ikktomuseyokkis
Low ranking American. Unlike most users on here, my life goal is to really suck at go. I'm aiming for the most optimal lack of progress I can.
I figure, Why not? I have enough fun with the game already.
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Interested in drawing, but think that you suck?
Try my handy dandy drawing tutorial:
But first, a disclaimer: I hate 99 percent of people's art.
Honestly, the stuff people come up with is nothing compared the Chinese visual landscape, with a character here and there, a river, a well-proportioned building, or a nice cup of tea here and there. Anyone who's been to China knows what I'm talking about.
For a visually-oriented person, the country's cities are sheer pleasure. Hong Kong is by far the most visually exciting city I've ever seen.
For visually-oriented people, what I call 'alphabetic culture' is vastly inferior to 'logographic culture'. Being logographic means having an intuitive understanding of geometry. Watch a Chinese architect sketch. They can do perfect sketches of buildings in minutes!!
The principal inspirations for this system were threefold: Chinese script, Zak Smith's use of the pen, and my own experiments with image processing programs in Linux.
If you want to follow along and learn my system, it will take about an hour. I have a feeling that, in Jungian typological terms, sensates will benefit least from this, and intuitives the most. Thinking types should find it interesting.
So, let's begin.
Programs you will need:
A raster image processor, ie Photoshop or GIMP
A geometry program that can save to SVG XML files (I recommend KIG)
A vector drawing program (Illustrator or Inkscape)
Steps:
Photograph the thing you want to draw
Try sketching it quickly from the photo
On the sketch, circle the bits where you had trouble
Open the photo in Illustrator or Inkscape
Use paths to draw lines through all of the important parts of the photo, especially the circles themselves
Save the vector-baed polygon as an SVG
Open the SVG file in wordpad
Skip to the bottom of the file
Cut and paste the co-ordinates of the polygon vertices into your geometry program (KIG makes this very easy)
Save the result in the geometry program's native format
Draw lines wherever you want on the figure -- make it look cool
Export the result as an SVG
Open the result in GIMP or Photoshop
Make it look cool using layers and filters
This is the first of three images you will use as guides in the drawing system.
You've just used the computer as a geometry tool in the tradition of Klein, famous for the Klein bottle, who made this type of geometry acceptable for future scholars and hence
Now, open the original photo in GIMP or Photoshop
Use these settings, or do the following:
Go to where you can adjust the color levels
Don't maximize input and output levels, but bring them up significantly, until the lighting on the figure is fairly extreme
If you want, use layers and lots of filters to add some interest
If there is any white space in the figure itself, use paths to add a color to it, making it recognizably 2d
This is the second image you'll need. You've used the computer as a 'light calculator.'
Now, wherever you do your drawing, go make a serious attempt at the figure
If you're not a sensate type, it should be taxing, but doable
Circle the places where you mess up
Get back to the computer, and open up the simple polygon drawn from the vertices of the path you drew in Illustrator or Inkscape
Draw a circle through the three points where you had the most trouble making a proportionate, and therefore 3d, shape
In geometry, this is known as a circumcircle
Circumcircles are just as common in modern math as they are in Euclid, so consider yourself part of a time-honored tradition, now that you've used one
You're done
Even if you're as terminally intuitive as I am, with sensation as your third function if not your unconscious function, you should still find you're capable of making excellent drawings using this method
Of course a drawing is not just figures, but also designs. However, the same method should help you to draw (though not invent -- for that you need to learn some math) good 2d designs such as are found in post-Islamic architecture.
'Experimental mathematics' is also a good place to start. These people are more concerned with generating beautiful or strange images than they are with proving theorems, and as such they are (according to Aristotle's four causes) the same thing as artists at least 25 percent of the time.
Computer programmers and artists actually have a lot in common. And just as all computer programmers should study assembly, all artists should study 2d stuff.
Kehinde Wiley and Zak Smith are two artists who are just as good at 2d design as they are at 3d figure drawing. I recommend them both.