How To Actually Practice Composition As A Beginner

in this video we're going to look at how to get stuck into the idea of thumbnailing creating and planning your scenes as a beginner how do you start where do you start what do you do I think that as beginners often we begin sketching we're just drawing in our sketchbooks you might be at the back of the class drawing things maybe you're not supposed to often we aspire to create big things big illustrations big ideas but it's a real challenge to bridge that Gap from just sketching in your SketchBook drawing characters drawing little things to actually being able to plan and execute a larger illustration this is one of the things that I think really challenged me in the beginning I wanted to be an illustrator to be a comic book artist and do all of these things that essentially came down to needing to plan pictures to create these larger scenes and I knew thumbnails were a big part of it but again it was tricky for me to know how to actually start now you can read a lot of stuff in books creative illustration by Andrus is one of my favorite books on illustration I think it's really good it covers all the basics but again it doesn't always tell you how to get your ideas onto the page and how you actually use these Concepts so what I want to do today is really cover this from the most basic level the foundational idea of composition and thumbnailing how we get these things to work and especially for you if you're just beginning at this idea how do you get stuck in how do you begin to use the ideas of composition in thumbnails and start to plan your images even when they're simple so this is the most important thing I think a really good way for you as a beginner if you're a beginner or even if you just want to really tighten up your illustration and compositional skills a good thing to do is to plan and play around with composition while you're drawing really really really really simple things and again that's a big part of what I want to unpack and talk to about in this particular video this is as usual for the drawing codex going to be a laid back back more of a drawing lesson right it's not a tightly edited video you shouldn't view it that way it's just going to be me drawing I'm going to show you these ideas and we're going to sort of illustrate them by looking at some books I'll do some drawings to kind of explain these Concepts and at the end if you stick around I'll do a demo and show you kind of how I put these ideas together and how I go about planning very simple images for myself anyway this should be a fun demo let's jump in and get started all right welcome to the drawing Cit my name is Tim MC Bernie I've been a professional working artist for over 20 years and on this channel we're all about drawing cool stuff from our imagination embracing the Challenger drawing and mastering the craft of line and color illustration if you want to learn more about illustration or picture making you can check out my free illustration mini Workshop this charts my journey going from someone who look really wasn't that good at drawing or art to becoming a professional artist being published I discussed topics such as how to get more detail and polish in your work how to think about composition creating thumbnails for your scenes as well as a few ideas surrounding how to think about getting professional work it's free and the link will be in the description so if that's something you're interested in go check it out all right and here we are at the drawing table firstly what I want to talk about is just some basic Theory what's the difference between just kind of sketching around and making an illustration the primary difference that I really notice is the idea of the picture plane so normally when I'm sort of you know just starting out as an artist and you know you're just kind of sketching in your Sketchbook or even you know later on when we're just kind of playing around typically the type of stuff you might see might be like this right where I'm just doodling around I'm drawing characters here characters there um there's you know a variety of little sketches and you know I think this is a very natural way way to draw it's a good way to learn it's a good way to feel creative to not necessarily feel constrained by any requirements the trick is that this is one type of skill we're not necessarily trying to plan an image we're not trying to think about what is the most important thing which is the picture plane now the picture plane or just some constraint to your image is where you kind of actually think about what are the extremities of my image and and how do I utilize them best and this is where again what you might have is something similar to this where I'm trying to plan for the image I've got the idea of this is the picture this is like the con constraints of it and what am I going to put there and I'm thinking about how to fill that and more importantly when you come to the idea of you know dealing with creative illustration or any of these types of books what we're dealing with is you know what theory can we employ how can we utilize the theories of composition I stuff people have found that works over the years that you can use as well and people have again put these ideas down and these are well understood you can stand on the shoulders of giants by understanding this but one of the things you notice is probably a lot of my sketches as well they're dealing with quite complicated subjects right there there's a lot of stuff going on here and often as illustrators this is kind of what we're trying to do is is talk about like how you manage a lot of complexity but that's not necessarily the best way for you to really get your kind of hooks in initially and understand how to actually do this I think