#185 - The Thing That Makes You Different Can Make You Valuable
One thing large corporations get wrong.
YouTube Video - Practice Drawing George Bridgman Leg Shapes — Web version.
The results are of low quality, but they are reproducible.
In a three-star restaurant, the menu depends on the chef’s specialties: he may specialize in specific ingredients or a specific kitchen.
If that chef leaves, the restaurant owner hires another chef cook. The menu will be different, but the dishes will be equally good because the chef has his own specialties.
When a three-star restaurant changes chefs, it gets different results, but what is reproducible is the quality of the result.
Fast-food restaurants aim to reproduce the result. Three-star restaurants go for the reproducibility of the quality of the result.
Don’t be replaceable. Try to create your unique way of doing things. If there is demand for it, you are not easy to replace.
This Week
There are many improvements on Practice Drawing This! Many are to my parametric 3D models, so you see a different model each time you want to draw it.
In keeping with this article’s topic, it is one of several unique drawing practice resources on Practice Drawing This. Sure, there are other excellent, amazing art education sites, but I know of no other place that has parametrized manipulated 3D models. If that’s something that you can use, then Practice Drawing This is irreplaceable!
Updated 3D Models
Some 3D models are rendered more nicely. For example, some models now have fewer contour lines, making them more pleasing to look at. For the models created by tracing shapes along a line, that line is now also drawn as an arrow. See the example above.
New 3D Models
Five new 3D models were added. Click on their image to go to them directly:
Subtracting Forms
Adding Forms
Flashcards
I slightly changed the order, moving the primitive 3D models to the front. I hope that doesn’t mess up your routine too much.
I want to focus more on practicing simplified models as a step to drawing things rotated. If you can break something down into simplified forms, you can rotate that thing from imagination or memory.
To that end, I also introduced two additional steps in the flashcard system: one where you break the thing down into simplified forms and one where you draw its simplified forms rotated.
I’m also working on an updated guide on simplified forms and hope to have that ready soon.
Before both simplified form stages, there is a (rotated) gesture drawing stage. So, for each flashcard, you now go through the process of drawing them as:
1) gesture drawing,
2) simplified form,
3) observation,
4) memory,
5) gesture drawing rotated,
6) simplified form rotated,
7) observation rotated,
8) memory rotated.
The stages effectively go from easy to hard: gesture, simplified form, observation, memory, and then the same but rotated from imagination.
Don’t worry, you won’t have to remember this. The flashcard scheduler will tell you which stage you’re in for each flashcard, based on how well you tell it you did last time.
Updated Guide
I updated the guide on the dexterity warm-up line drawing exercises. I want to create something similar for simplified forms, explaining the various types of primitive and manipulated forms you can use to model a figure, prop, or anything and rotate it from your imagination.
3D Models
As a prelude to overhauling the guide to simplified forms, I restructured the 3D objects index pages. Different types of simplified forms are now grouped.
There are primitive forms and manipulated primitive forms, such as wrapped forms, stretched or squeezed forms, bent forms, forms created by tracing a shape along a line, and forms created by adding forms together or subtracting forms.
I have models for all of these, and they can be randomized by pressing the dice icon so you get a model with different proportions each time.
You can use these simplified forms to build more complex things like figures.
Downloads
Because the models are part of the downloads, the file was also updated.