Feedback Part 2

While they were all encouraging and they all held some bits of information that would help guide me in the coming years there was one email I received back in 2008 that would do more to influence my growth than all of the others.

It came from Todd Lockwood.

For those of you who don't know of Lockwood's work, please go check it out. He is an amazing painter and in many's eyes his is the last word when it comes to dragons.

Following are some excerpts from his email...

"Use good reference when you draw. Drawing out of your head can be fun, but if you want to learn and draw well, life-drawing is a must. It's an invaluable way to learn the subtleties of the human form (something that few can ever really master entirely), so have a regular place to draw. At home, if you have a camera, take photos from which to draw. A digital camera can be a wondrous asset if you have access to a computer and printer. I also strongly recommend a book called 'Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards. It contains some amazing exercises for stimulating the part of your brain that sees things as they really are, and can help you break some bad habits that you have taught yourself when you were learning the standard, over-simplified symbols of How Things Look. Every first grader knows that a nose is an L-shape, or upside-down 7, for example. It's not true, obviously, but even talented artists will have set routines that they run when they are drawing an ear, say, or an eye, that may contain inaccuracies that escape the casual observer. The result is a face or figure that is drawn according to a list of symbols rather than a detailed observation of the reality, complete with light effects, shadows, perspective, and so on. Accurate observation is essential to a good drawing. If you always draw from your head, you will not exorcise those flawed routines."

"Art is far more about knowing what things look like and why than it is about media, but digital media offer too many temptations that can blunt your learning ability. I recommend highly that you draw with a pencil, kneaded eraser, and a paper blending stick or stomp and concentrate on making the best black & white images that you can for now."

"There is a good resource available online: you can view the art texts of Andrew Loomis, for FREE, here: http://www.fineart.sk/photo-references/andrew-loomis-anatomy-books. Loomis was an illustrator and teacher of art in the forties and fifties. What most distinguishes his career is the legacy in these books. He was a master teacher, and covers all the basics thoroughly, with terrific illustrations to boot. He's an amazing teacher"

He then gave me a mini lesson on light and shadow. These points as well as some others that Todd touches upon in his class at the SmART School can be found in his recent blog post on Muddy Colors here: http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2014/01/narrative-illustration.html

LIGHT & SHADOW

"Here's a tip for shading: light acts like ping-pong balls. A particle of light hits a surface and bounces off at a predictable angle, like a billiard ball banking off of a side-rail. I'm attaching some little jpegs that demonstrate this..."

"I'm showing you two things: the light that bounces directly into your eye, as a highlight (solid lines), and the light that doesn't, which is the ambient light (dashed lines). You can think of ANY surface as a mirror which throws light back. That's easy with a flat surface, because mirrors are flat. Round surfaces are otherwise no different. Light strikes the surface and bounces off most powerfully at an IDENTICAL, but OPPOSING angle. Just like a billiard ball. So, the light bouncing toward your eye- the only light you will see, obviously- will be strongest where it is coming off of that kind of bounce. It's relative to the placement of the light source and the location of your eye, in space. A highlight IS NOT strongest where the surface is closest to the light source. It is strongest where the angle of that surface is MOST LIKELY to bounce the light straight toward your eye. That is the red lines. The ambient light is the light that is bouncing off of irregularities in the surface, and it goes in every direction. There is light bouncing everywhere, all the time. We only perceive the light that happens to be bouncing to the exact spot where our pupils are. Some of it will bounce back toward another surface, then off of that second (or third) surface and into our eyes. That's reflected light, or fill light (the solid purple line)."

There will be a tendency for a surface to appear brighter toward the light source, but that is different than the actual highlight. Look at the drawing of the brick to see what I mean. There is a point of demarcation on the corner edge of the brick where the highlight is most likely, but the light that strikes the face of the brick as it falls away from the light is doing so at an ever increasing angle. This will be especially true where the light source is close. The more extreme that angle becomes, the less likely it is that the surface irregularities will bounce some of that ambient light toward your eye, thus the light appears to "fall away".

"If you think of a surface as a mirror, the highlight will appear wherever that spot is that would have been a reflection of the light, were it an actual mirror. Make sense? Some surfaces are great at reflecting, like mirrors. Some aren't, like walls. But walls are still flat enough that there will be a 'hot spot'. Look at the walls where you are sitting right now and find the hot spot"

"That's all you need to know about how light works to start studying it. Everything you draw or paint is either a flat or curved surface, and the rules will apply. Even water works that way, though transparency is another issue. Your job as you draw is to see the light bouncing. The better you know the volume and construction of the forms of the objects, the better you will understand how light bounces off of and onto those objects, so that is important too."

While I never did read Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain, the books by Andrew Loomis (especially Figure Drawing for All it's Worth) and Todd's excellent mini lesson jump started me on my quest. Thank you Todd.

UP NEXT: Paul Carrick