Training Yourself to Draw From Imagination - Peter Han

[Music] Peter Haun is one of the best professional artists and teachers around he teaches at Art Center wrote a really awesome art book and he's just I mean look at his work good stuff well at lightbox we got him to do a demo at our booth and we recorded it for you to enjoy so take it away Peter today I'm going to draw for you guys a little bit and I'll even explain a little bit of process and thought as to what I'm thinking as I do it I'm going to be doing an illustration straight on drawing with a bit more detail work I have one hour so in that hour I've had to think about generally what to do first questions I get is do I know exactly what I'm gonna draw I have no picture in my head at all I have an idea and the idea was I wanted to draw something fantasy I want it character and I want a creature now what that is I'll figure it out as I do it I'm a mess up can I apologize if I do but it might come out very cool too that's the excitement about this I love adapting with the mess up so the thing is I am going to make tons of mistakes but if I tell you what they are you'll know but if I don't tell you you will have no idea am I gonna construct as I draw now yes and no let's just draw for a little bit and you'll flip to see what I'm doing with this information as I get this in place people ask art why aren't you starting with like circles and construction and the underlay drawing you know again how do you not have a direct image in your head of what you're doing if you haven't studied it if you haven't thumbnail it and I have not thumbnail or drawn this every before in my life so have i drawn dwarf-like characters yeah have i drawn drawn animals and creatures that might be entailed to this story absolutely but i have i drawn this very image never so I am now problem-solving it as I am doing it right now I find that exciting because it's something new of an experience and it's something I'm always learning from right now we have this kind of old dwarf like character I'm gonna put right here and they're gonna be shunt stunted and short kind of broad large armor sets he's got a hold a big hammer in front of him and I think he's gonna look a little bit grumpy and I'll put like a crazy mount animal on this side as he's looking at him spray off the shapes and the shape language I'm already thinking about well think about what kind of shape do you want to use worth dwarf think about like some films cartoons comics that have been out beforehand - my favorite was obviously Lord of the Rings yeah what a did such a great job think about shape language the meaning of shape and the things of design costume - creature to environment architecture culture dwarves in that movie very square a lot of squares right from the silhouette to the costuming to the weapons to the patterns everywhere so I'm going to reinforce that also because that shape language makes sense to me now does that mean that you can't use other shapes for dwarves of course not that's the artist perspective and that's use storytelling but I want an immediate response and I only have an hour so in that hour I have a deadline now and the deadline is the most important I gotta get this drawing done for you guys in the hour so I don't want to just start something and not have you know anything completed to some degree I gotta be able to predict how much time I need to be able to make decisions quick and fast and hopefully then hope have something that's accomplished to the job I was given which is a draw for you guys all right now we're going to the shoulder section he's gonna have some broad hair coming down this direction here I like the idea of having like braids maybe in the hair also again am i designing right now no I'm trying to maybe tell story I'm playing with things like character relationships drawing for fun and there's no reason why you can't draw for fun either the tool that I'm using currently to do this is a felt tip brush pen may but Sakura this is a pigma SB brush pen and this is my favorite currently right now because it's very flexible it gives me a lot of line variation and it's permanent so if I do a watercolor on something like this I get a lot of freedom to be able to move around all right I'm gonna put the arm coming forward now here's the deltoid coming up bottom of the arm elbow so I guess now the question is how do you train to do stuff like this right because again I'm not constructing but am I in a way I am now let me tell this secret towards how I'm doing this I'm not gonna say that this is the answer what all artists are doing but for me in my perspective I'm always training to communicate to verbalize stuff so here's how I'm doing this there is construction ok a minimal amount of construction am I going in there with a circle box lines constructive stuff no but these lines that I'm placing down or shortcut constructions it gives me a guide that I can follow and understand this right here that line to this line gives me formed turn and an end point for the armor now I know where things are placed the direction of the volume and the shape language behind it all in three lines now most people need a full construction but what's enough training and visualizing your skill set and objects you're drawing turning things in space you don't need as much information to draw from so you become what efficient you become fast and that's how I actually accomplish these kinds of things and that's what I also trained to do also I look at references there's nothing wrong with that and from those references I trained my eyes to look for things that visually describe a story or information on a minimal