there's a lot of easier ways that we can go about sort of really just beginning so but I think this important idea is is really really really good to grasp is that the difference between just kind of drawing and and illustration or picture making is that we have the picture plane we're actually thinking about where things go and this could be a very you know complicated scene like this it could be something simpler right where even what you're doing is just planning how does a character fit on the page now this is where we start to think about as someone who's beginning to understand these ideas how can you start to plan and and this is where thinking about how even simple characters or simple faces will you know how they fit into the picture plane will will be good way for you to get started with this and that's really what I'm talking about here one of the things you'll kind of notice if you've done any life drawing is that this is a big part of the actual exercise that you're given what you see right is the you know sort of model lying there and you're faced with like a subject right again imagine we have some sort of figure there but the question is like how how do you fit that on the page how do you think about composition and and one of the good things about figure drawing I don't do a lot of figure drawing but one of the things you will notice is that it does train you to fill the page and think about composition how how do I kind of frame the world that I'm looking at and make it interesting photography would be similar we share a lot of things with all these types of Visual Arts in that we have a frame that we're trying to fill as illustrators we get to basically put whatever we want in there but again this picture plane could be just you doing art so all you've got is you know similar to this you have the whole picture plane to consume with whatever you want it could be a cover right something more commercial and in this case yes you still have the whole thing but often what you might have is some type right you might have a few little bits and pieces that you know are going to have pre-existing text or other elements and your job is to kind of make an image within there that is interesting you might have you know a variety of different aspect ratios to this you could have film where again you know you have the whole frame to fill up or you could have some other type of poster or splash screen art where again you're dealing similar to a cover with the idea of some text right and your image has to kind of consume the rest of the picture plane either way the trick is as an artist to learn how to compose an idea and fit your story with within this little sort of world and that really is the difference between just kind of sketching in your Sketchbook and actually starting to create images and create illustrations now what I'll do in the end is show you some demos and we'll do a bit of sketching and and really kind of dig into this idea but the first thing and really what you know I want you to take away from this is that you can learn about the concepts that you might find in a book such as creative illustration by Andrew Lumis or um you know any other compositional book you can learn these ideas is even with simple subjects and that really is the hack here and I think this is the major thing that will allow you to kind of get started and think like an illustrator think as if you're filling up a picture plane start to deal with these issues of how you manage this and how you plan it and figure out how you do this as an artist how do you specifically fit into this world what do you like to start with do you like to start with tone line which one of these compositional principles works for you again that's a big part of what you will learn from doing this exercise now if you're not quite convinced about whether or not you need to do thumbnails again all all I like to point to is that you know my opinion is that good images are planned I've classically said this many times that even when you look at someone like Frank fretta in this book icon um has a lot of different sort of Frank fretta art even if you look at an artist like Frank fretta who's known for very spontaneous artistic illustration ations they was they were all planned they all had thumbnails they all had little quite distinct ideas for how it would go that were really really nailed down and you can see here there are modifications to that there are changes but the key idea that was contained in this thumbnail is carried through over here in a similar way another great artist that I like to show and again I like these these guys because specifically like James Jean Frank foretta I think they have a really artistic sense to their illustration there's obviously a million examples of illustrators using thumbnails but I I guess the the interesting thing here that's always um you know sparked my interest about James Jean is the the sort of abstract nature and the Artistry of his work is all planed right there's very very sequential planning and thumbnailing and ideation and process to all these images and again it really sort of shows that often images that feel very like sort of graphic like there's a big idea there um again you know the there there often was an iteration process there were thumbnails that were at the the core of it and again with a lot of illustrators because we often have to work with clients what you will find is the thumbnails look very very close to the finished image and I think this is a good sort of sensibility to take into you know whatever work you do um but yeah anyway the my opinion at least is that good images are planned and that working on the thumbnails and understanding your process is critical to being able to control composition which is not to say there