Drawing tip #3 - Don't copy, analyze!

Igor, my teacher at Sofia Art Academy, keeps stressing that students in the school of classical traditional drawing don’t just copy what they see; instead they analyze the model and make decisions on construction and tone based on that analysis. This is something that I am still find hard to do. Basically you should be asking yourself a bunch of question while you are drawing…how light is that area comparing to its neighboring area, how is that curve different from this curve etc… The trick is to be able to compare with the model and to do that it is important to view your drawing from a distance.

You should: Squint your eyes…look at the subject..look at your model… look at the whole picture to try to see what areas needs more work. 

If in doubt, always look at the model. It should be telling you what is needed. If something doesn’t look right ask yourself what you need to do about it and then check the model. Do you need to add more layers of tone…do you need to make an adjoining area darker. It is all about comparing parts of the drawing with the same parts on the model. 

When I was working on the lips the upper lip started to have this dramatic transition between two areas. The transition looked really hard and not very natural and I couldn’t see the same transition when looking up at the model. So what was wrong? Either I should add more tone to the upper lip to smoothen out the transition or I should remove some layers (using eraser). Which alternative should I choose? 

The model will give you the answer!

I started to look at the model but wasn’t able to solve my problem. Igor told me to look again and this time to look at the whole model not just the area that I was concerned about. I squinted my eyes and started comparing the model and the drawing to see if anything stood out. I could tell that there was an area above the upper lip that looked darker on the model than on my drawing. I started with adding some more layers of tone to this area and then put the drawing at a distance from me again and starting comparing. Now I saw that the area that I just worked on was blending together with the upper lip…that was the confirmation I needed. I added more tone to the upper lip which was the answer to my original question.