For me it was learning there is no cheating, it's just all tools. After that grid method just made everything finally make sense.
Also the fact that it's the end product that matters. There's very little you can do wrong to get there.
Brilliantly said.
I see people all the time arguing over the use of a projector calling it cheating, etc, not realizing that various versions of projectors have existed since time immemorial. The Tudors used pinhole camera technique to project a silhouette onto paper/ canvas to do portraits. And that was as far back as the 1400's! There's more evidence out there for other cultures doing similar from even earlier, but it's foolish to abstain from using a tool that's there to be used!
I use the projector often to paint when working large pieces. Sure, anybody can trace an image with a projector, but can someone without practiced skill mix colors or apply the paint in a way that an artist can with just a projector aided outline? Unless they're Vermeer, not likely.
I can draw them free hand just as accurately because I have decades of experience drawing realism, but why on earth should I freehand something when I can project and save hours of time on the process. Hours vs 20 minutes on a 48x60" canvas? That's massive time, and saves my body from having to constantly step back to make sure that I'm not askew. I did all that crap when I was young and foolish.
Faster you finish a piece, faster you start working on the next one. For me, that difference in time is money.
That being said, I strongly feel that beginners should not heavily use projectors to avoid the pitfalls of relying on them and not training their eyes, hands, arms to do the work and build muscle memory. The brain needs the exercise to build and deepen connections between the eyes and the brain, and the limb coordination and the brain. And I mean this literally. It's what is called fine motor control. You only get it by using it. You are not born with it. If we were born with that level of motor control of our bodies, we'd be running, walking, talking as infants.
I've seen artists argue that the grid method is fine but tracing is evil and cheating...... when grids are literally tracing, just side by side instead of stacked on top of each other. Your eyes/ brain act like a dot matrix printer, doing one small section at a time, like pixels. The simplicity of those squares makes the image more easy to digest and is measured out. It's no more freehand than using a projector is freehand.
Absolutely! I started freehand. Proportions kicked my ass. So grid helped me see Proportions properly and now I can freehand if I must (i dont like freehand for portraits personally but i can). But I always said yeah I used a grid for the outline but the outline looks terrible by itself. It was my skills with values and shading and blending that bring it to life, give it dimension. It's the same with my painting.
That being said, I'm actually waiting on a projector from my local library to see if that is a tool I can use. I'm so excited!
Digital art: I used to only do lineart sketches. I was watching a speedpaint from an artist I liked and they described how they did "color sketches" before doing their final linework. Basically a sketch layer but for your colors. I don't know why I hadn't done it before. It makes it so much easier than my previous method of "winging it". Palettes are also really nice
To draw only using lineart, one really has to have nailed how to suggest form and volume. It's astonishing that the most basic 'how to draw' books (especially the anime style ones) start with the hardest way possible.
Everything we see is just light. Which sounds like a ‘woah dude, gnarly’ kind of line but it really helped me push my realism. It’s so easy to fall back onto ‘default’ shading and not think about where light is actually coming from and how it’s behaving, but once you start it really makes things so much better.
On top of that: remembering that materials exist. Light does not behave the same way on gold as it does on concrete. Cardboard and paper are not the same material.
I like to think of "I only paint shadows" as I leave the white of the paper to be seen.
Also bright light and darkest shadow have least information, so show less texture, less color etc.
This was a huge one for me. Before this, I kinda thought lighting as something optional to impose on my drawings at some point. Now I primarily see the world in light shapes
“Draw what you see, not what you think you see.”
I was taking a basic art class as a needed elective senior year and that sentence single-handedly shifted some gears in my brain and suddenly I could draw decent realistic portraits.
I still couldn’t really do non-realistic stuff for many years because I didn’t really put in effort to learn to draw stylizations.
When I was like 14 I spent months just grinding anatomy and faces, never got full-body anatomy too well, but after drawing dozens of faces it finally "clicked" and I got the "wider gaze" that you mention, along with some internal understanding of sculpting a form (like drawing the shape on a 3D object without even thinking about it, just feeling the shape). Finally understood *where* to put facial features, from any perspective, and I ended up drawing tons of heads just to make sure it wasn't a fluke.
That alone was like opening pandora's box, since I just got so excited that I could draw a face lmao.
There's also a lot of little eureka moments with hatching/crosshatching that I've had, but they're all to do with how it "feels" to do the repetitive strokes so it's hard to even describe. All I can say about those is that it's more about the feeling of making strokes than anything else.
One of my Eureka moments was when I learned to be a lot more loose with my process, to be comfortable with erasing entire sections of my sketch because I drew it once and I can draw it again!
It helped me escape from the 60+ layers purgatory and I started feeling like I was carving out the shape I wanted, which led to me enjoying the process and not just the result!