aren't other ways to make images but again this makes for a very reliable process that makes for a very you know in my experience relaxed way of working so the basic task that I think we can deal with here is to develop a learning framework for understanding these compositional ideas and again we'll check out the creative illustration book in a minute to just kind of talk about what those ideas are but the basic idea that I think works as a learning framework for you creating this type of work and and building a composition is to think about again repeatedly sitting down as a ritual to create an illustration or a piece that's more finished and making that part of your process as opposed to just drawing right so formalizing this is going to create illustrations which again you can see from those thumbnails that I showed before this is something I do a lot you know I make drawing thumbnails and then trying to practice drawing an illustration even if it's personal work I make this part of my ritual and part of my learning process because it teaches me all of the things that I do need um when I'm you know working on these larger images so that one framework is really simple it's just we pick a simple subject and you basically just play around and experiment and iterate while learning these compositional principles I know that's simple but again I feel like often people sit down and we go I don't really know what to draw I don't know what to do so that's really what we're going to deal with and I'm going to pick a subject here but you can pick whatever you want and I'm just going to pick something that again I'm comfortable with this is the kind of thing I would sketch around with which is just um pictures of girls faces with some sort of stuff right I normally when I was sort of younger I just drew a lot of Elf girls I drew a whole comic about an elf girl it's kind of just stuff that's very sort of comfortable for me but it could be whatever it is for you cars PLS boats whatever it is right whatever works for you why make it simple I think it's important that you pick a comfortable subject because we're going to be learning and experimenting with composition l ideas like role of thirds informal composition formal composition Etc you're picking a subject that you are comfortable with and you can also expand your visual Library as it comes to the subject and again you might combine a couple of things often I'm combining like um again sort of forest elf girls with sort of trees and flowers and things again which is just it's just a comfy thing to draw right again it could be anything for you it also allows us to just kind of make it simple but interesting which I think is a big challenge if you can make a simple subject interesting compositionally it tells you that your compositional skills your illustration ability is actually improving if you're trying to sort of make things if you're trying to learn composition but again you're dealing with something that's more complicated um more sophisticated then again it's harder to tell whether or not you're actually understanding the principles because what we can do with a subject such as a simple face is just move it around the canvas and see how the compositional rules actually apply to a simple subject like this so it's kind of like we're controlling our variables we're being scientific so we have here our book creative illustration by Andrew Lumis this is the one I'm looking at here and this has a lot of great information about composition talking about overlapping line and area uh and and sort of areas is the first principle of composition again this is just talking about the fact that when you have things overlap it creates a pleasing sense of dep depth it's often what leads the image to feel as if it has complexity and that it feels like it's actually a scene and your ability to do that and you know make sure that there is overlapping shapes and that you mount you sort of balance the the patterns and the tonality there is really important you also have these ideas like sort of line creating movement and dynamic um sort of tension with the particular lines that you use we also have a lot of these Concepts that are very time honored when it comes to teaching illustration which is that if you kind of think about Simplicity of form and these kind of marks that can just be a part of sort of letters and symbols you can base compositions around this or again often what actually happens is you kind of have a composition that maybe doesn't fit anything but but you can kind of lean into accentuating the way that it does follow very particular shapes and again because these shapes are rooted in our symbology ology and iconography because we understand the letters this can be one of these subliminal ways that you see an image and there there is sense made of it it's an organizing principle so when you have chaos you can put anything anywhere what this is talking about are like things that tend to work um and again here's a more complicated sort of version of that and a lot of these ideas are really just there from an illustration point of view to give you something to do because often as illustrators we need organizing principles to help us create many many many images right and uh this kind of explains why some things work and why things don't here this talks about balance here you have the concept of formal subdivision which really sort of works and and helps you to kind of divide things up if you're dealing with a a centralized sort of formal composition and lumus has this really sort of interesting idea called informal subdivision which is where you just kind of think about like lining stuff up within the frame will help to create these kind of imaginary lines because the human mind tends to look for pattern