1. Storytelling
- Tennyson Wu
- May 3, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: May 4, 2024
Why is storytelling important?
Deciding what story you want to tell with your drawing and how you want to tell your story helps you communicate with your audience what you want to show with your drawing. Your audience doesn't have to be a gaggle of fans at an art gallery, your audience could be as simple as your friends and family, or even just future you.
We start the lessons with storytelling because it will be the lens through which we view and understand the other art fundamentals we will cover in this series. In the lessons that follow, we will see a lot of advice on how to make your drawings look better.
But, by starting with storytelling, you will understand how to make your drawings more impactful.
Ways to create ideas for drawings
Don't know what to draw?
Here are some prompts to help you get your imagination going. Try to draw something related to one of these:
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1.Your hobbies | 2.Your favourite book, movie, series |
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3.Interesting things where you live | 4.If you could go anywhere... |
5.What art you find inspiring?
(drawings, paintings, photos, videos, sculptures, etc)
200. Master Study
Inspired by Marc Brunet's "Impossible Love"
If you've been drawing for a while and are tired of drawing the ideas above, here are some questions I found help me create new ideas for things to draw:
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The last question could be something you saw online, through social media, or watching a show. Or it could be something you saw in the real world while going about your day.
Now would be a good time to talk about observing life through mindfulness, but we're not quite ready for that tip yet. You'll have to wait until the next lesson ;)
Finally, the last way I create ideas for things to draw are similar and opposite.
What is similar to the subject you have been drawing recently?
What is the opposite of the subject you have been drawing recently?
What are things your subject is usually around?
What are things your subject is usually never around?
Try to answer these questions where the subject is a dog. It doesn't need to be super logical, rather, use the questions to help you create ideas.
My answers. Yours are probably a bit different, and that's ok :D
A wolf is similar to a dog.
Some consider a cat to be the opposite to a dog. You could also say, dogs are organic beings and can move. Houses are inorganic and cannot move.
A dog is usually around parks, trees and nature
A dog is never in space, with spaceships and asteroids
Can you answer these questions for the subject you have been drawing a lot of recently?
The importance of documenting your journey
Why do I recommend documenting things like the date, and what you are doing?
What you document will become messages to your future self, and to your future audience, if you want to have one.
They will be a way to communicate across time
It will be nice for you to look back on these drawings one day and see how much your art skills have improved!
This is what your piece of paper might look like after following the tutorial for Storytelling.
Break complex ideas into simpler componentsBut what if the thing you want to draw is more complicated than "a bird" or "a tree?" Let's use an example: "ultra high tech biomutant mecha." Well, what do we mean by this? That depends on what story you want to tell. Only you will know what you mean by your idea. In this case, let's say we have a mecha that is also a biomutant, in that it is a mechanical being with organic parts. Since it's "ultra high tech" the mechanical components should look super futuristic.  I experiment with my subject through different rounds or iterations. Open up each item below to see my thought process in each iteration (shown with the numbers in circles above). Iteration 1 I start with a round head, and add some sort of "ears" that I have seen on videos of older mecha anime. I believe in those shows, the "ears" are more like antenna. I want most of the character to look mechanical, but also high tech. I decide, sleek, and white looks high tech (I suppose thanks to Apple products). Now I have a high tech mecha, how can I make it a biomutant? If I have one of the arms as tentacles, that's organic, and sort of bio, and mutanty I guess. In hindsight I think the tentacles were more inspired by my recent time with Baldur's Gate 3. I also want to keep reinforcing the high tech part and mecha part and give the character an energy weapon. I model the legs as cheetah hind-legs, since cheetahs seem to have a sleek design to me. This also helps reinforce the marrying of organic biomutant and artificial high tech. Iteration 2 The mecha's head looks kind of cute. That's not what I was going for. So I test out another head separately, since that's all I want to focus on changing for now. Of course, there are lots of things I could try to do differently, but sometimes it's better to focus on a single thing. Instead of a round head, I try out a triangular head and it immediately looks much sleeker and more intimidating. I like this and keep the change. Iteration 3 I'm more comfortable experimenting now and try to change a few things while keeping the main design from iteration 1. Tentacles for the arms and all the joints makes me think someone could confuse the mecha for a giant tentacle creature in a high tech battle suit. That's not what I'm going for, so I think I want to reduce the amount of pink tentacles in my design. The arm with the cannon can be even more high tech if it is simply levitating and not connected to the body directly. This idea I borrowed from Archons (part of a race of high tech aliens) in the videogame StarCraft 2, though I strongly suspect they also borrowed the idea from older sources. I change the joints to the legs to black, to indicate mechanical joints and wires instead. Now it feels more mecha and even more high tech. Iteration 4 To be honest, I just tried this out because there wasn't a lot of space at the bottom of the canvas. I tried to make another design for the head. After reviewing I decided the head on iteration 3 was better. Iteration 5 By this point I was getting tired of drawing in this session and already fairly happy with my ultra high tech biomutant mecha. So I decided to have some fun and tell a little story with my mecha, one where an evil version is destroying the city. I use black and red because I have used this combination before, and know they go well together. This is also why we see this combination in movies and games fairly often. Iteration 6 I see iteration 5 and think my mecha looks decidedly evil. Very intimidating too. I wonder what it would look like with the original colour scheme. It is fairly easy to copy and paste the lines with my digital tablet. If you are using some more traditional like a pencil, you will just have an extra round of practice when you redraw the scene. Redrawing your ideas helps you become less precious with any single drawing. It doesn't matter if you mess it up the drawing because you can and will likely draw it a few more times. With the original colour scheme, I think my mecha looks less evil and intimidating, and more just bored. Which version is best? That depends on which story I want to tell with my mecha :) These iterations are what I did in one drawing session. Of course I (and you) can start a new drawing session on another day with a completely different starting point for a "ultra high tech biomutant mecha." Or, we could continue with one of the steps we already drew and take the idea in a different direction. |
No matter what subject you choose, your drawing probably won't look exactly like you want.
Here's a little secret:
Your drawing never looks exactly as you imagine it in your head.
But, with lots of practice, you will be able to get closer to what you have in your mind.
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