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Practices 20/21 – Learning From References Without JUST Copying
🕑 Added 2025-04-18 14:51:02 +0000 UTC1. The buffalo picture felt very invasive—like, you couldn’t just ignore it. It covered the whole canvas, and the two little birds (which seemed to be fighting) really caught my attention, both visually and conceptually. That’s probably why I chose that picture. Of course, at first I wasn’t really sure why—but I guess lately I don’t hesitate much about why I choose these practices. It's usually afterward, once I’m done, that I start making sense of it—like a digestion process.
I started with my usual approach: defining shapes through lines, then shadows, and afterward I just went a bit wild with colours and textures, trying to create volume out of tones that matched the reference. I’m copying the image, yes—but only at the surface. What matters is how I translate it using my own structure: line art, shapes, colours, values, and textures. Copying is just the starting point. The real work is understanding what I’m looking at and rebuilding it through my own visual language. That’s what makes the practice useful—it stops being imitation and becomes interpretation.
Since I’m not picking them directly from the photo, I spend a fair amount of time guessing exactly what colours I’m seeing. I think this is a great exercise for sharpening how you spot colours in the real world, and later apply them to the canvas.
2. The gramophone picture had colour, shape, and highlights. It was just a simple object, yet that visual combo was interesting to me. I kept the line art a bit rough, as you can see in the asymmetrical curves on the top and the straight lines at the bottom. I wanted to see how far I could push a childish drawing style and then make the render as complex and real as I could—not to match the picture, but to contrast the roughness of the line.
3. This picture felt calm to me—like, if you look at it, it’s almost like hearing and feeling cold wind from a temple. The background wasn’t difficult, but those white trees… well, you can see in the process video how much I struggled to get them right. I think it’s because of how hard it is to guess the shape all the leaves make. It’s not very defined geometrically—or at least not for me. Did I get it right in the end? Well, right enough for me to move on, I guess.
4. The fire hydrant, like the gramophone, was another “exaggerated” idea using rough line art. I feel I’m pushing that idea more and more, but not hard enough to make it really clear. It’s like stepping out of my comfort zone. For me, a good drawing takes time to get right, but it turns out that sometimes, quick sketches done in just a few minutes capture the essence of the artwork better than refined drawings. What can I say—this has always been a problem for me with the drawings I like most.
5. The old lady portrait was more fun than anything else. Portraits aren’t easy, but I like drawing old people. Gravity pulls the skin down and creates folds, which makes my work easier because I can use those lines of expression as guidelines. While writing this, I’m surprised by how much of this process I just assume without even thinking—but it makes sense when I try to put it into words.
6. The seated man—I did this one quickly because he felt focused, complete, relaxed, and ready at the same time. In a way, I guess that’s how I’d like to feel. I don’t have a body like that though—he’s actually a very popular jiu-jitsu athlete.
7. Lastly, the scene in the garden—I liked the mood. I could paint just one segment of the composition and then mirror it horizontally. The contrast between the darkness and saturation… just a place I’d love to sit and drink a cup of tea.
Process video: https://youtu.be/3x2EZFSBbG8
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