From about age 13 to age 20--looking back, it's hard to believe it was only seven years; time seems to stretch further the younger you are--I thought I wanted to draw comic books. I took quite a few art classes; my senior year, my courseload was comprised of one hour of english, one hour of gym, and four hours of art (including a study hall which i spent dicking around in the art classroom). I spent most of those four hours drawing comic book figures, ignoring or twisting whatever actual assignment was set before me.
Around the time I joined the army, I lost some of my interest in comic books, and got out of the habit of drawing. What little drawing I did--mostly personalizing christmas and birthday cards--was of the non-comic book variety.
Recently, I've started getting back into comics, and the itch to draw my own has resurfaced. Unfortunately, I've discovered that I've pretty much completely lost the ability to draw the human figure. Not just in a comic book style--I can't draw people at all. The reason I can no longer draw people, I now realize, is that I never actually learned to do so in the first place. My first attempts at drawing comics involved laying tracing paper over my favorite images and tracing them. My development in drawing comics developed in that direction--in effect, all my comic book work was tracing from memory, directly copying things I liked and combining them to form 'new' art. I never really bothered to learn much else; any actual drawing skill sprang mainly from raw talent and incidental learning.
This loss is especially irksome right now. You see, Snow seems--not without reason--to be a bit down. Making offerings of fan art seems to make most SGs happy; I'd love to do this for Snow, but for the reasons related above, I'm finding it difficult to create such an offering. Incidentally, everyone who reads this (both of you) should go say hi to her.
I'm looking into taking an art class or two, possibly at UPitt. I don't need anything fancy; in fact, I need something very basic, which will help me relearn (or learn for the first time) the fundamentals. Hopefully, my atrophied skill at tracing from memory will work for me in this respect; it should, since I've mostly lost it, impose itself less on what I learn.
Around the time I joined the army, I lost some of my interest in comic books, and got out of the habit of drawing. What little drawing I did--mostly personalizing christmas and birthday cards--was of the non-comic book variety.
Recently, I've started getting back into comics, and the itch to draw my own has resurfaced. Unfortunately, I've discovered that I've pretty much completely lost the ability to draw the human figure. Not just in a comic book style--I can't draw people at all. The reason I can no longer draw people, I now realize, is that I never actually learned to do so in the first place. My first attempts at drawing comics involved laying tracing paper over my favorite images and tracing them. My development in drawing comics developed in that direction--in effect, all my comic book work was tracing from memory, directly copying things I liked and combining them to form 'new' art. I never really bothered to learn much else; any actual drawing skill sprang mainly from raw talent and incidental learning.
This loss is especially irksome right now. You see, Snow seems--not without reason--to be a bit down. Making offerings of fan art seems to make most SGs happy; I'd love to do this for Snow, but for the reasons related above, I'm finding it difficult to create such an offering. Incidentally, everyone who reads this (both of you) should go say hi to her.
I'm looking into taking an art class or two, possibly at UPitt. I don't need anything fancy; in fact, I need something very basic, which will help me relearn (or learn for the first time) the fundamentals. Hopefully, my atrophied skill at tracing from memory will work for me in this respect; it should, since I've mostly lost it, impose itself less on what I learn.
But thanks for your help on Current Events! I appreciate it!