DrawWithMike.net

Hi. I had watched Mike's 'Drawing Negative Space' videos and attempted to practice what I had learned. I was amazed. What started as 3 trees, intended for background, mid ground and foreground, took me on a journey. The background tree was nicely placed and so I moved onto the mid ground tree. Upon looking at my drawing I thought that this tree actually looked more like a waterfall! And so I continued with this idea. Looking again from a distance I was amazed to see a thick forest full of life. I was astounded and just looked upon what I had drawn the same as you would while looking at a fairytale drawing in a book. This feeling really surprised me. Thanks Mike for your much appreciated hard work in providing these opportunities to advance my knowledge about graphite drawing.

Hi Andy. Welcome to the forum. I think that what you’re experiencing is the difference between copying a reference, and telling a story through your composition. I love that stage when you can really feel that you’re creating a story through your artwork! In my experience, it actually takes a lot of planning and thought to magically arrive at a composition that reflects the story in your mind, but it’s so rewarding!

You wrote that so eloquently, Andy, that I could mentally follow your journey. Welcome to the world of creating your own world!

Whilst I can't claim to have been on such an extended journey myself, I always leave a lot of room in my compositions for invention. The animals are tied down tight (my buyers know their animals extremely well) but everything outside of that is as loose as I can make it. Often, for example, there might just be wavy lines containing "foliage" or "trees". Here in "Vanished!".... (I've darkened it for greater legibility). The top left was a quick sketch to help me get an idea of what the background might look like, so I incorporated it directly into the composition. You can see the dogs are carefully defined, but I only created vague blocks of midground and background trees. I knew where the puddles would be in the foreground, but nothing else has been decided. This was the final result: Like you, I made a start and travelled through the composition, creating my world as I drew. At each stage I created what I expected to see in Nature - and sometimes Nature surprised me and had me create something I wasn't expecting.

I'm so pleased to lean that the same happened to you, because it opens up a whole new world of possibilities in your drawings for you.