Tips on how to handle assignments on imagination drawing

Imagination drawing assignments give many students a hard time. Imagination drawing needs a lot of creativity. Imagination drawing can be of massive help with architecture assignments when coming up with different designs. Students often have specific areas in which they can easily come up with creative drawings. If a student covers animals perfectly in imagination drawings and is asked to draw buildings, people, or any other that is not in their line, they are likely to struggle. This blog will help you in handling assignments on imagination drawing.

The would-be artist often takes it for granted that it is possible to draw one thing without being able to draw another. 'I can draw faces, but I can't draw birds... is one fairly common argument on these lines, or 'I can't for the life of me draw eyes. Such statements are tantamount to admitting that one cannot draw at all. It simply means that faced with a particular graphic problem-that of drawing birds or eyes, for example, the artist retreats, perhaps believing the while that he can draw almost everything else. I must repeat; drawing is an attitude of mind, it is not concerned with regurgitating learned formulae, of being able to draw hands, but not fingers, of being able to draw figures, but not cars.

It is obviously absurd to think that one can isolate the subjects around one into such categories as eyes and face and the like, as though these have a separate autonomous existence: the eye is a ball and it rests in a socket, which is on a face, and must be related to this face. The face itself is on the front of a solid skull, and is constantly changing with the emotions which surge through the body upon which it is balanced. And this body walks on the ground at some point of the earth, which is itself spinning madly in space. Everything is too intimately connected to be separated out so glibly with such words as 'I cannot draw eyes'.

Equally silly, is the idea that it is possible for one to draw from life without being able to draw from imagination, or vice versa. Obviously, one prefers one kind of drawing to the other, but they are by no means mutually exclusive.. In any case, it is not so easy to decide at what point one is drawing 'from life' and at what point one draws from imagination: the two are the woof and of life, are enmeshed in the very fabric of an artist's being.

One interesting experiment you may try in order to study this question of imaginative drawing is to try making a picture of an animal you have never seen. Try drawing a zingomort, for example, a beast which you have probably never encountered before. The zingomort has the tail of a small fish, the head of a pig, and is covered all over in scales and eyes. It lives on dry land, and eats fried onions. Try your hand at this - don't worry about the media - use pencil, and above all, don't worry about form. Restrict yourself to drawing the content of this strange creature as you imagine it to be.

You may well end up with a drawing something like the Sus Marinus Monstrosus (plate 89), which was offered by the zoologist Aldrovandus in the sixteenth century as a genuine creature. You may not have created an exciting drawing, but you will at least have learned one thing through your attempt - that it is extremely difficult to invent something new. The temptation is always to put down what one already knows; to build a zingomort from a pig and a fish with little or no attempt to relate them morphologically. Put away your famous zingomort and leave it without looking at it for at least a week. At the end of that time, using the same medium, and without looking at the drawing, make a picture of a fish and a pig. Now compare the three drawings, and you will see exactly what I mean about the difficulty of inventing something new.

The imagination is more limited, more given to relying on visual formulae than we think! You will probably have drawn the ears of the pig in the same way, or the eyes or snouts, as though these elements could only be drawn in one way. Now put away these three drawings and once more draw your zingomort, this time making sure that you are being inventive. Try to change as many elements as you can, yet still preserve the basic structure of the fabulous beast. Consider every element as you come to it, trying not to draw a single line without giving it some thought. If you find that you can do this, then you are on the way to learning something about drawing.

You will have seen by now just how difficult it is to invent new forms, and you will be in a position to admire such sketches as those in plate 66, which, in spite of their resemblance to Breughel or Bosch drawings, are organic forms of considerable invention. This fact that it is difficult to invent leads us to one position, if we are honest, and that is to the need to clear ourselves of visual prejudices as much as possible. We must do this if we wish to become artists.

When faced with a new graphic problem or with one which we have not with sufficiently, our immediate response is either to trot out a stock piece of graphic, or to say, 'I cannot draw that!' We can imagine the sinking feeling in the stomach of the artist who was originally asked to make a drawing of a crocodile which he had obviously never seen (plate 88). The animal he finally ended up with is not a very reptilian crocodile, admittedly, but it has much beauty of line, and in any case the monkish artist was interested in other things than zoological accuracy. The moral, so far as we are concerned, is that he did not say, 'I cannot draw crocodiles...- he got on with the job as best he could. He did not allow content to restrict form or his own inertia to prevent him from trying. There is a world of difference between saying 'I can't draw crocodiles', and trying to draw the beasts. It is a question of integrity.

It is true that even a trained and professional artist when faced with a new subject will feel a similar sinking sensation in his stomach, but he will probably settle down determinedly, driven on by integrity or a sheer refusal to be beaten. You may adopt either of these attitudes yourself when faced with a problem you do not like or cannot solve. One amusing example of the 'I cannot draw... variety is recorded of a very professional artist - the illustrator Tenniel. In 1871 he was asked by Lewis Carroll to illustrate Alice Through the Looking Glass, which he did, though he baulked at one of the illustrations required of him, saying that he could not see his way to drawing the picture, 'a wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art'. One feels, of course, that it was not so much that Tenniel couldn't draw a wasp in a wig, as that he was acting as a kind of self-appointed editor to Lewis Carroll, and objecting to the chapter in which the wasp appeared. Chapter and wasp in wig promptly disappeared, as a result, yet we know that Tenniel was a man with an imagination fertile enough to illustrate the slithy toves, creatures half like badgers, half like corkscrews, given to building nests under sundials, and with a love for cream cheese.

The moral of our Tenniel story is that it is the attitude, not ability, determines what one can or cannot draw.

Excelling in imagination drawing is all about the mindset. Everything here is about positivity and not giving up. Constant practice of imaginary drawings will make your work better. If you have any challenges in handling your imagination drawing assignments, reach out to us for professional help.