Why you should learn to draw “realism,” even if you do cartoons (or anime)
Art students are often told to “draw from life” (as opposed to drawing from photos, or your imagination) because our art should, even if it’s highly stylized, emulate life. You can’t make a convincing “cartoon hand” if you don’t know what a real one looks like. Your stylized, artistically modified drawings look more convincing (even if they are not remotely “realistic” anymore) when you understand what you’re stylizing.
First, the “drawing from life” part. (As contrasted with drawing from photos.)
I drew a lot of portraits from photos, starting when I was a young teenager. I’d draw my favorite actors and actresses, like a lot of kids do. That meant drawing from photos. I became pretty good at it for my age. I occasionally drew from life (my friends would pose for me) but not nearly as much as from photos.
When I first took a Life Drawing class (drawing a live model posing in class), it was extremely difficult. I didn’t do very well and this was a grave blow to my ego at the beginning! I had always assumed that I drew pretty well because I was doing a decent job copying photos. But I still had a long way to go in developing my drawing skills.
Copying a 2-D thing (photo) into another 2-D thing (your drawing) is a far cry from looking at a 3-D person and converting that to 2-D. Plus, 3-D “life” is different than photos — photos change color a little bit, flatten tone, and sometimes warp perspective. (Ever see how much distortion a fish-eye lens does? Well, all cameras distort a little bit — just not as noticeably as the fish-eye lens.)
Adapting to drawing from life is a good thing and increases your skill and helps you understand what you are drawing, as it’s right there in front of you (not just some shadows and shapes in a photo). In addition, drawing from life, where you have some pressure on you to finish the drawing before the model starts to move, that helps you increase your drawing speed and become more decisive in how you draw. (Note that the little portrait sketch shown at the top of this page was done in 20 minutes.)
I’m not saying that copying photos is bad. I still do plenty of it myself. It’s just not a good idea to only copy photos.
Why you should draw from life and “reality” (realism) even if what you want to do is cartoons.
Does anyone doubt that artists like Bill Watterson and Ryoichi Ikegami both know how to draw realistically, and very well?
This Bill Watterson art shows a more realistic approach to the background (the trees, snow, sled). He also has obviously studied perspective, understands balance in the figures and gesture (their poses look fluid and not stiff). Clearly, this artist is extremely proficient and comfortable with “realism” even though his art style here is not realism.
Ryoichi Ikegami, probably my favorite manga artist (I confess I’m not a huge manga fan), has a style that is closer to “realism” but still, he’s not rigidly realistic either. In his work we see an immense knowledge of anatomy, structure, human expressions, and things like perspective in landscapes and cityscapes. (The same understanding is in Watterson’s work.) My own proficiency in perspective is definitely lacking, so these guys have all of my admiration and respect!
We return to the fact that these guys (and I daresay many of the artists we admire and look up to) undoubtedly studied from life as well as “realism,” even if they ended up being known for a less-than-realistic style. Their background in realistic drawing (and the knowledge and understanding they attained while studying it) contributed to the excellence they show in their cartoony-style artwork.