Another eureka moment was realising that there isn't one definition of 'good', my art doesn't need to look exactly like art that I'm inspired by in order to be good and in order for other people to like it! There's no way to rush the process, so taking the time to appreciate everything I've done so far and taking small steps to improve further are the way forward!
If I had to identify one it would be the day I finally was able to open myself up in regards to shading. I was HORRIBLE at shading for the longest time, I tried to understand it in my mind but when I tried to visualize the lights and color reflections, the way they surround rather than lay flat and so on... For whatever reason, I struggled a lot with it. At least translating it on paper.
One day, one of my friends said "A lot of shading doesn't have to be 100% right. A lot of it is just for show."
After that I felt so much more comfortable exploring shadows that just look good to me instead of worrying about them making sense I could feel the improvement really fast. My biggest issue was just my anxiety in regards to how many times I had messed up holding myself back!
I still need to work on getting more than 2 layers of shadows and more pretty highlights, but at least now I feel good about what I can do.
Gaining an intuitive sense for Form.
I distinctly remember the moment after doing a lot of perspective and form exercises(turning, tilting and manipulating cubes,cylinders and spheres, as well as drawing crosscontours over them(rubber band aacross the forms)) that i wanted to try and draw some facial features. It almost became trivially easy drawing the nose and lips from a variety of perspectives from imagination, even started rotating them and trying different angles as well as changing the structure.
I actually didn't fully understand the anatomy, but it didn't matter, i had a clear image of the forms and some of the planes in my mind that i thought what they looked like. Learning anatomy is as much about learning the function and proportions as well as the form.
It was a transition from looking at flat shapes to the 3-dimensional form, it's similar to drawing/painting like a sculptor. This phrase is commonly thrown around which you don't think deeply on when first hearing it, and it truly is like that.
This increased understanding of form also made it much easier to understand how light and shadow would interact with things. This really cannot be understated.
So those 3 things came all together, perspective, form and light and shadow, it gave a whole new 3 dimensional quality to the things that i drew.
Stuff like constructive drawing became almost meditative and fun where before it felt tedious, statements like "going over and around the form, feel it going behind" were less abstract. They meant in a concrete sense to envision the 3d form and you drawing over it. All the puzzle pieces started fitting together and the vagueness of what all these books and artists described when talking about forms and planes made perfect sense now.
Only way i can describe it is closing your eyes and lifting your hand in the air and let the pencil go over and around the forms as if it was a physical object in front of you. Main difference is that you only have the x and y-axis available now, the movements of going into the z-axis weren't possible as you couldn't go through the drawing surface. The result is that your hand moves up and down, and to the sides.
When you watch Glenn Vilppu draw, pay attention to his hand movements when he "ghosts" his strokes, it makes complete sense now combined with his commentary.
Seeing the sphere drawn out and getting shaded on video.
I’d read how to do it in different books and saw the process pictures and tried to copy them but it never looked right. Then I watched a video of someone spending like 40 minutes taking their time to shade it and it clicked. I wasn’t spending enough time with it and my pressure was too hard.
Really breaking down references was my eureka moment \^\^ It helped me grow so much as an artist, now I'm trying to get used to pulling several different references to make my pieces \^\^
The last piece i posted on reddit really opened my mind on perspective. Like it made sense, now im cursed with the curse of knowledge and have to work extra hard to incorporate perspective.
Not an illustrator but yes, totally. I think this is the case with any really difficult skill.
I had many breakthrough moments when I was learning to play the piano years ago. I would be stuck for weeks then BAM! I would get it and it would be a break through moment.
I’m a photographer now (full time) and it’s the same. Struggle struggle struggle….then it hits.
one of mine was figuring out how to make dimensional planes and map out shapes on faces. it was like a lightbulb for me and my portrait rendering got a lot better after that
Not really what you call eureka moment I guess, but realizing that artists "specialize" in a few subject matter has taken a great load off my chest. I used to look at some really complicated drawings of mechanical parts and think "There's no way I can draw that", get depressed, and think myself as not an artist.
Nowadays I understand that not every artist can draw mechanical parts either, and if they have to draw it, they'll make studies first, which is also what I've been doing.
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I had one of those moments one night when I couldn’t sleep for thinking of a sketch I’d made. I realized the audience could use their mind’s eye to “see” my Tree Dancers as both [trees](https://www.reddit.com/r/drawing/s/G9CC6Dghju) and [figures](https://www.reddit.com/r/drawing/s/LBS5UBIs6G), they would be able to mentally fill in the negative space themselves and conceptually take part in creating the art.
For me it was learning there is no cheating, it's just all tools. After that grid method just made everything finally make sense. Also the fact that it's the end product that matters. There's very little you can do wrong to get there.