what we tend to do is try and say well okay and the way I always explain this is that you are an early homed stalking in the jungle and you are dealing with fight or flight are you hunting for food or are you going to be food as you stare Through the Jungle you see a complicated canopy and the patent recognition that we've developed is there to figure out is that a tiger or is that something I can get right what do I have to do so we're good at basically connecting things up that don't necessarily go together so if there is a thing here and a thing here our brain will kind of connect up the line we will create these imaginary patterns from things because it's just sort of what we gear to do you can't turn this off this just kind of happens people see patterns they see faces and all sorts of things um oh that cloud looks like this that cloud looks like that informal subdivision is really just leaning on that idea that we are going to tend to derive linear movement from the way that things are arranged on the page like this a very very interesting idea again how you apply it he seems to be he's just kind of saying like hey you just draw a whole bunch of lines and um you know uh it'll kind of help you line stuff up uh yeah you know again you know this sort of seems like a little bit of nonsense to me but but but I have kind of used it a bit and and again it gives you something to go on especially if you're not feeling super inspired any anyway L lots of ideas here now what do we do as a as a demo and and as a practice is to see like can I use these ideas can I use these Concepts in simple illustrations and the type of illustration that I'm normally dealing with is just a very simple portrait or something in the beginning so if you're thinking about like how simple could it be well you're just drawing a Syle a sorry a simple thing on a single plane of the image and again if it's a face if you're one of these people who you know starts out drawing faces which I think is a a lot of sort of character first artists but uh you know it could also be a car right you have an illustration and you have to kind of think well look where do I right where do I put the car how do I right how do I how do I position it there are a million ways that you can position it there are a million ways that you could line other things up with it to make it feel interesting to think about again where are the Shadows right like maybe it just has some interesting Shadow play and that's creating a you know a series of other shapes um the goal here is to think about experimentation right think about your ability to plan images and think small and if you can do that then obviously the next step is to figure out how to translate it to a larger image which is another sort of issue that again you know stick around like subscribe Etc we we will get there and I have plenty of illustration um sort of demos talking about you know how I actually do that but often what people are actually asking me is like how do you do the thumbnail right how do we how do we get the idea and one of the tricks is that often thumbnailing for me is one of the hardest parts it really does take a lot of mental energy to get it right so let's just start with the basics because again I think often for the beginner It's tricky to know where to start so let's just look at something like angle and think about trying to just make sure we get the basics down make sure that we get all of these simple ideas happening in our image if I just got a little simple thumbnail like that again I can consider just drawing again the flat formal composition so we can start with this idea right we just have a face and it's front on now the reason I'm picking this this is that may be all you can draw that may be it that may be uh the sum total of your drawing ability is just drawing front on faces this doesn't mean that you can't think about and explore the ideas of composition and use them to make your images more interesting in fact I think that's often what you see a lot of really good artists especially people who are in the influencer style game Who basically all they draw is just girls on Instagram that's basically all they can do that's all they do um but what you'll notice is they're really good at it and if you're really good at it you can make anything seem like it is more sophisticated so just pay attention to how we do that so what can I think about to make this more interesting well again it's a formal composition so normally if you're just drawing faces what you have to draw with is your hair right so I have hair I've got some basic adornments that I could deal with right how can I make how can I make this more interesting right and then as you draw as you sketch you can start to think about well like what what else lines up with this right like like C can you use some of these formal and informal compositional ideas and just play around because to to a certain degree also your job is to get used to drawing thumbnails right if you get used to drawing small if you get used to drawing little things like this then you can start to experiment with composition a little bit more and drawing small drawing thumbnails is yeah a skill unto itself it's not necessarily something where you should just think oh yeah that's easy right it's just small it's just I don't to put any detail no it's it's going to take you it's going to take you just as much time now this is kind of boring it's just formal you know um I I would need to think about like what I kind of add to it but what you notice is that just like simple formalized compositions where you place the face um you know how we kind of line things up right like a formalized composition a centered composition that will work right it it's good right it's symmetrical it has it has it has