Studying from Masters
Saturday, February 9th, 2008It seems I’ve waited all my life for a mentor. There have been a few great teachers, here and there, that I’ve had the chance to work with and learn from for what seemed like very brief moments. Maybe I have romanticized it a bit too much, but I always wanted that apprenticeship with a great master the way many of the Disney animators had with Walt’s Nine Old Men or the way a young cartoonist studies with a veteran comic strip artist.
For the most part, I’ve had to learn my craft myself, looking for guidance from artists I have admired from across distance and time. It seems that some of the best teachers I ever had are ones I’ve never met, many of whom have been dead for centuries. From Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens, and Holbein to Windsor McKay, E.C. Segar, Heinrich Kley, and Walt Kelly; to living masters young and old: Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Jeff Smith, Stephen Silver and so many others that I couldn’t possibly list them all. They are masters of their art and I have been able to learn by studying the marks they continue to create or have left behind.
But studying from masters is more than just copying their lines. If we approach it with the proper vision, we can get a glimpse at the artist’s thought process.
The following is advice I’ve given to students through the years. It’s basically the way I learned to draw over my lifetime.
1. Make studies of the drawings. Draw as close to the same size as the original as you can, and use the same materials as the artist. Copy the process of drawing without duplicating every line. Draw as if you were seeing the actual model or creating from your own imagination. Be aware of the artist as he “talks”; understand his thought process–what he is seeing and why.
2. Apply what you discover in the artist’s teaching to a live model or creative sketch of your own.
3. Analyze your drawings. Understand your weaknesses and faults. Then take your questions back to the “Master” and repeat step one while the questions are fresh in your mind. Correct your drawings so you can be better the next time.
4. Repeat the whole process.
Your objective should be to understand completely the process and thinking of the artist. Do this on a regular basis: at least 15 minutes a day. The results should be hearing the voice of the teacher in your head as you draw and solving the visual problems as he would.
I know that last step reads like the back of a shampoo bottle, but, looking back, it was good advice and something I need to follow myself more often. Recently a student asked me how I have taught myself. I responded that I learned by being aware of everything around me and wanting to know how things work. We can watch a movie, read a book or view a painting and get caught up in it; but it’s when we deconstruct it, analyze it, find out what makes it good (or bad), then emulate and adapt it; it’s through this process that we become artists. We can’t just wait for others to come along and teach us; we must learn to find the answers ourselves.
The great thing is we have some amazing masters to help us.