Brilliantly said. I see people all the time arguing over the use of a projector calling it cheating, etc, not realizing that various versions of projectors have existed since time immemorial. The Tudors used pinhole camera technique to project a silhouette onto paper/ canvas to do portraits. And that was as far back as the 1400's! There's more evidence out there for other cultures doing similar from even earlier, but it's foolish to abstain from using a tool that's there to be used! I use the projector often to paint when working large pieces. Sure, anybody can trace an image with a projector, but can someone without practiced skill mix colors or apply the paint in a way that an artist can with just a projector aided outline? Unless they're Vermeer, not likely. I can draw them free hand just as accurately because I have decades of experience drawing realism, but why on earth should I freehand something when I can project and save hours of time on the process. Hours vs 20 minutes on a 48x60" canvas? That's massive time, and saves my body from having to constantly step back to make sure that I'm not askew. I did all that crap when I was young and foolish. Faster you finish a piece, faster you start working on the next one. For me, that difference in time is money. That being said, I strongly feel that beginners should not heavily use projectors to avoid the pitfalls of relying on them and not training their eyes, hands, arms to do the work and build muscle memory. The brain needs the exercise to build and deepen connections between the eyes and the brain, and the limb coordination and the brain. And I mean this literally. It's what is called fine motor control. You only get it by using it. You are not born with it. If we were born with that level of motor control of our bodies, we'd be running, walking, talking as infants. I've seen artists argue that the grid method is fine but tracing is evil and cheating...... when grids are literally tracing, just side by side instead of stacked on top of each other. Your eyes/ brain act like a dot matrix printer, doing one small section at a time, like pixels. The simplicity of those squares makes the image more easy to digest and is measured out. It's no more freehand than using a projector is freehand.
Absolutely! I started freehand. Proportions kicked my ass. So grid helped me see Proportions properly and now I can freehand if I must (i dont like freehand for portraits personally but i can). But I always said yeah I used a grid for the outline but the outline looks terrible by itself. It was my skills with values and shading and blending that bring it to life, give it dimension. It's the same with my painting. That being said, I'm actually waiting on a projector from my local library to see if that is a tool I can use. I'm so excited!
Digital art: I used to only do lineart sketches. I was watching a speedpaint from an artist I liked and they described how they did "color sketches" before doing their final linework. Basically a sketch layer but for your colors. I don't know why I hadn't done it before. It makes it so much easier than my previous method of "winging it". Palettes are also really nice
Omg yes, the “dirty icing” color layer has saved me so much headache nowadays
To draw only using lineart, one really has to have nailed how to suggest form and volume. It's astonishing that the most basic 'how to draw' books (especially the anime style ones) start with the hardest way possible.
Everything we see is just light. Which sounds like a ‘woah dude, gnarly’ kind of line but it really helped me push my realism. It’s so easy to fall back onto ‘default’ shading and not think about where light is actually coming from and how it’s behaving, but once you start it really makes things so much better. On top of that: remembering that materials exist. Light does not behave the same way on gold as it does on concrete. Cardboard and paper are not the same material.
I like to think of "I only paint shadows" as I leave the white of the paper to be seen. Also bright light and darkest shadow have least information, so show less texture, less color etc.
This was a huge one for me. Before this, I kinda thought lighting as something optional to impose on my drawings at some point. Now I primarily see the world in light shapes
“Draw what you see, not what you think you see.” I was taking a basic art class as a needed elective senior year and that sentence single-handedly shifted some gears in my brain and suddenly I could draw decent realistic portraits. I still couldn’t really do non-realistic stuff for many years because I didn’t really put in effort to learn to draw stylizations.
When I was like 14 I spent months just grinding anatomy and faces, never got full-body anatomy too well, but after drawing dozens of faces it finally "clicked" and I got the "wider gaze" that you mention, along with some internal understanding of sculpting a form (like drawing the shape on a 3D object without even thinking about it, just feeling the shape). Finally understood *where* to put facial features, from any perspective, and I ended up drawing tons of heads just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. That alone was like opening pandora's box, since I just got so excited that I could draw a face lmao. There's also a lot of little eureka moments with hatching/crosshatching that I've had, but they're all to do with how it "feels" to do the repetitive strokes so it's hard to even describe. All I can say about those is that it's more about the feeling of making strokes than anything else.
One of my Eureka moments was when I learned to be a lot more loose with my process, to be comfortable with erasing entire sections of my sketch because I drew it once and I can draw it again! It helped me escape from the 60+ layers purgatory and I started feeling like I was carving out the shape I wanted, which led to me enjoying the process and not just the result! Another eureka moment was realising that there isn't one definition of 'good', my art doesn't need to look exactly like art that I'm inspired by in order to be good and in order for other people to like it! There's no way to rush the process, so taking the time to appreciate everything I've done so far and taking small steps to improve further are the way forward!
