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Oct '24 (edited) • Master Artist's Attitude
How I switched from Realistic Drawings to Unique and Expressive Art
This is for you, if you want to learn to be creative.
Making realistic drawings gives you an amazing experience, builds extreme skill and they are mind-boggling to look at.
.. but really we just created a different version of what already exists.
If you only draw realistic for the rest of your life,
you’re missing out on ALL of the following experiences
Continuously blowing your own mind as you create way cooler things than you’ve ever expected.
Feeling discovery state, curiously finding every new way to draw something,
Showing another human mind new ways to perceive beauty, a new perspective to grow from.
Creating things never thought of before, reinventing what is. God mode.
Seeing the world from an extremely fulfilled perspective.
Expressing a feeling you have.
Having your own style.
Being one with yourself.
Art is significant shit.
If we don’t truly CREATE, we might otherwise live as a copy-paste citizen that gets told what to do, how to think, never discovers what’s past their tiny bubble.
My personal experience:
As a kid, I endlessly took photos of grimaces I pulled. My dad hated it.
I would be hilariously entertained and obsessed with finding yet another new way of obscuring my face, exploring what’s possible.
He really wanted me to take “normal” photos. I fucking hated it.
It felt like conforming to a template.
“Yay I look so normal. I would never come up with the idea to look like that.”
What’s the point of looking the same as everyone else?
I became extremely driven to show him how much better it is to be creative, how genuinely inspiring unique people are. I took thousands of photos of me pulling faces. ;)
Along those years I had practiced realistic drawing too and had built mad amounts of skill.
I could draw incredible things that looked real.
Eventually I ended up combining that skill with the idea that I was ready to fight for. Uniqueness.
I experimented.
I found out how exciting it is to make certain lines thicker, certain shadows stronger,
like in my favourite cartoons.
I made eyes bigger and sad mouths more curved, kept certain parts realistic.
I would draw only the shapes I felt like were needed to make a certain grimace.
I would leave out anything I didn’t feel like drawing.
I combined aspects of styles I liked, held the pen strangely, spun the paper around, drew over the top of it.
Every time there was such a surprise for what new cool shit can come out of it.
What I made looked like I was an actual artist.
I fucking loved it and became addicted to seeing every new piece that I’m able to make.
This is how you become creative:
1. Have you decided what you want to draw? If not, take 1h to do so.
2. Sit down with your pen and paper and make a list of observations of the thing you want to draw.
What elements do you like about it? What can you observe that’s slightly interesting about it?
Ex: in front of me, there’s an empty coffee mug with a crack.
I like the amount of ball like and long reflections it has on the rim.
I like the way one line of the crack is behind another line.
The mirrored image of the handle of the cup is kinda strange.
The cup is very round, I didn’t expect its shadow to be this triangular.
The way it’s turned makes the handle stick off at a pretty steep angle.
3. Make a 1min sloppy, childish drawing with only the elements on your list.
Move way too fast to be able to make it “correct” and ignore your usual drawing process.
Any shapes and lines that catch your eye, make them extreme! Make them weird or bigger.
4. Check out your sketch. What do you like about it? What do you not like about it?
Ex: Sketch 1, the tiny thing in the top left corner of Photo 2
I liked how it looks like a big hole with a napkin hanging out the bottom.
I don’t like how little space I had left to fit all of the reflections.
I made a big mistake and put the inside reflections on the outside of the cup.
That’s it, I don’t think it is very good.
5. Keep going like this, make many more 1min sketches developing from the first one, and after analyse what did work.
You will end up so surprised where you can land with this technique.
Practicing this exercise a few times will eventually let you find your own style!
6. Bonus: Fully render out your favourite of these sketches with your realism skills.
It will be surreal and creative as fuck.
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How I switched from Realistic Drawings to Unique and Expressive Art
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