edited by: Zubaida Nazzal
In this article, I want to answer a question posted on YouTube by the user (Just Guy). The question is, can an artist learning without the fundamentals progress as fast as an artist learning with the fundamentals?
Let’s say there is a creative person called Sami, he has no fundamentals, he wants to develop and rise on the development scale from 1 to 100. He draws randomly and keeps practicing, but out of a 100, he might only reach around level 20 for example. In his mind, he thinks that fundamentals are like math, and learning them will ground his creativity. Sami might think learning perspective and drawing cubes is boring and uncreative and thus, thinks that skipping them is for the best.
Then it is not helpful to learn fundamentals?
learning fundamentals, will help you observe better and execute better. If you look for example at a space ship, a person or a tiger, you will not be intimidated by them, you won’t be worrying how are you going to draw them. In your mind, you will break them down into geometrical shapes and put them in perspective – and these are the most important fundamentals – and then build them however you want.
Changing your perception of things will take time, but you’ll eventually get used to it and be able to see things in a simplified 3D manner.
What’s the issue of being a creative artist with big ideas?
Back to Sami, the issue here being that Sami wants to express himself like a big artist with great ideas, he has new ideas, new worlds, new characters and new concepts. Despite all of this, if you do not have the fundamentals and skills, you won’t find yourself in a level higher than 20. Despite the ideas being good, your inability to draw or to speak the language will obstructs your progress and expressionism.
If I compare Sami to little kids, kids have ideas, but they usually can’t construct them due to lack of skills and fundamentals. Same goes to Sami, despite all the ideas, he will have the same obstruction as the kids when he reaches the execution stage.
Then how can I reach level 100?
In theory, learning the fundamentals can help you reach around level 60. Therefore, the way to go is to combine the knowledge with the art. Being a great artist is a mixture of fundamentals, skills, research and imagination. However, you do not need a wide imagination since our world is rich with references, ideas, history and civilizations.
My advice is to delay being an expressive artist until you learn the fundamentals and be able to better express yourself and ideas.
If you look at this warrior concept art, by itself, the idea is useless without the skills to back it up. You need to know light and shadow, composition and anatomy. As you can see in the board, they didn’t draw something purely from imagination, they did a research and gathered ideas and stick to a theme. After gathering all the information and references, they combined them and came up with something new.
All the great work you see from great companies like Disney and Studio Ghibli, know that it involved a lot of research and studies for references and in many cases, they even traveled to the area in which the movie is supposedly located.
In the Lion King movie, they had to study the anatomy and movement of lions, zebras, hippos and many many other African animals. A very interesting fact from this movie’s studies, is while studying the environment, they studied the movement of the dust when animals run. The reason for this excessive research, is to be able to make something that is believable and close to our reality despite it being fantasy.
In short, what you need is to have the fundamentals, then study the real life and finally execute your ideas to the fullest.
Feel free to watch the full video on my YouTube channel https://youtu.be/3FHRMS1v_20 and don’t forget to like and subscribe for more. Stay tuned for another article.