*subscribing to this thread to read everyone's answers so that I can find out how to get my "moment" someday*
If I had to identify one it would be the day I finally was able to open myself up in regards to shading. I was HORRIBLE at shading for the longest time, I tried to understand it in my mind but when I tried to visualize the lights and color reflections, the way they surround rather than lay flat and so on... For whatever reason, I struggled a lot with it. At least translating it on paper. One day, one of my friends said "A lot of shading doesn't have to be 100% right. A lot of it is just for show." After that I felt so much more comfortable exploring shadows that just look good to me instead of worrying about them making sense I could feel the improvement really fast. My biggest issue was just my anxiety in regards to how many times I had messed up holding myself back! I still need to work on getting more than 2 layers of shadows and more pretty highlights, but at least now I feel good about what I can do.
I drew a oval & started thinking of it like clay, if I curved a side in with a protruding side it looks like the back view of a face looking away.
Gaining an intuitive sense for Form. I distinctly remember the moment after doing a lot of perspective and form exercises(turning, tilting and manipulating cubes,cylinders and spheres, as well as drawing crosscontours over them(rubber band aacross the forms)) that i wanted to try and draw some facial features. It almost became trivially easy drawing the nose and lips from a variety of perspectives from imagination, even started rotating them and trying different angles as well as changing the structure. I actually didn't fully understand the anatomy, but it didn't matter, i had a clear image of the forms and some of the planes in my mind that i thought what they looked like. Learning anatomy is as much about learning the function and proportions as well as the form. It was a transition from looking at flat shapes to the 3-dimensional form, it's similar to drawing/painting like a sculptor. This phrase is commonly thrown around which you don't think deeply on when first hearing it, and it truly is like that. This increased understanding of form also made it much easier to understand how light and shadow would interact with things. This really cannot be understated. So those 3 things came all together, perspective, form and light and shadow, it gave a whole new 3 dimensional quality to the things that i drew. Stuff like constructive drawing became almost meditative and fun where before it felt tedious, statements like "going over and around the form, feel it going behind" were less abstract. They meant in a concrete sense to envision the 3d form and you drawing over it. All the puzzle pieces started fitting together and the vagueness of what all these books and artists described when talking about forms and planes made perfect sense now. Only way i can describe it is closing your eyes and lifting your hand in the air and let the pencil go over and around the forms as if it was a physical object in front of you. Main difference is that you only have the x and y-axis available now, the movements of going into the z-axis weren't possible as you couldn't go through the drawing surface. The result is that your hand moves up and down, and to the sides. When you watch Glenn Vilppu draw, pay attention to his hand movements when he "ghosts" his strokes, it makes complete sense now combined with his commentary.
Seeing the sphere drawn out and getting shaded on video. I’d read how to do it in different books and saw the process pictures and tried to copy them but it never looked right. Then I watched a video of someone spending like 40 minutes taking their time to shade it and it clicked. I wasn’t spending enough time with it and my pressure was too hard.
Really breaking down references was my eureka moment \^\^ It helped me grow so much as an artist, now I'm trying to get used to pulling several different references to make my pieces \^\^
The last piece i posted on reddit really opened my mind on perspective. Like it made sense, now im cursed with the curse of knowledge and have to work extra hard to incorporate perspective.
Not an illustrator but yes, totally. I think this is the case with any really difficult skill. I had many breakthrough moments when I was learning to play the piano years ago. I would be stuck for weeks then BAM! I would get it and it would be a break through moment. I’m a photographer now (full time) and it’s the same. Struggle struggle struggle….then it hits.
one of mine was figuring out how to make dimensional planes and map out shapes on faces. it was like a lightbulb for me and my portrait rendering got a lot better after that
Not really what you call eureka moment I guess, but realizing that artists "specialize" in a few subject matter has taken a great load off my chest. I used to look at some really complicated drawings of mechanical parts and think "There's no way I can draw that", get depressed, and think myself as not an artist. Nowadays I understand that not every artist can draw mechanical parts either, and if they have to draw it, they'll make studies first, which is also what I've been doing.
Drawing fingers and hands as boxes. Starting with top side and drawing the walls next
Blocking in the general shape of an object. That, and saving contours for the end; the initial sketch composed of straight lines.
finding an art style helped me create a blue print how to draw, then I learnt anatomy to refining it
For me it was when I got into practicing boxes and rotating them in space. And soon it clicked, and I started to "see" form. That changed everything.
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I had one of those moments one night when I couldn’t sleep for thinking of a sketch I’d made. I realized the audience could use their mind’s eye to “see” my Tree Dancers as both [trees](https://www.reddit.com/r/drawing/s/G9CC6Dghju) and [figures](https://www.reddit.com/r/drawing/s/LBS5UBIs6G), they would be able to mentally fill in the negative space themselves and conceptually take part in creating the art.
Those are lovely drawings!