# How does a reference make you a better artist?



## EvilLugiaXD (Jan 26, 2012)

I just thought of something. People say being as a artist you have to be creative and draw what comes of your mind with out copying someones work or style.  Then they go off and start using things from real life for reference. What the hell?

First of all how is that being creative? You are basically copying nature and how she makes things, how is it creative to use reference when the whole thing is suppose to be from your mind?

(I am sorry for not making sense, I like to type things as they come to my mind.)


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## Little~Bit (Jan 26, 2012)

Can't get better if you don't practice with something. I mean, I'd hate to commission someone for a horse character and get a cat character instead, because they think it's the same thing because they don't know how to reference the correct animal.


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## Arshes Nei (Jan 26, 2012)

EvilLugiaXD said:


> I just thought of something. People say being as a artist you have to be creative and draw what comes of your mind with out copying someones work or style.  Then they go off and start using things from real life for reference. What the hell?
> 
> First of all how is that being creative? You are basically copying nature and how she makes things, how is it creative to use reference when the whole thing is suppose to be from your mind?
> 
> (I am sorry for not making since, I like to type things as they come to my mind.)



You are absolutely right. Not only do you not make "since" you don't make sense either. I'm tired of people thinking the " stream of consciousness" is being creative or thoughtful. Think about what you type. 

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2010/10/water-by-three-masters.html

They used reference from the same source. Water. But each version is original and different.

EVERYONE uses reference. Good artists use it well. You don't get an idea without building a visual library of how things look. So it is not about photos from Google but looking at the world around you.


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## Moonfall The Fox (Jan 26, 2012)

The idea is to draw believable anatomy. If you are drawing a horse, people need to know it's a horse, even if it is stylized.

Also, it is always best to draw as realistically as possible to learn, because you will improve artistically from doing so no matter whether you want to make it look exact or not.

I don't usually use reference pictures, and if I do I never copy the pose- I use them to learn muscle or skeletal structures only. It does help, when drawing realistically or trying to make something believable.


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## Little~Bit (Jan 26, 2012)

Herf a derp.


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## Moonfall The Fox (Jan 26, 2012)

Huh? I am not the OP, dear.


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## Little~Bit (Jan 26, 2012)

D=

I'm retarded.
Ignore me!

*Hides in a hay bale* FML..


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## Moonfall The Fox (Jan 26, 2012)

It's okay. <3 I do that same crap all the time. 

By the way, nice avatar. Pretty markings.


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## Little~Bit (Jan 26, 2012)

Thank you! C=


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## Catilda Lily (Jan 26, 2012)

So trying to be a better artist by looking at pictures to make things look better equals being uncreative now?


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## Zydala (Jan 26, 2012)

EvilLugiaXD said:


> I just thought of something. People say being as a artist you have to be creative and draw what comes of your mind with out copying someones work or style.


 
Who's "people" we speaking



> Then they go off and start using things from real life for reference. What the hell?



What the hell what? That's smart. They wanna know what something looks like before they attempt to draw it. Are you talking about copying pictures? Because *Copying IS NOT Referencing*.



> First of all how is that being creative? You are basically copying nature and how she makes things,


 
*Referencing is also NOT copying*, for the sake of clarity.



> how is it creative to use reference when the whole thing is suppose to be from your mind?



Apparently the only creative art out there is non-representational abstract and alien concept art.

Here's the deal: when you're referencing something, it's to make sure you have an accurate representation of what you're trying to make. You're drawing someone with their head in their hands, but no matter what you do you can't get it right. So you look in a mirror (or take a photo) and do the pose yourself. Aha! That's what the palm of the hand does when you put your chin in it. Go back to drawing. 

BAM! That's reference. Is the result a picture of you with your head in your hand looking in a mirror? No, it's something else entirely. Well, then! Creativity still seems to work then.

Here's another good example of someone using reference, using their friends to pose. But the comic page obviously doesn't have the friends or the artists' living room in it. It's still entirely creative.

*TL;DR*: *Copying is not referencing*, *referencing is not copying*, professional artists use it all the time because they know the limits of a visual library and it makes much higher quality art than mere guesswork.


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## Fay V (Jan 26, 2012)

The mind in regards to art is a blank slate. You are not born with the knowledge of what a bird looks like. If you want to be a good artist you need to understand how the world works, understand how simple shapes form complex ones, how a form shifts as it moves. 
It is impossible for you not to draw of what you have seen. The truly creative people are those who take the time to learn from life, understand how an object works, then apply that to a latter image. Understanding how to draw a cat, a horse, a lizard, and a bat will help you combine those aspects effectively to create a dragon. 