Rhythm it it has a patter to it so even though things seem like oh that's too easy that's too basic no no it's not about easy it's about what works and and what story you're trying to tell so the way that you might make this interesting and play with composition is just to change the different things that are there whatever but we we can also think about you know creating something that might be more Dynamic right we can think about the angles so this is where right we might think about placing the character in a slightly different position now as I've sort of said the one caveat I have to this as a drawing sort of teacher person is is I do feel like thumbnails they really require me to go sub verbal I'm often just like really like get in the zone when I'm doing this because again you're really creating the whole world right um so yeah I I do apologize if I sort of zone out a little bit and and also you know these are just little demoes right they meant for illustration purposes only um uh you know pun intended so you know that they're not going to be the best IDE ideas necessarily uh often you know when I'm doing thumbnails right um what I try and do is you know do 20 right do 10 really just get into the flow of ideation but you know again I just sort of start with a face and you know like you could start with a face you could start with something else um you know I'm sort of like what what what have I got like how can I how can I use some of these right some of these different ideas here to think about placing the figure right go and I'm going out this way now do these things make any sense right like is is this like what is this for it's not necessarily too important what it's for at this stage because again we're just getting used to drawing thumbnails right we're getting used to drawing small playing around with these ideas but yeah think about okay where do we have right where do we have this formal informal composition right can can like does this work right can I just draw a bunch of lines right like does is is this interesting is there any is there any logic to this is this going to make it better and just keep experimenting right so again just placement like where are we placing it right is the character light on a dark background or vice versa right how do you play with the tonal Arrangement here does that does that affect the drama um you know again could I I think about well okay I mean the other main idea that I think is right essentially like all composition right is just about eye flow so start to think about like what's my what's my first read what's my [Music] second how am I going to how am I going to make this work um and again often with a face your your first read is is the eyes right is the the standard sort of facial area right so again you can think about putting either abstract or sort of non-abstract things in the background um you know and just play around with the with that idea um can you create something interesting now these are as I said going to be simple but if we just kind of keep doing this we'll start to explore how this idea works so again hopefully I've sort of explained the idea here what I'll do is I'll do a few really trying to think about how I make it interesting and I'll talk through the ideas that I'm actually using um as I'm doing it but in terms of exercise this is kind of all you need to do it's just simple subject start arranging start thinking about it do 20 do 10 just explore you don't even need to be able to draw a face in any kind of crazy perspective this is not about drawing well it's about picture making well and often naive simple Style um you know people who is drawing is not where they want it to be yet you can still improve the look of it by considering the picture plane and where the things that you're drawing fit within it so what I'll do is I'll draw these a little bit bigger right so these will be a little bit bigger than thumbnail but hopefully that'll allow us to see them a little bit better um and understand what's sort of going on and again we'll try maybe a few different sort of formats but uh you know it can also be good just to stick within with that sort of same format so again the things that I have to think about making an image and and how I make it are that I can add um again I can think about like a simple idea right like what's going to be there it's a girl plus trees slash Forest Right Flowers could be anything girl plus Birds girl plus fish um again see a lot of artists do this stuff um and make really really interesting um ideas with it but you know that's kind of what I'm thinking and as as I do it you know I'm just sort of considering like again you know like where where things fit within the frame so I've got again I'm going to have a face somewhere here see if we can really sort of get that get that looking up going again using a slightly modified uh lumous you know head mannequin I talk a lot about a lot about these ideas uh in other videos on the channel if you want to sort of check that out again you can also erase right do whatever you want and these thumbnails are really pre right they they're kind of pre good drawing right so we're mostly thinking about like where where things go but yeah even as you sort of start to play around like again often when I'm doing simple subjects this does this does really challenge me right because I'm I'm used to right I'm used to thinking about hey let's have a better let's have a bigger story here so for me again you know dealing with the simple subject is still challenging right I really have to think about you know where where these things are and I I don't have any formal you know situation where I start with one thing or another that's another really important sort of point to make is you know my whole thesis on