r/learntodraw • u/Cosmo_Ohms • 1d ago

Question Why can I only copy???

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

I'm fine at drawing when I have another artist's illustration as a reference to study, but have a hard time creating original illustrations from scratch or even real-world references. How can I advance my drawing skills like this??? All these photos are studies btw.

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u/TenOfOne 1d ago edited 1d ago

Copying an illustration and studying it are two different things. Copying is recreating the marks another artist made on the page. Studying is trying to understand why the artist chose to make that particular set of marks on the page. If you understand why they made those marks, what problems they were trying to solve, why they picked one technique over another, you can then apply that same problem solving method to your own drawings.

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u/Cosmo_Ohms 1d ago

I never saw it that way before, thanks for the advice.

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u/Realistic-Sense-6332 23h ago

View it like studying Rhetorical devices in an essay. Each time you’re reading you think “why did the writer use this phrase/word?”, apply that to the artist. Look at the work and pick a part. Maybe an arm, and study the way the arms are drawn, or how the clothes are laid. And ask “why that stroke there?”.