Using a Mirror to Improve Your Drawing
Katie LiddiardDescription
Are you working on a painting that just isn’t moving forward as you’d hoped it would, even if it’s a painting of a subject that you love? According to artist and instructor Katie Liddiard, it probably isn’t the painting’s fault — you just need a fresh eye. Fortunately, Katie has a terrific tip to help you assess, correct, and happily move on. All it takes is a 3″ x 5″ mirror that fits handily in your back pocket! The mirror corrects eye fatigue that might lead to missing corrections that should be made. By holding the mirror up against her nose so the mirrored side faces the dominant eye, and looking at both the artwork and the subject in the mirror, Katie gets a reflection of the full scope of her setup. Any mistakes or areas that should be corrected are immediately visible, even if they don’t jump out at you when viewed straight on without the mirror.
Katie finds that whenever she’s been painting without a break for 20 or 30 minutes, pulling out the mirror and checking her full view in this way is extremely helpful. And if you get too accustomed to the reverse image of your painting that you see in the mirror, and you’re failing to get that fresh-eyes bump, Katie suggests turning your painting upside down. You’ll find that you’re now seeing objects as abstract shapes and not attaching expectations such as “flower” to them, and it can help you detach and easily identify areas you want to correct or refine.
Have you been staring at your painting for hours and find yourself getting a little sad about where you're going with it? It probably isn't the painting's fault. What you need is a fresh eye. I'm Katie Liddiard and I'll show you my little trick to keep my eyes fresh so I can keep going on my painting and not miss any corrections that may need to be fixed. My little trick here is this guy. My little three by five mirror. It just sits in the back of my pocket and I pull it out time I find that I'm getting I eye fatigue. When I do get eye fatigue, what happens is that I start missing corrections that need to happen. So what I do is I'll pull this guy out and I'll hold it up on the inside of my nose, on my dominant eye. What I do is I'll look at both my piece and my setup in the mirror and it will give me a reflection of my entire setup. What that will do is it will point out just immediately because I'm not attached to that image, all of the corrections, anything that's jumping out that needs to be addressed. So if I don't take a break for, you know every 30 minutes, every 20 minutes or so, then the mirror will help keep my eye fresh so that I can pick up immediately with anything that needs to be corrected. Another way that you can use it. Instead of having a reverse image is to have an upside down image. It's the same idea but sometimes if you get too used to seeing the reverse image in the mirror, an upside down image will really give you an abstraction of all of your shapes so that you are just comparing your shapes side-by-side instead of attaching flower to the thing that you're looking at. So it's a really quick, simple, easy way to give yourself a fresh eye and keep moving forward in your masterpiece.
I would love to take a class on painting those roses. Beautiful