Don't be lazy and blame creativity for the fact that you don't want to go to the effort of using a reference or learn how to use one effectively. It's not creative to ignore fundamentals just as "stream of consciousness" is not particularly creative and is no excuse for poor grammar and sentence structure.


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## EvilLugiaXD (Jan 26, 2012)

Fay V said:


> The mind in regards to art is a blank slate. You are not born with the knowledge of what a bird looks like. If you want to be a good artist you need to understand how the world works, understand how simple shapes form complex ones, how a form shifts as it moves.
> It is impossible for you not to draw of what you have seen. The truly creative people are those who take the time to learn from life, understand how an object works, then apply that to a latter image. Understanding how to draw a cat, a horse, a lizard, and a bat will help you combine those aspects effectively to create a dragon.
> 
> Don't be lazy and blame creativity for the fact that you don't want to go to the effort of using a reference or learn how to use one effectively. It's not creative to ignore fundamentals just as "stream of consciousness" is not particularly creative and is no excuse for poor grammar and sentence structure.



So what you are saying is a reference is like a format on how to draw things correctly then? Sorry if the question seems offensive.

 The way I was thinking is that in order to be a good artist, you had to go by memory of what a object or creature looked like and thought in order to be a good artist, you had to sum up the memory of what that particular object or living life form looks like, and draw it as realistically as possible.  

So is using a reference is a form of training so your mind can draw things almost as perfectly as real life? Or is it to training that involves identifying what the object looks like so you may draw it in your own style?


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## Zydala (Jan 26, 2012)

Forget 'training'. The goal of art isn't to be a visual encyclopedia; to be a good artist you have to know how to use the fundamentals to your advantage, not make things perfectly from memory. If you spend all your time trying to 'train' to draw what things look like in real life from any angle in any lighting ever... then you're not spending time making interesting, _creative_ art.

Reference is a _tool_. That's pretty much it! Don't think about it so hard :] Professional artists who have painted for decades STILL use references and recommend it to beginners.


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## Egypt Urnash (Jan 29, 2012)

Art isn't supposed to be entirely from your mind. It's good to be able to make shit up, in fact it's pretty vital to be able to do that, but that made-up stuff has to have some basis in reality.

When you tell a story, it's probably going to involve people doing stuff that bears some resemblance to reality - you might be writing about space warriors in remote-operated mechs units fighting shapeshifting worm beasts that possess people's bodies, but you'll still want to think about the realities of what combat does to a person, and what the constant paranoia of wondering if your squad mates are actually being run by the enemy does to a person. The details might be different but the stresses are the same, right?

And it's the same for art. To make things believable, you have to study them. A kid's drawing of a tree is just a brown vertical blob with a green blob on top. An adult, studied drawing of a tree not only thinks about a tree's structure in a bit more detail, but is the result of deeper thought - what kind of tree is it? Is it one appropriate to the climate being portrayed? And you can't do that off the top of your head at first, so you go looking.

At FC, someone came up to me and asked me to do a badge of their springbok character. She had ref but I knew it was more just a generic deer than a springbok. So I pulled up a Google Images search for "springbok" and was able to decide what details I could use to really sell that this character was a SPRINGBOK as opposed to a horse, an antelope, a dik-dik, or a cow. I didn't copy off of any of the photos directly but I was able to analyze them and use them in my art.

Art, in a lot of ways, is about holding up a distorting mirror to reality. How distorting it is is a function of the artist's experience and their own goals. But unless you're doing pure abstraction, you have to look at reality to some extent or another. And sometimes that does mean directly copying a few bits of the real world! Sometimes that even means copying a lot of it; check out photorealistic painting sometime. It's not my bag but I can admire the technical skill that goes into making a more-real-than-real caricature of things, as opposed to the wilder caricatures a cartoonist like myself creates!


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## lostfoxeh (Jan 30, 2012)

Well, there is creativity, however references do several things to help with it. Often an artist would have an overwhelming emotion that comes as a vague shape and impossible to show to anyone in its pure self. Like waking up from a dream. It is vivid and life like while dreaming, but when awake it fades fast until all that is left is the feeling of the dream and short bits. References help fill in the missing bits to bring the emotion/inspiration too a form that is vivid.

References help when you do not have an idea of what to make, but you want practice in using your tools of your trade.

There are times when someone is so inspired that they will have a fully formed picture in their head, often there isn't a need of a reference then, as they can see what they want complete already.


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