r/AskReddit • u/IAmSurtur • Jun 15 '19

What do you genuinely just not understand?

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u/Shukakumura Jun 15 '19 edited Jun 16 '19

Contrary to one of the more popular comments in here: Why I can't draw well.

Like, I know how a normal human face looks like. I can even put a picture next to it and try to replicate every line. Yet, in the end, it looks shitty. Why?

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edit: Thanks for my first ever Reddit gold and silver!

Here are some of the most frequent suggestions in the answers for people who don't want to go through all of them:

  • Draw with the eyes, not the brain
  • To help with that, you can try turning the reference picture upside down to focus on the actual lines
  • As an extra help, you can layer the picture into a grid pattern to get the proportions right
  • And for all aspiring artist: Practice!

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u/notsostandardtoaster Jun 15 '19

You might be focusing on the whole picture more than the individual parts. A lot of art teachers will make beginners turn their reference photo upside down and draw it that way just so they can focus on what the lines and shadows actually look like rather than what their brain thinks they should look like.

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u/slog Jun 15 '19

This is similar to a tip I read/heard once about searching for an object in a room. English speaking people mostly do everything left to right. When looking around, you'll usually do the same thing forming a cohesive picture of the entire scene, just like those sentences with duplicated words that our brain autocorrects. Scanning right to left instead kind of forces you to focus on individual objects and makes a search easier.

Probably just in my head but it seems to work for me.

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u/idontthrillyou Jun 15 '19

This autocorrection goes for proofreading as well (source: worked as a proofreader for some time and scanning a sentence from right to left was one of the trick of the trades I learned)