level of a couple of minds of shapes that I can then match up to that then also go back to the idea steam how do I get to be I'm familiar I'm familiar with these objects I'm familiar with the shapes I'm familiar with the character type and I'm able to then express it without really thinking about it I'm using then experience to execute this as quickly as possible this then also feeds into massive confidence confidence and drawing confidence and storytelling and also at the end of it really just having fun with what you're doing so other advices in terms of what you could do in terms of excelling your drawing skills to do stuff like this fail as every artist will tell you right but it's not seeking failure it's about experimentation and then fail and that experimentation is bending and challenging your skill sets to try stuff that you couldn't do before most people will shy away from it oh I can't draw this so I can't draw that and I'm only going to stick with a comfortable stuff well consider placing yourself in an uncomfortable situation break the rules if you have to mess it up and then pick it apart have the right awareness of asking the questions oh well what's the way like about it and what do I not like about it in most situations in drawing and design the key thing that I find that people make a mistake on that need to improve the portion okay proportion isn't the number one thing on that let's give it some more reg and what put some armor at the front I brought this in he's gonna have his leg coming forward and down [Music] now the paper I'm using for this is a large-scale watercolor paper I used cold press this one right here and specifically it's a Strathmore brand and I do favor that particular paper I'm not a big fan of a hot press I like cold pressed paper a lot of the sketchbooks I use in my classes are actually right next door Cottonwood Arts I like their stuff a lot is there anything wrong then also with the materials to draw with things like markers and pens or even pencil to help you then walk in things to help you then bridge over to a more finalized image of course not and as a student I used to draw that way all the time penciling something marker drawing and putting inking on top of it but from there I always find a way to take away the the crutches of the tool and use it to its advantage which is help you build confidence and familiarity sketching with intention is a huge element of what I like to teach and it's about knowing what this piece is for and knowing when I was supposed to end right if I have a very strong intention of what I'm doing now I know when to end it also ok let's put another creature over here how about some kind of more like animal starting from the top I could start anywhere and build it from this let's give it living tusks on this side and as you'll notice as we mention it back in the beginning as I said I'm not gonna point out to you guys the mistakes that I'm making however at the same time I will because if you do know the mistakes I'm making you'll also understand how am I able to also let them go and use them to my advantage is this area of the ear and the more perfect no it's not are those lines exactly what I wanted no they're not also but do I use it to my advantage absolutely because I can force it and push it in a direction where it reads better as a shape so I don't look at it being like oh I messed up I gotta start over I feel bad about it I don't have that kind of mentality so from there I'm able to always move forward I never feels frustrated and the end piece doesn't matter to me I don't care how this is gonna turn out because I know I can do it better another time by drawing this once I could draw this for you again right afterwards even faster even more confidently I can even adjust it to make it even stronger of an image but it's that experience that help that again problem I'm running out of space most people get anxious about that oh man I gotta adjust it trying to start it over again no I'm gonna you know what turned the body of the bore towards the camera let's go this direction knock a finiman there's always a problem-solving method behind the drawing [Music] so again in stuff like this I find live drawing to be very enjoyable most people in with a draw in class with me there again nervous oh I don't like drawing in public I don't want to draw my sketches in front of people you know it's not gonna look very good compared to what other people are doing I don't feel like I'm good enough that mentality will always be there if you hold on to that you have to make sure you really hold on to the process of anything else it's always a learning experience and you are the only one that will ever see the mistakes always but how you look at it and how you project it is what's gonna make your further outcome more successful and also it'll continue your drive to pursue and have the curiosity to build your skill so I think this is pretty fun now I've got a dwarf light character on the ground plane right here let's put the perspective going this way let it go like this this if this there was a construction of it there's the eye line [Music] do you might think adding that kind of stuff in there Oh doesn't that detract away from the image no I'm communicating to guys I'm showing you a demo just basically explain my visual thoughts and internal thoughts so yeah I could have left that stuff out and drawn things like a landscape in rock structures but I think as a viewer this helps it shows you what I'm looking at because I see it in my head but now I can actually now show you visually I feel like a lot of artists can draw beautiful things but they have a hard time explaining