Medicine Cabinet

lexxercise:

joannaestep:

escargod:

ugh, exactly. that’s why i draw with my eyes shut. just to keep out all those horrid outside influences, you know?

and when i get jury summons. i make sure i’ve got my mp3 player in with me to drown out all that relevant information so i can make my judgement based on absolutely nothing at all. same thing when i’m voting. i just drop my pen onto the ballot paper and hope it makes a tick in one of the boxes. heck, i’m reblogging this post with commentary and i didn’t even read it. i have no respect for people who put any research into what they’re doing whatsoever. they’re just gross.

Reblogging for amazing comment.

OP, how…. how do you think master painters work? Illustrators? Do you think professionals at Disney or Pixar or Ghibli work without references? That they’re just magically able to accurately draw architecture and animals and natural looking movement without references?

Using a reference doesn’t mean copying an existing piece of art; that’s just copying. It means researching your subject matter and using your research (often visual) to create stronger, more accurate work. It’s not just “okay,” it’s necessary to attain the level of skill the artists you admire exhibit. These artists don’t generally rely heavily on references for every piece, either. They look up what they need, learn from using it, and are able to absorb that knowledge for use in future work.

This may not change how you and those who share your sentiment feel about it, but I urge you to look a little deeper into what using references really means, as it would appear your understanding of the subject is fairly shallow.

I think OP misunderstands the difference of reference and copying.  Reference is used by an artist to gather information on their subject matter.  

Say, if I had to do a painting of a forest scene, I would have to research what types of trees and plants would go into my painting.  I wouldn’t want to accidentally paint a type of tree that does not exist in the selected region I chose.  If I decided to paint an oak tree, what is it that makes an oak tree different than a pine tree?  What characteristics does an oak tree have?  This is what research is for, otherwise I’d be painting what I THINK an oak tree looks like, rather than what it would actually look like.  

References can easily be obtained nowadays thanks to image searches and an abundance of reference books on nearly an subject.  If I wanted to know how to draw hairy beefcake men, I just have to plug that into Google and I have tons of information.  You can even go out to take your own reference pictures!  Get your friends to pose how you want your subjects to pose so you can see how the body would look in the position.  Professional artists use reference all the time.  The Pixar team that worked on Ratatouille went on a trip to Paris to gather information on Parisian architecture and food culture so that they could incorporate it into the film.  It’s just like studying so you can fully understand your subject matter.

(Source: artist-confessions)