Developing Creative Practice Pt. 3: Drawing from Movies (Patreon)

In this third instalment of Laura Ryan's three-part mini-series Laura will be looking at drawing from movies. This is a topic briefly touched upon by Lance in this earlier blog post; if you're ever stuck feeling creatively bereft just hop onto the Draw Navigator and take your pick of our short exercise articles, or Laura's series to get you going again!

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Why draw from movies?

Movies are cultural markers, their themes driven by collective ideologies and paranoias, a subject discussed at length by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek in The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. I’ve always enjoyed movies which are unusual, ones which contain dark themes, strange colour palettes, aesthetically rich scenes and an off-the-wall plot. When you're looking for subjects to draw from, the lighting and cinematic quality of movies provide still-frame references that are second to none and footage that can be paused to create a unique set of sequential images. In this blog I'm going to propose two approaches - drawing rough sketches from a moving or paused movie and making longer, detailed studies from a screenshot. I’m interested in subversive themes and when I watched The Handmaiden it offered plenty of bizarre and taboo happenings to draw, so that will be my main subject for most of the drawings here. 

'Eden' - a graphite drawing made from The Handmaiden

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Your Brief

Your brief is to:

• Explore the colour palettes, visual motifs, key characters and atmosphere of your chose movie through short studies.
• Create a developed artwork which is informed by a movie of choice - this should not a movie poster, but an original piece of work which draws its inspiration from the film. 

If you don’t have a movie in mind,  I can recommend the following as a starting point; The Fall (2006), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) and The City of Lost Children (1995) for some freakish and off-the-wall content. You may prefer to identify the kind of movies you enjoy by writing a few notes for yourself to establish your own concept or line of enquiry. 

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You'll need the following:

• A movie to watch 
• A sketchbook
• Coloured pencils
• Eraser (I like to use a fine detail eraser)
• Graphite pencils (I like to use 2B & 6B)
• A3/A2 paper (I like to use this smooth, off-white paper)

Initial sketches

Gather your drawing materials and get settled in front of your film. As soon as it starts, make very fast, gestural drawings from the opening scene, allowing it to play without pausing. Use your coloured pencils to make visual notes of the colour palettes and make written notes of the time signature of scenes that you might want to return to later; try to get as much down as possible without being overly precious. 

Once you’ve filled a page or two with splashes of colour and gestural impressions, it’s time to move on to some twenty minute studies. I draw a few squares and rectangles on my sketchbook page to give myself some predefined compositions to sketch within - you can also use a viewfinder to isolate parts of the screen to create new compositions. Pause your movie on a few of the key characters and make studies of their facial features; consider the mood of the character, and the kinds of drawn marks that might best convey them.  An evil villain may be drawn in sharp, spikey marks, whereas a heroic child may be rendered with softer pastel colours. Since this is your sketchbook stage, you don't need to worry too much about accuracy - just a paper spread of preliminary sketches. 

20 min sketches from The City of Lost Children

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Developing a final artwork

Having finished watching and sketching from the movie, go back through it and find the scenes you'd like to work from.  If you like to work in an abstract or very gestural way, you might prefer to play the movie at a slowed down speed, and make a drawing from the moving scenes - platforms like Netflix will allow you to play a film at a slower speed using in-movie controls. If you'd rather work from stills you'll need to take some screenshots - (here’s how to take screenshots from a computer or tablet; if you're working from a TV screen you may have to work from the paused image). Before starting your drawing, you might also want to edit the screenshot, changing the contrast and saturation - here's a Draw Patreon article on how to do that. 

Since I like to make precise and realistic long drawings I prefer to print the reference out at the size I want to work, using a light box to transfer the key details, and then draw over the top. It's best to select materials that you feel confident using, if colour is essential then gouache or watercolour is a great choice; for a desaturated, tonal result graphite works well. Think about how the film makers have conveyed mood and atmosphere through the use of light & dark, composition, and colour schemes. You might replicate or alter those qualities in these drawings and borrow those devices for your own further work. Be sure to share your results with us here at Draw on the community board!

'Untitled' - drawing from The Handmaiden

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This article is the second in a series by illustrator Laura Ryan; you can follow Laura on Instagram here. You can always use the Patreon Navigator to look back over previous blogs HERE.

<< Read Developing Creative Practice Pt. 1: Surrealist Games HERE

<< Read Developing Creative Practice Pt. 2: Five Creative Strategies HERE