drew allllll from my mind....and it gives me huge courage that yes....i can do it....no matter..it is good pose or bad....i can do it.....but, i always research from nature if i need to know what exactly the thing is in nature....and nature is great Treasure indeed....:D and of course...i follow Don`s way..........

[Josh Lokan]

Great responses everyone. This was a good read. And thank you for posting such a great discussion.

For me, this idea smacked me right in the face back in art school. I was late on one of my illustration pieces, and my instructor, who I was slightly intimidated by, found out. I didn't know this at the time, but apparently he liked me, and decided to help out. He pulled me out of the class and showed me something I wasn't expecting.

He took my drawing, which as pen on Bristol board, took out a pair of scissors and started to cut out large sections of my work. I couldn't believe it! He then went back into the class room and came back with a pile of magazines. He laid them down and began to browse through them apparently looking for something in particular. He found what he was looking for and cut out several images. He then took them and taped them over my work. Then he put the whole thing onto a scanner and ran out a copy. He handed it back and told me to go and finish my piece.

What he did was a bit extreme, but it totally showed my how important reference is in terms of working out things out. This is an example of literally using it as part of the medium, but yeah...reference is just that...it's reference.

One more story was how an instructor told us that in order to draw something well you need to draw it 3 times. But, in order to do that, you had to start with reference. "How else would you know what it looked like?" - was his argument. From there, you were supposed to be able to draw the subject from your imagination.

Many of use would caricature the item, person, place, etc., but it always proved important to start with the original look. 2 reasons. The first one I saw was already mentioned, you caricature based off of the original look. The second has to do with function. Your subject has a function you're trying to describe through imagery. This needs to read to the viewer and make sense to them. They don't have the ability to look into an artist's mind and gain an understanding of what they were trying to draw, so it needs to contain enough information about it's function so that it reads on it's own. And the person looking at the drawing probably is familiar with what you're trying to draw, but only by what it looks like in real life...not by a caricature.

OK, I'll get off the soap box now. Some more rambling for people to read....HA! Have a wonderful day everyone!