4 Reasons Photographers Should Draw More Often

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This drawing is beautifully rendered but drawing like this is an inefficient way to capture an idea.

 

Think of the difference between notes and finished pieces of writing. Both kinds of writing are useful. One kind of writing might even lead to the other. You don’t spend as much time choosing the words you put on a post-it note as you do the words in a job application. One kind of writing might even lead to the other. Because they take less time and skill, you make a lot more notes than you do finished pieces of writing.

Can you draw? Note that I didn’t ask you can you make drawings that look pretty. So if little kids can draw, then so can you! Think of these types of drawing (sketches, doodles, cartoons) as notes that require very little drawing skill. They’re most useful when you keep them simple. Their value is not as aesthetic objects but in the quality of thought they contain. But why would you want to? Let me count the ways.

1

Imagine The Possibilities

Draw when you can’t get there from here or you can only imagine it.

(I could have recorded the idea with words but this simple image is much more specific.)

 

2

Capture The Idea In What’s Picture Imperfect

Draw when what you see isn’t picture perfect but you want to remember the idea.

(I saw this type of image many times before I encountered it with calm water and unbroken reflections.)

 

3

Identify Possible Variations

Draw when you want to figure out new variations of the same idea.

(Drawing helped me find the idea of not just one but two spirals.)

 

4

Structure Stories With Storyboards

Draw when you start a project and you want to figure out which shots you need to complete it.

(Storyboards are what great movie directors like Hitchcock and Spielberg use.)

 

Read more on Drawing here.

Learn more in my photography and creativity workshops.

Let Why You Draw Determine How You Draw

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If I’m trying to make a drawing that looks good or one that is good to look at then the hour I spent making this is well spent but if drawing requires that much time I won’t draw often.

If I’m drawing to record ideas, this is a much more efficient way to draw and so I’ll draw more.

“Make things as simple as possible – but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

 

In their wonderful book Art & Fear Ted Orland and David Bayles share a story.

A daughter asks her father, “What did you do today?”

“I taught my students how to draw,’ he responded matter of factly.

She gasped in amazement, “When did they forget?”

I find that when I ask people if they can draw the number of affirmative responses is directly related to age. The younger you are the more you know you can draw. So what happens when we grow up? We are taught a terribly limiting understanding of the many things drawings can be and do.

With a unidimensional vision of what drawing is, we are trapped by someone else’s limited vision of perfection that is further complicated by comparison to others.

We can all draw. Note that I didn’t say we can or should all draw like Michaelangelo. It takes more time to develop the skills necessary to draw in some ways than others. And you probably draw a little differently than your friends who also think they can’t draw. But if you can read this (possibly even if you can’t), then chances are you already know more than one way to draw.

Drawing is many different things to many different people – and it can do many things for you. For Thomas Edison drawing was a way to visualize what didn’t exist – yet. He handed his team a very simple sketch to help them invent the phonograph. (As a draftsman he was no Leonardo but his limited drawing skills helped him be an even better inventor.) Words weren’t enough and he needed a way to visualize what they had never seen before but soon would in part because he helped his team visualize it with a drawing.

So once we understand that even doodles are just one of many kinds of drawings, we might start to reframe what makes a drawing good based on the purpose we intend it to serve. If all you’re looking for is a way to find and capture ideas, then the time it takes to render them realistically is wasted. (And who wants to waste time?) Moreover, for some purposes, the extra detail added may be distracting or, worse, confusing. (If I ask you where the bathroom is, and you start spouting extended passages of flowery verse, one or both of us might get wet.)

The kind of drawing I want to encourage you to practice as part of your creative toolkit is not about making good-looking drawings; it’s about making useful drawings. Drawing can be useful in many, many ways.

 

1. Imagine The Possibilities

2. Capture The Idea In What’s Picture Imperfect

3. Identify Possible Variations

4. Structure Stories With Storyboards

 

Read 4 Reasons Photographers Should Draw More Often.

Learn more in my photography and creativity workshops.

4 Good Books That Will Help You Make Faster Smarter Drawings

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Want to up your drawing game? Want to just get some game – fast? Check out these books. These books are first and foremost about making drawings to find, refine, and record ideas; they’re about making useful drawings, not drawings that are meant to look good.

Rapid Viz – Kurt Hands

This book shows you how to draw quickly and effectively, as well as many different uses for drawing.

Drawing Ideas – Mark Baskinger + Willam Bardel

This book is much more than you need, but it’s still useful because it offers a number of reasons why to draw and how to draw based on those reasons.

Setting Up Your Shots – Jose Cruz

This isn’t officially a drawing book (and the drawings in them are … eh) but it offers a great clear survey of the different camera moves filmmakers use to tell stories. This knowledge will help you vary the way you compose your drawings for effect and with purpose. Think storyboards.

Visual Grammar – Christian Leborg

This composition book uses nothing more than simple shapes and lines to demonstrate the fundamentals of composition, which you can use to understand the dynamics of any image, generate new ideas, and make many variations on them.

Enjoy drawing!

Learn more in my photography and creativity workshops.

 

How Drawing Helps You Think | Ralph Ammer | TEDxTUM

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“You don’t have to be an artist to draw! In this beautifully illustrated talk, Ralph Ammer shows how drawing your thoughts can be a powerful tool for improving your thinking, creativity, and communication. He wants you to believe in your drawing abilities and provides numerous exercises to help you get started.

Ralph Ammer is a professor at the Munich University of Applied Sciences and teaches biophilic design, which aims to create life-friendly objects, images, and services based on nature. Ralph believes in the diversity of 21st-century craftsmen, regardless of whether they produce well-written programming code, carefully crafted prints, or the occasional ceramic vessel.”

Why Drawing Is So Important To Me

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I love to draw. I began drawing before I could speak. I’ve never stopped. It took me decades to learn to draw the way I wanted to. I spend less time drawing than I used to, now I rarely draw to produce finished results, but hardly a day goes by when I don’t draw, to record or refine ideas.

Drawing is a way to understanding. There’s a difference between knowing things mechanically (with a camera) in 1/125th of a second and knowing it manually (with a pencil, pen, or brush) over the space of hours or even days. Both ways can inform one another.

People often ask me, “Do you draw before, during, or after I photograph?” I respond, “Yes.” There are different benefits to drawing at every stage in the process of creation.

I sometimes draw before arriving at a location to structure my visual explorations. I sometimes draw while on-site, to record ideas that cannot be photographed. I sometimes draw after visiting a location, from unfinished photographs made there, to identify the many ways they can be combined with other photographs. I sometimes draw on finished photographs to identify patterns of thinking and ways to develop them further.

There are many reasons to draw and many ways of drawing.

I take the definition of photo-graph literally – light-drawing. For me, photography is one more way to draw.