The reference conundrum

Finally, a use for Instagram reels

There’s a skate park being built near my house. On my morning walks I keep seeing skater kids staring through the fence to see if it’s ready yet. I’m excited too - about drawing skaters doing a demi plié or a jam roll (I don’t know the terms). I was getting obsessed with drawing people skating but there weren’t any around yet.

I find this conundrum happens sometimes - I need/want to draw something I don’t have access to. Clients do sometimes send reference images and of course there’s Google image search.

But I want to keep as much life as possible in my work and using photographs as reference makes my drawing as awkward as a middle aged woman inventing skating terms. The result can be forced and inauthentic.

Moving reference is much better than photographs. I wanted to find short videos so it wouldn’t take forever to find what I was looking for. The skaters were supposed to be quick personal drawings not something that takes all day.

To my surprise Instagram’s reels turned out to be the answer. Those annoying videos could be of actual use, instead of just startling me with sudden noise and making me throw Yorkshire tea down my pyjamas.

Drawing from reels was a revelation. They are short. They repeat so if I miss part of a movement I wait a few seconds and try again. I could search by hashtag to find the right reference.

At first I drew over and over again without trying to find specific poses, exactly as I would when drawing from life. I scrolled through different videos drawing whatever skate related content caught my attention. Sometimes I stayed with one video for a while, redrawing the same skate move lots of times and building up a mini-library of how the figure moves at different points during that action.

After filling a few pages of quick drawings from reels I put the phone away and worked from those drawings to make new drawings. Taking an extra few steps away from the source material is key to making something uniquely mine. Crucially, because I had been drawing from moving imagery I could still feel the excitement of drawing from life and that kept energy in the final work.

Obviously drawing from reels is no substitute for drawing from life. Also, watch out for the heavily art directed reels, those feel as though they would be as artificial to work from as photographs. 

Overall though, reels feel like a good halfway point between sometimes necessary reference and the exhilarating chaos of drawing moving people from life.

Have you tried drawing from reels, youtube videos or any other moving sources? Do you find it helpful or restrictive?

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Other useful places to draw from:

📺 Secret Life of 4, 5 and 6 year olds

You can find clips on youtube and it’s on BBC iPlayer

There’s both British and Australian versions. There are also spin offs like the one about siblings and the Christmas themed one. My favourites are the care home versions where older adults living in residential homes make friends with nursery school age children.

📺 Old Enough

Available on Netflix, clips on youtube

Each episode is only ten minutes long. The best thing about this show is watching how young children problem solve

📱Your own phone

I’d forgotten how many videos I had of my son on my phone. It was lovely to rediscover them all through drawing

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All my posts are remaining free and open for the foreseeable future! If you fancy getting me a cuppa tea that would be amazing! Totally up to you, we’ll still be friends!

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