local anon · 8mo
I am curious, when you say you don't use references you mean you don't reference poses when you're drawing, but what about when you're studying? How do you approach something you don't know how to draw, is my question :3 like, how did you study? have you changed ways of approaching studying over the years? if yes, what didn't work out for you and why!
Thank you for answering in advance, if you do!
I don't use references for poses/anatomy. In general I don't really do references for environments either since I have to make up so much of it. I do, however, have mood boards.
I don't know if it counts as 'studying' but I try to absorb aesthetics and cultural touchstones where I can, or if I'm able to learn functionally how something is built/made. Especially if it's environments or fashion, I spend a lot of time researching history of why the cultural trends with clothing are the way they are or what kind of infrastructure movement was happening and why. If I have to draw something mechanical, I try to understand the literal mechanical blueprint behind something, how energy is distributed and the kind of engineering priorities needed to build it.
The more I understand a thing the easier it is to draw it from imagination. Aesthetics are incredibly easy to remix if you understand why the aesthetics are what they are in the first place.
So much of expression is communicative by nature, so I have to understand what it is I'm communicating. Especially if I'm making something up to be fantastical/purely fictional, then I need to understand what cultural touchstones I'm calling on for what specific purpose. Maybe the easiest way to explain it is trying to understand the grammar instead of just memorizing vocabulary.
I'm a person who's really bad at studying, really. I hate practising without a purpose, so the way I 'study' is whatever it is I need to draw is the purposeful thing I need to immediately learn/understand to be able to accomplish it. For example, getting into danmei and wanting to draw fanart I was faced with the challenge of not knowing Chinese fantasy fashion that deeply, so I spent quite a deep-dive learning as much as I can about what the types of clothing is called, how they're layered, what dynasty or era that cultivator-fiction usually draws on, what existing fiction danmei is already referencing to begin with, etc.... All just so I can, like, be able to sketch dumb things for Scum Villain lol
The only times I actively do use references is when I actually am making a visual homage/shout out to something (illustration, movie, style, meme, etc) or drawing a character design that isn't my own, which means making it close to whatever it is I'm, well.... referencing.