exactly what they're thinking or what they're doing or how they even verbalize it part of that advice then is to practice that yourself if you like to draw any opportunity you get to explain to people your thought process your ideas your method of working how you like to explore they will get you even stronger of making the proper choices and you start to really truly understand why you're doing certain things this has been 15 minutes 15 okay so when people say we're gonna drop figure drawing I got five minutes five minutes is a very long time to draw 15 minutes it's forever to me an hour and eternity of drawing I could do so much here now this is established I could keep adding more stuff it's keep adding it and you know I think it's still a base okay I'm gonna bring it some other pens and I'm gonna push my darks values hatching elements of details and I wanna start to group everything together all right as I had some elements of the environment it's in vegetation I can really dress up this scene if I want to maybe there's a little water array over here just random things in the background here's his weapon set as you'll notice I tend to jump around quite a bit I don't stay in one area I move from one spot to the other to the other is one layer after the other that's why most of my friends tend to call me a printer as you'll notice block block block square square if anybody has any mentions of comments or things you want to shout out you're more than welcome to I'll look up every now and again if anybody wants to raise their hand also yeah and that's the thing there's something there's always something you've never drawn before you know and it could be even things that are familiar some things you've actually seen but I've never drawn so how do you even approach stuff like this well in my classes that I teach the fundamental basic is not about drawing what you see you're filtering it how do I interpret that as a primitive form to build a visual library not about drawing it as it looks like because you're not a camera it's not about drawing it realistically and every sort of drawing or painting is an interpretation do the artists eyes and brain so then you got to find a way to simplify it so that you can also use as a tool for something else if you drew me let's say the animal was a komodo dragon and they ever try to come out a dragon do you even know what a komodo dragon looks like okay you have a picture in your mind now okay you can understand what it is you will study at the zoo great and you study it study it draw it what it looks like and I took away those drawings and I said now draw for me again in memory it'd be really hard but if you drew the most basic primitive shapes that represent the Komodo dragon it could be a box squares circles whatever took away that drawing said now recreate those shapes again it might be a little bit easier now given time you slowly add more details and become stronger about those memories or detail work but in the beginning if you don't know how to even just build it the details will matter could I build you these structures or shapes very primitively of course do I need them right now for myself not necessarily but in the beginning as a student you did I do that 100% the other side of that is get outside and look at the real things if I said if you've never seen a Komodo dragon before in life go to a zoo maybe a fine one there's one here in LA right there's a male Komodo dragon over there he's about 20 years old he's a breeder type if you don't know anything about Komodo dragons offshoot there they're called a on parthenogenesis and their animal that can actually recreate it females can lay their own eggs and fertilize it they can clone themselves crazy stuff so what happens then is you start to then draw and you get curious about the things you start researching about this stuff and you become more familiar with the subject and that locks in that memory and you become easier to draw because you become again familiar but the simplicity is the main thing question why exactly are you drawing stuff here in here you still have stuff to finish in the middle yeah because it's about to finish about the entire thing the big picture not the small thing if you've finished that one area do you really know what that finish is maybe not maybe you come back to it like oh that's not finished yet and what happens you keep doing that and you overwork the piece so don't worry about the end piece work on it through a layer think about the intention and get it to a point where accomplishes the job in the deadline of how much time you have right not every piece is about rendering it to a photorealistic level because here's the thing I could stop here and tell you this is a finished drawing you know why because my intention was to show you that shapes the general composition the placement of the figures that's my intention I'm done now if I said I want to my intention now is to include shadow shapes referencing of materials you know things like background where I got them a lot more to do so I'm not finished yet so my intention and clearly drives me in a direction of a path if you have never thought about what your intentions were in a drawing then your drawing blindly your join you lost and you never end you don't know when the end and again you look at your stuff and you overwork it and you feel like oh man I didn't know when to stop should I give myself a timer well that can help but I think it's better to really think before now I'm kind of focusing it right up here and using these kind of shadow shapes to block out separations foreground to middle ground it was thin the subject matter