compositional ideas and and doing stuff is that you kind of got to play around right like I I don't think reading the book is going to do it for you you have to jump in you have to think about what is sort of going on and consider like you know can can I make something interesting out of that right so you know as as I sort of sketch around and and play around I this is the interesting thing is it's like when do you actually start to use these ideas I I guess that's the the main point I'm trying to get at and I'm not necessarily studying them in the beginning uh it is a progression right of we start with a thing and and then we sort of build so as I as you kind of just mess around and there's another few different ways you can start that I I'll share with you in a minute as well you don't always have to start with the frame but again I'll share that in a minute yeah as you think about this you can start to see interesting things pop up right and the more that you see interesting things pop up the more you can lean into it or lean away from it right and you can start to formalize and think about the image you're you're making the story you want to tell right like how you want that to go so again as I do this I I start to see that like oh like look there's like sort of an interesting shape here right that we can kind of play up so I can think about like let's right let's see if I can add some some other tricks right again I'm often drawing trees and and leaves so let's think about adding some of those and this will help me to give the whole thing depth but but I'm liking the fact that I have this kind of silhouette here right so I'm sort of building around that this is me explaining it to you none of this is conscious uh you know I don't I don't really think thinking about it consciously is is the best idea um I'm just trying to sort of share with you the the sort of thought process that goes on right as we as we go through this right and then we've sort of got right one head down there one shoulder here again you know you don't have to be perfect with your Anatomy you do an anatomy pass after right this is just a aidea um and the idea is we experiment with this and we play around with it now again if it helps you you can start to think about like okay like where is the right where where are my rule of thirds right like does that make sense you you can kind of see here that right again her eyes are kind of on this line right that's kind of working and yeah it's like you know there's some logic to my madness here but again be messy be sketchy right this doesn't have to look pretty um in so far as mine looks pretty it is purely accidental right right so again trying to think about how to fill in these areas and again I've got this movement here and she's kind of going this way I guess right so like maybe I could put some right some other branches or things here again thinking about overlap remember that's what Luma said right overlapping shapes part of the foundation of of composition right and uh that that is true and uh yeah you get to just explore now you could do just 20 sort of you know flat faces and just play around with different different colors other compositional ideas all of this is about what are you struggling with right like what what are you dealing with and and what what are you trying to work on as an artist how can you use simple picture making to to help you do that um but yeah again you know it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be too fancy right we we can figure out what all this stuff is later if we if we do another pass but yeah you know I'm playing with these with these lines right I'm getting some interesting sort of Silhouettes happening um yeah you know and and then I'm like oh okay that one's interesting let's do another one now the other thing I sort of said that you can do and and this is you know this is often like a little bit kind of sneaky right cuz uh this is not doing it how you should do it uh and this is where again you get into these set of stories where it's like um look you know there's no right or wrong but you you can just kind of play around right you can just sort of draw figures right I'm often trying to you know draw sort of right no rhyme nor reason to to how I'm sort of starting this um again I can kind of start it this way you can actually start anywhere you want an end any way you want as well I can just start by sketching around and then think okay like like where where where should I compose that right like what what should I do uh this is often a big part of my ideation process if I'm if I'm really trying to think about okay I know what I want to draw I know that I need to kind of think about a dynamic pose but often you know really sort of fitting within a frame is is not necessarily the the easiest thing to do um again have have a sword or something like that here so again you know I'm just sort of adding it and thinking about the scene right think about think about what this character is doing and now that I've sort of blocked it out right I've got some sort of idea think you could do 100 of these do do it from different angles right I I often you know also just you know play around with you know just draw over again this is ideation this is this is thumbnailing there's no right or wrong if if you actually look at um you know like Sketchbook Pages um that you know people are doing if you look at you know Frank fretta's Sketchbook like yes he he has those um you know sort of perfect um sketches that look exactly right but if you actually look at the page those came from you'll see it's a giant mess of all sorts of stuff right and uh yeah it often takes a while to really nail exactly what you need so again I can get starting [Music] to starting to flow a little bit again you know these