Getting The Most Out Of Studies

I find that most people have a love-hate relationship with studies, they either absolutely love doing studies and do them A LOT, or they pretty much never do studies at all. I think there definitely needs to be a healthy balance in between so that you’re able to apply the studies you’re doing to your own work whilst also understanding the value of studies within your own work too.

Studies can be quite a challenge though as there’s a lot more to them than just trying to copy what you can see, in fact, you should always have a plan for your studies to enable you to learn from them. So I thought it would be a good idea to elaborate on that a little with a few tips that I have!

Consider the purpose of your study.

A trap that some people fall into is pulling up an image or item that they want to study and just directly copying what they see. Now, this isn’t a bad way to start out, but it becomes very unclear what you’re actually trying to learn, which is then reflected in what you actually end up learning from the study. It will also hinder you because if you’re unclear with the intentions for your study, you will likely tackle it with a method or technique that is not appropriate for what you’re trying to learn.

For example, let’s say you’re studying the design of a vehicle, so you start painting it, full colour, accurate lighting etc., lovely textures, it turns out to be a great painting, but that’s a lot of time spent on unnecessary elements that don’t really help you to understand the design. For me, in this case a line drawing would be much more beneficial to understand the design aspects of something as that focuses primarily on design without considering other elements. Now imagine if you were trying to study the depth in a landscape and you did this using line in a drawing, again I’m sure you could get a nice drawing out of it, but in terms of the depth of a scene, line art isn’t really that great of a solution. In this case, a value study would be much more effective and allow to you primarily focus on the depth over anything else.

The best way to overcome this is to understand your intentions when you start your study and what the most appropriate method is to learn what you’re trying to understand.

Make it your own

As I mentioned earlier, doing a study isn’t about just copying. Studies can actually be quite useful in understanding your own style and taste if you take a bit of a step back before starting your study to analyse what you’re working from. Ask yourself what you like about the image. What stands out to you? Is it the gesture in the clouds, or maybe it’s the texture of the clouds, it could be the way that the sunlight is hitting the environment or the depth within the image. Taking time to understand your reference first allows you to then focus on these elements within your study and really push them further.

For example in the image below I was doing a study to develop my own workflow for painting environments. I feel quite confident in my current workflow for characters and creatures but it can be quite restrictive and I wanted to work on that. Therefore I already have the purpose of my study and know that I’ll be focusing on the workflow I use and how I build up the image to recreate the reference. I tend to aim for strong, expressive shapes and colours in my work, both things I picked out within the reference image. To add to that, you can also use your knowledge to pick out what would make a more interesting image too! Personally I felt like the clouds would benefit from some clear gesture and flow.

You can see from the final study that it’s not a one for one copy of the reference but it is my version of that reference, the colours and shapes are pushed and the clouds are more expressive. Creating studies like this really shows your taste as an artist and your creative abilities. It is important to note though that sometimes a one for one study is what you might be aiming for, especially if you’re trying to mimic an artist’s brush strokes or use of colour.

Study various areas.

It’s essential to study various areas too, especially if you fall into the trap of studying similar things over and over because you’re passionate about them. I say this because I definitely find myself guilty of that! Being a concept artist, illustrator or in any kind of creative field requires you to build a visual library, and that only comes from consuming a lot of visual information. Studies however, really enable you to retain that information and understand how to reconstruct that particular thing in a different setting too. 

Study what you don’t know, study random things, you’ll never know when you need them and study different levels of details too! For example, sometimes it’s useful to zoom in on a very specific detail within a reference image and really focus on that whether it’s understanding a texture in more depth or even a mechanism that you’re trying to figure out. Don’t be fooled into thing you only need to study things you currently focus on as things can shift quickly!

Study a lot…. Then apply!

I started this by saying that some people study too much and never really apply it and some don’t study at all, so the key is finding that healthy balance. So when I say study a lot here, I just mean keep it consistent, I would say a few times a week at least, and if possible do it daily. This doesn’t mean you have to do a full blown painting every day, but at least try to get something done even if it’s just 30 minutes. I tend to focus on drawing so for example, I used to have a really good habit of drawing every morning, even if it was just for 15 minutes, I at least showed up every day and that’s a habit I am aiming to get back into before the New Year.

Application of what you’ve learned is crucial too, you really need to apply what you’ve learned in a study in your own work. That’s why I think all of the points I made before this are super important as without understanding the purpose of your study or what appeals to you within it, it can be really difficult to practice it within your own work.

I hope this helps anyone who is struggling to take their studies to the next level or just gain a little bit more from them, as always I’m open to other people’s opinions on this in the comments too!