considering things like cache shadows possibly forms shadows using shadow shapes to group areas together because my focus is up to the head to the arm on the left down into the hammer back over to the boar that's my direction I want to follow so everything else around it I'm gonna block out in shadow so I want to focus these areas I thought about this already okay I've used one pen for the entire thing this group group as soon as I see myself noodling and stop pull back a little bit let's think broad okay as soon as you noodle you're now kind of basically kind of fussing with it you're going back and forth go back and just group it I want to just group it right once you get to this point a huge element that you have to train your mind is commitment commit to the line commit to the shape commit to the composition see it to the end even if you feel like oh I don't know if it's going the right direction and you might not have a clear picture take it to the end and mess it up all the way that way you now have something the question and break down and analyze now going in there with the subtlety and the care of these areas of us wrapping and material fabric wrapping around the arm of this dwarf and of course if you have no intention as to what you are trying to do that question still remains when do I know when to stop if I don't have a clear idea what I'm going for as soon as you just ask yourself that question what am i trying to do here stop right there because then you don't know do something else come back to this when you feel more confident and then finish it things don't have to be completed in one sitting give it time to marinate in your brain step back look at it from a distance don't go nose in you'll get tunnel vision right show it to other people share it okay what do you think about this what's your response the response I guarantee you most times it's positive hey that was really cool man and most people are looking for a very harsh critique right students come up and be like give me your hardest Christine tear it apart that makes no sense to me because the idea is that I also want to give you a constructive criticism we can't only focus on the negative we got to focus on the balance of what's we're not not working but what is working change of stuff that's making mistakes but be consistent with the stuff you're doing good at you even recognize what you're good at it find your strengths and weaknesses right stay positive and the mindset with the work you're creating have that interest and passion in the process share with people build your community control the people that you want around you if you have a positive people around you it's gonna create a positive environment here at lightbox there's nothing about positivity right now use it if none of you are do artists right now and you're a light box and you haven't drawn a single thing if you make a mistake you should be drawing right now even now right you could be having your sketchbook and sketching something that's something I love to do all the time I would have visit talks demos from artists that I really respect and I don't just sit there and watch them questions are good but I would draw with them I'll sit there and actually get that in that mindset that inspiration and I understand you guys are talking as a big group so that's just me just talking right so do what you can I do comic-con in San Diego and I've been doing that for about 13 years and that shows so primarily driven by sales and buying stuff and mature merchandise but shows like this is more driven towards education and learning and inspiration comic-con beer can be the same way too but that's a massive show but stuff like this take advantage of those moments if you want to learn something the best thing to do is get involved talk to people and not to the people that are behind the table the person next to you the person next to you is the most important connection all right no we're kind of fleshing all this stuff out again he's the main focus as he goes in I want to touch the bore a little bit we are not only half an hour in do you usually work this quickly do you bastard for demos do I tend to work this quickly when I'm drawing for myself yes a lot of my pieces I complete are in an hour typically now is that because I'm in a rush no it's because I have a clear intention of what I'm trying to do and I also do find this extremely fun so I'm always driven to draw constantly and I do draw practically every single day and a question I got with the demo I had yesterday was about how many hours I should draw on a day and that's not really important don't worry about that okay because the question really is about are you drawing every day not about how long you're drawing you could draw 10 hours every day if you want to that's great you'll improve but can you be consistent to that degree every single time you will burn out but if I draw everyday and variant explore things have focused and intention it could be for hours or for even half an hour right 10 minutes but at least I got to touch paper with pen and before this I was drawing another demo at my table and the depth table I met is at 5 to 5 I'll be doing additional drawings like this one at my own and I just draw for fun not for anything for ourselves sailing or prints or anything like that I just like to draw in front of people and if you guys you're here for the rest of the show and find me if you have more questions because I expect that you guys don't have questions right now but if you do come find me and ask I'd be more than happy to give you my thoughts and advice from my perspective all right this guy's relatively done with the shadow