how to draw reference images for 3d modeling
How to use reference images: 13 essential tips for artists
Reference images, if used well, tin can be dynamic resource. Just knowing how to utilise them properly is vital if you want to end upward with a conceivable piece. Just relying on your visual retrieve is not the best mode to end up with an exact representation because at that place are likewise many elements to grubber up from the depths of your memory. This is where reference images come in handy.
In this article, we listing tips from professionals that'll help you use your references images in the about successful fashion possible. On page ane, you'll notice general tips on how to approach using reference images, and bound to page ii if you desire more specific communication on the principles to follow when using reference to create art.
Desire to showtime with some brilliant drawing tutorials? See our guide to how to draw, which rounds up out choice of the all-time classes. For a more than technical guide to epitome types, head to our guide to prototype file formats.
Should we use reference images?
Recently, the hashtag #ArtistConfessions took off on Twitter, and one of the most pop confessions artists shared was 'using references'. This is bizarre because, as British illustrator and caricaturist Neil Davies pointed out, that'due south exactly what artists should be doing.
"That's not something that needs to exist confessed, we all use reference!" he tweeted. "Look at probably the most famous American illustrator, Norman Rockwell: I have a book just of his reference photos! Or Drew Struzan: he didn't make upwardly poses, he took photos of himself!"
And so where has this idea – that using references is bad – come from?
"There's a kind of purist mindset on certain parts of the internet that says using reference for anything more than studying is disrespectful," says Due north Carolina creative person Ivy Dolamore "I retrieve it stems from a frustration with people who trace and recreate what they see without really understanding information technology. Being a 'copier' isn't flexing your creativity."
01. Place the grayness area
Using references isn't the same equally simply copying, of class, but in that location tin sometimes be a grey area between the two. "The biggest problem is when artists adhere too closely to the reference image," says California-based illustrator Kelley McMorris. "Sometimes a pose or perspective can look natural in a photo, but awkward and stiff in a cartoon. It's important to modify the reference to serve your cartoon, not the other way effectually. Or equally my professors sometimes said, 'Don't exist a slave to your reference!'"
Suzanne Helmigh concept artist and illustrator working in the game and picture show industry in The Netherlands, agrees. "The key is to understand what you're looking at and non simply depict what you call back you see," she says.
"I used to teach people how to pigment portraits and I made them study the skull and facial muscles earlier portraying bodily faces. This helped them tons in understanding the proper volumes and proportions."
02. Combine your references
Davies feels information technology's important to employ more than just i reference. "I'll always attempt to find a good selection of images to look at, even when I'm drawing from i main one," he says. "I'll often use ane reference photograph for drawing a face, for example, and then another for a lighting reference, and maybe another for a colour scheme idea. Combining lots of dissimilar references is a great fashion to be creative."
Speak to near pro artists and y'all'll hear a like story. Absolutely, i notable exception is Korean comic artist Kim Jung Gi, who famously doesn't use references. Fifty-fifty he, though, doesn't purely rely on his imagination. Every bit he explains in an interview on his website: "I find things all the time. I don't take references while I'one thousand drawing, but I'm always collecting visual resources. I discover them advisedly on a daily basis, almost habitually. I study images of all sorts and genres."
03. Scout out for copyright
So where can you discover references? Google Images and Pinterest are the obvious go-tos, simply don't forget most copyright. "Sometimes I worry that I've stuck as well closely to a photo that I found online," says McMorris. "So if I do apply photos from online sources, I endeavour to find copyright-free stock photos, and I always try to change the reference substantially. For instance, I might change the model'south costume, or only utilize their hand for reference rather than the entire pose."
04. Create your ain references
Alternatively, McMorris volition simply cut out the middleman and shoot her own references. "I usually just dig through my closet for something I can utilise every bit a costume, grab whatever'southward lying around the firm every bit a prop, and take a few shots with my telephone," she explains. "It only takes a few minutes, simply tin save me an hour of struggling to draw from imagination. By taking your own photos, you'll not just avoid whatever copyright infringement, simply you'll also larn most what kinds of poses, angles and lighting work best for reference."
That said, photography is only one fashion to create your ain references. Dolamore, for example, creates her own 3D model references using DesignDoll, helping her to map out poses, perspective and shadows. "This gives me a outcome I like, although you can't merely copy what DesignDoll gives you, either," she says. This does, of course, take a petty fourth dimension. And Samuel Read, a concept artist at Mighty Kingdom based in Adelaide, admits that, until recently, fourth dimension pressures dissuaded him from using references as often as he should, even while he was recommending the practice to others.
As Read explains, "Although I used reference for things like inspiration and developing ideas, I was lacking in using photos and life cartoon for task such equally posing my characters, making expression studies, and designing different kinds of hands, feet, optics, noses, mouths and then on."
05. Analyse your process
The #ArtistConfessions hashtag made Read rethink his procedure and focus more on these areas – and this approach has fabricated an impact in his work. "The apply of more varied reference photos, equally well every bit cartoon from life, have started to teach me more than about the different ways in which people are synthetic, and methods of communicating ideas, such as making someone's hands read as one-time, weathered and tired, or difficult and strong," Read says.
Using references tin can exist full of pitfalls, just done in the right style it'll make yous a better creative person. "Listening to professionals proudly saying they employ reference has helped me immensely," says Dolamore. "Learning that work I admire isn't created out of sparse air gives me the conviction to recall, 'Oh, I can do that, too'. I've stopped thinking every bit much virtually the purism and more about how I can accomplish that initial vision. Why not apply the tools available?"
The content was originally published in issue 177 of ImagineFX , the world's acknowledged mag for digital artists. Buy issue 177 or subscribe to ImagineFX .
Next page: step-past-step tips for using reference images
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Source: https://www.creativebloq.com/how-to/how-to-use-reference-correctly-8-essential-tips
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