Drawing On The Paper, Rather Than Through It

"Mr Benn" David Mckee

No matter how hard you try, a drawing will always be flat. You can layer it with perspective, you can shower it in shading, but when you’re done it’ll be as flat as a pancake. This isn’t a bad thing, it should be celebrated. It’s a unique quality of something being drawn, and it’s why it’s worth the effort of drawing in the first place. 

Techniques of rendering and perspective can add grounding to a drawing, and can elevate impact. But it’s always important to be aware that these techniques are working for you, not you for them. The more ‘real life’ perspective and rendering you lay on a drawing, the more rules you’ll have to follow. The more you’re boxing yourself in. If something looks better with broken perspective or a broken arm bone, break it! It’s a drawing, those bones aren’t there. If rendering is wanted in a piece, for lighting or for mood, I find it can be exciting when the drawn quality is maintained. Aim to keeping it as expressive and emotive as possible.

"The Snowman" Raymond Briggs

Computers are very good at creating images that follow the reality of our world. They can calculate objects in space with correct perspective and lighting, faster and more accurately than we can. So why not go the other way. Why not do what computers appear to struggle with, which is being genuinely visually creative, poetic and expressive. Let the page have its own rules.

"Wild" Emily Hughes

I think about this as drawing on the paper, rather than through it. I have explored the idea of trying to make the paper go away as I'm drawing. This naturally encourages a certain level of dimension to a piece, as your imagining the paper to be a window. However it can be fun to think about it in the opposite way. It is incredibly thrilling to see a drawing living on the page, rather than in it. Not looking through a window, not a re-creation of a paused moment. But the creation of something that is happening on the paper live, living on it’s own terms, with it’s own logic and reality!