are not these are not going to be masterpieces very tricky from my experience to do good thumbnailing demos while talking about it right but this is ideation you're sketching right like think about what you're doing right and then think oh yeah like where where would be a good frame like maybe this so sometimes what I would do is you you can sort of build like a draw a little frame in Photoshop right and then kind of move it around I I often do that but yeah you know like where where would be a good frame right does that work hard to say well but again I I think one of the most important things about thumbnailing right and if you take one thing away from this it's that you it takes a while to kind of get into the flow of doing it and and you know that that means that you kind of have to get used to drawing your subject you have to get used to drawing in the right size all of these things you really have to sort of start to flow with the ideas you you have to you know try a few different ones you have to get in the mood for it it's not a matter of like do one right it it it really is a matter of do thousands and again you know even when I've you know I've been doing this for a long time it takes me ages to get into the flow of it where I'm like oh all these ideas are kind of the same Tim you've just drawn the same freaking picture like five times get an original idea and I'm like well I kind of have this idea over my head right but um you know you can kind of see it's like a similar sort of motif again you know a lot of people will have very similar ideas um that's you know totally fine right you can do a 100 pictures that are you know just like that and uh yeah you don't have to don't have to feel bad about it but again what you start to do is just experiment be like I wonder whether I could use that rule of I wonder whether I could use for I wonder whether inal composition I wonder whether there anything to that right about like oh maybe we better be better yeah if I sort of lined that up right and you know that's going there and you know this is going here and uh you know again it's like if you need to add something where do you add it you you add it to one of these points right you know you add it here add it there um yeah you know so an interesting way to approach it but again let's do a few more I'll try some different ideas see if I can get something more creative than just uh yeah female sort of looking in 3/4 position uh yeah sort of a now first let's uh let's sharpen this pencil cuz that's that's not getting there but again you know uh you you might like doing these with a particular type of pencil right something loose uh might allow you to flow better totally totally up to you but yeah you know let's uh let's have another go um again you know I'll just sort of start sketching and this is where again you know let's play with that idea of depth right let's think about what other ideas I can I can sort of bring to the table right so maybe let's sort of think about okay maybe the character is kind of looking um kind of not necessarily at us right like a little bit away from us again we're just trying to create a sense of mystery a sense of something or at least that's kind of what I'm you know trying to do and again often you know when I'm sort of blocking these things in you know I'm not thinking of a particular character all the time right I'm thinking of like you know generic character that can be evolved so same subject right again let's see whether we can get the character looking particular way and then I might think about okay like how how do we frame this right like what do we what do we do right now let's think about some sort of foreground right we got our mid ground here and and you know let's let's think about using some background here now again this is another you know interesting way that you can you know you can experiment with using basic compositional principles like background Middle Ground foreground right I'm going to create sense of depth right I've got overlapping shapes right getting smaller got some kind of again Branch going here just using the same Motif right again you know this is what I'm comfortable drawing makes it easier for me to do a demo um again I feel like I always have to apologize for doing the same thing demos it's like not creative and and you know one of the things I'm always trying to do when I'm doing it is genuinely try and show like you know good during right so like ideally you know these should actually be interesting um but but honestly that is one of the hardest things to do is to kind of you know actually actually make the the Demers like a masterpiece right it is just genuinely tricky now this is where I think again we have like more stuff we can add um more more things that that you can put in there and because of that you know some of these ideas of like informal composition can actually be really useful right if we start to think about where like where not to put things it starts to organize your mind because again it's like I could keep drawing leaves here but like is that like what's that going to do you know um putting putting some limits making sure I'm kind of like okay line that up and like Let's Line this up right let's make sure we got some right some other lines over here okay let's think about eye flow right we're going to start here and and we want the you know the image to kind of flow around a bit but uh I I also don't want to you know fly off here right so we don't want to go all the way there let's maybe let's bring these up here again keep playing around hack away raise out there so again like the other ethos with thumbnailing and image planning is like hack hack away right get your Hatchet in there right if if it's not working like be brutal you know like be absolutely