shapes I'm going to go down here up into the bore and then I'm going to start to go into the small little kind of bits and pieces this is where I tend to kind of slow down a little bit kind of being more attentive as the minor elements of things all the sweeping movements the speed comes from the very beginning again you get that great dry brush with this pen so it's very fine of a line it can be very nice rich and dark but you can move quickly and get this dry brush let's go into the bore general shadow directions going this way those put shadow shoots behind it and as it goes this direction I'll put a little bit emphasis on the head and less on the rest of the body I want you guys to look right here now these kinds of decision making choices are not as apparent in the beginning and they're also very difficult to make on the fly so other things you can do to practice this kind of stuff is thumbnail it a lot of thumbnails and practice do a rough sketches figure out what those problems are and present those questions that you develop them to that way when you get to the final piece a lot of those things will be problem solved and from there you can continue to really just execute with the speed that you need so I still thumbnail today client work personal work projects I will use thumbnail process for personal sketching I can just go straight in there what if it's for something I have to really problem solver and that's our job if you want to be a conceptual designer that's your job problem solved problem solving the story problem solving shape design color sets you know costuming action and function culture the character traits and history all that stuff and how they unify and link together anybody else have any other questions comments thoughts I have a question absolutely do you so there is me hatching with the direction of the arm and so these are crossed contours wrapping around the structure that you can follow to continue their increased volume now does that mean you always have to do that not necessarily but being consistent is important if I choose to go with the direction of the volume and area and I break that rule and start flattening it it'll complete so choose and be specific and consistent to the areas if I'm gonna follow the form here moving around that shape I want to do it over here also yeah but in this area the shadow I went across is that one of the flattening shadow shapes exactly what I'm consistent with it all the way through so choices in terms of direction of line is very important for sure so stuff like this it puts a little pinprick in my head and I'm eventually as I go into the future I'm probably actually create more illustrations and images pertaining to this theme so a lot of times things pop into my head and I can't get it out until I draw it just stay stuck in there there are times where I will think about something and I wouldn't stop thinking about it until I drew it you could happen it for a month it would stay there because I didn't have the opportunity to draw it it'll stay in there for months other times I'll draw one thing and I'm so interested in it I can't let it go and all the work I produced myself we're drawing the sketches are constantly coming back to it until it exhausted and then everyone something else thinking about even how this facial hair is very blocky then those is blocking overall silhouette is blocking external to internal to the weapon and this shape design unfortunately is not a formatted class that you can really find a lot of places there no books based on it but what I will tell you is that it is industry standard knowing shape design studying brands and properties movies comics games will help you with this looking at art books can give you that too many students get pieces and parts of it from different classes but hopefully you can explore that on your own time I could keep going on this and take it all the way to a full illustration but I love developing new ideas and use sketches and drawings to explore so what actually might even do in the next half hour that we have is a to get a new piece and maybe even use the same elements of stuff and redraw another piece so now I'm like making marks right indications of things it's all the small stuff little minor elements all the big movements have been done I think I could stop right there and move to a new piece let's get a new sheet of paper out why am i deciding to move on I feel like this is done in my opinion because I accomplished what I needed to do I set the figures my intention with shadow shapes indication of detail on the figure moving this direction of the ball I told you guys instead so do I need to move forward any more than this I mean I could add more intricate details more materials more stuff in the background but that was never my intention so I'm gonna stop I want to move on now I have time to do more drawing that was awesome big thanks to Peter Hahn for demoing for us at lightbox Expo and that's not it we got one more video from Peter coming out tomorrow so hit that subscribe button and smash or or thrash or do whatever you want to that like button will be here with the final video for this year's 12 days of proko

Channel: Proko

Views: 1,088,706

Rating: 4.9665346 out of 5

Keywords: Fantasy art, dwarf, dwarves, peter han, how to draw, anatomy for artists, figure drawing, artist, artistic anatomy, anatomy, draw people, art, tutorial, drawing tutorial, learn to draw, video tutorial, art school, art class, human anatomy, art training, art blog, art vlog, drawing lesson, art lesson, learning art, lord of the rings

Id: 6-8ED4DW6A0

Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019