Extreme, hyper focused detail in the drawing; this level of detail is generally not achievable when drawing from life, especially if it’s a portrait. There is no model who can pose for a portrait for 40 hours. Neither are you going to find a bird in the middle of flight staying still long enough for you to spend time drawing every line on every single feather.
Flamingo Drawing Lesson
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School subscriptions can access more than 175 downloadable unit bundles in our store for free (a value of $1,500).
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Drawing from life takes patience and time
Only problem is, when you draw from life, you have to work a lot harder to train your eye, work in less convenient situations, work at a faster pace, and interpret the image on your own.
Drawing from life requires a lot of patience and willingness to practice regularly.
Progress is generally slow, not very visible, and won’t produce immediate gratification. The fact is, the vast majority of students really are unwilling to invest that kind of time and consideration in their drawings.
With drawing, you really do have to simply log the hours drawing, the way an athlete has to spend time exercising every day to maintain their strength and stamina.
It is easy to see why students have only learned to draw from photographs: photographs are much more convenient than drawing from life.
If you want to draw a portrait, you don’t have to ask anyone to pose or sit still for you.
Need to draw an elephant? Just do a Google Image search and in one second there are hundreds of options to pick from.
Drawing from photographs has limits
It’s rare for a photograph online to have exactly what you’re looking for. Finding a good reference photo is surprisingly difficult and time consuming.
If you are drawing a hand in a specific pose, it’s really unlikely you will find a hand in the exact pose you want in a photograph online. In human figures, it’s usually glaringly obvious when something is off in the anatomy.
It’s not difficult to take a photo of your own hand, or someone else’s hand. Shoot your own reference photos! You’ll have total control over the position of the hand and make it exactly what you need for your artwork.
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Consequently, most students either compromise their image or just end up making up the hand up out of their imagination, which never goes well.
There are so few people who can draw a convincing hand, with good anatomical structure completely out of their heads.
Copying vs. interpreting a photo
When students draw from photographs, they don’t have to work remotely as hard to get half decent results. The process is deceiving because you think you’re drawing, but really, the photograph has done all the work for you.
Essentially, you’re looking at an image that is 2D and then transferring that image to a 2D drawing. Not much has to change in terms of moving from the photograph to your drawing.
When you draw from life, your eye has to work much harder to translate the 3D objects in space in front of you into a 2D drawing. You have to learn to observe, investigate, and visually analyze what you are seeing.
You have to process what it is that your eye is seeing, and then interpret that raw visual information into a visual statement that is your own.
Copying what you see is not remotely the same experience as interpreting what you see. In our pen & ink wash illustration tutorial, it would have been much, much easier for Teaching Artist Alex Rowe to simply type “sheep” into a Google Image search.
Instead, he took the time to visit a farm, which gave him the chance to observe the sheep, see their movement, and to sketch them from life. This experience with sheep in real life tremendously informed his ability to portray the sheep in his ink wash illustration.