brutal with it right this is not your finished image uh no one will see this and and with a lot of this early ideation right it it's like it's not even that people won't see it right it it's like maybe no one will ever see it you know not even your editor needs to see this this stage right no one no one needs ever see this so again I got my foreground I'm going to go simple again simple tonal pattern you can play with around with tonal patterns uh you know dark foreground medium Middle Ground uh you know light background again that always works uh you know but again those things are concept art techniques you know often people talk about composition they're like oh yeah you know foreground is darkest it's like in concept art it is cuz you're is trying to show depth easily and effectively in illustration uh yeah you get more creative right again where's this Anatomy going got a head right got a torso here uh again maybe again I can sort of have this idea putting a shoulder here right right so again got some foreground and this is like maybe four foreground um yeah again what what I what I kind of want is like for this to have some tunal separation from this right so this and this are separate and uh again you know I could make sure like hey let's make sure this stands out right I want to see the silhouette um I could put a lot of sort of complexity down here right and have this stand out or we could put a lot of complexity up here right some other branches behind right there's no right or wrong right it it's it's all a matter of what you want to do but yeah you know this this is the kind of stuff you play around with and you just get into the frame of mind of like I find this becomes addictive because it's just like oh that one's not quite good enough oh this sucks but there's an idea in here maybe if I trade this maybe if I trade that that from my mind is exactly what you're trying to get is to get to a point where you're flowing with it you you you can draw this thing um again you know you want to play with your drawing it's like let's try draw a character from behind but let's make it interesting um again you know that this will mean that you know it's sort of worthwhile you're figuring this out right you hack away with it but you have a purpose you have a reason for it that there's some sort of emotional uh I guess connection that you you have with the work that that is sort of worthwhile right um hopefully that makes sense again let me know in the comments right whether this is sort of resonating whether this idea um and again it's easy it's easy said than not it's easy for me to say hey just do a whole bunch of thumbnails pick a pick something um you know the reality is yeah the these will suck in the beginning right like mine in the beginning sucked that I'm starting to get out of sort of suck town with the drawings for for me starting to think about something that's a little bit more interesting um and yeah you know I'd probably keep doing this for another two or 3 hours maybe one day I'll do we'll just do a big three-hour session on the channel really show you feel like yeah let let me know if you'd watch that if if you want that video I'll make it it just be me randomly talking about stuff and and we can draw the same thing a million times but I think for our purposes here hopefully that gives you a good idea of what I mean little thumbnailing workshop um and again there's a couple of really key points here that that I just want to make sure you sort of take away one is that simple subject matter doesn't necessarily mean the illustration or the illustrative quality of it needs to be simple you can get really sophisticated you can also if you are quite good at drawing you can draw things from behind you can create mystery and you can think about the most important thing here the most important takeaway is the story is that as you start to explore how these different things affect the mood you start to think like an illustrator you start to think like a Storyteller and I swear if if nothing else you take away take away this that if your drawing isn't where you want to be this is the best way for you to start creating images that have more impact that gives you a chance for you to see what your drawing is actually capable of and I think often what you'll find is this is one of the things like trust me a lot of artists who are really really looked up to um from a social media point of view like everyone just kind of likes their work their drawing is not that good it's just not that good um I do this for a living um I teach drawing I've taught hundreds and hundreds of students um I've looked at who gets jobs and who doesn't get jobs you can just make people really like your work by the way you present it it's often not just the raw drawing ability and I've also seen many many students who are really really good like the drawing is like just next level right form everything is sort of going but they can't really put it into an image they can't make people look good um as you know make the image look good and make people interested in it so again that's just something that's really really worth taking away is often the difference between people who are getting a lot of Engagement and getting people to like their work especially on social media is this stuff it's the illustration it's presenting the image it's telling a story it's it's making the image abstractly interesting even if it is just a picture of a cute girl on Tik Tok SL Instagram SL whatever anyway uh that's it for now uh let me know what you think of this one in the comments below we'll catch you around happy drawing

Channel: Tim Mcburnie - The Drawing Codex

Views: 209,658

Keywords:

Id: 2NbGy2cMEFg

Length: 53min 1sec (3181 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2023