Who here can draw/illustrate in realistic fashion?

[brentspeak]

I borrowed "The MAD Artists" from the library; the talent these MAD magazine artists have/had is incredible. I can barely draw a stick figure, but most of the artists in the book apparently can duplicate Norman Rockwell paintings if they chose. And these are just artists from a humor magazine (Wallace Woods, Drew Friedman, Bob Clarke, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, etc.)

What is the secret in being able to draw? Do you have to demonstrate illustrative talent when you're like 3-years old? Be left-handed? Be left-brained? Have two brains?

[wtmusic]

1. Like anything else

talent and hard work.

I don't draw well but a good friend who is a cartoonist claims everyone has 5000 bad drawings in them. You gotta get them all out before you make the good one.

[Demit]

2. Simple. Just make your hand draw exactly what you see. The real secret is,

how do you make money at it? :)

[berner59]

4. Besides talent & hard work....

I'll add passion...it's such a personal thing but it needs to be driven from the heart. I can draw well, went to art school but ended up in graphic design because it was too hard to make a living illustrating...I envy successful illustrators...

[clydefrand]

3. Be right brained and be very observant of everything you see.

Look at the details and space relationships...negative and positive...what's there and what's blank(or what's not there). You can be trained to look and duplicate what you see on paper, but some people (the real artists) just know how to do it intuitively.

[Lerkfish]

5. equal parts talent and training.

You can train an untalented someone to draw...sort of, but without some amount of talent, it still won't get to the level you're referring to.

Observation is important, but I think it really comes down to what (I think) michaelangelo said about sculpting: I see the marble, and I see the statue. Then I just remove everything that isn't statue.

:)