How do I draw from just my imagination?

Here are two approaches to drawing: Make something as much like an image from life as possible, and Make something that doesn’t exist outside of imagination.

Here is The Marc Kane, with an old sketch of us with our friend Jamison, the first day we ever hung out.
There were no pictures, but she had a strong picture in her mind. She uses realistic elements, but an imaginative style (1998), drawn from her vision.

Here's a still life nature drawing that uses mostly elements as they were layed out to my eye, and some arranged by my imagination.

Now, cartoonists often use an approach that works down the middle. They draw often simplified versions of real things, like cars, trees, animals, and might merge them with images that are not entirely realistic.

It’s a matter of style.
If you want a photo-realistic style, work from still life and photographs. Your question, however, suggests you’d like to try something without reference.

Sometimes, a masterful vision involves a perspective that is very difficult to attain or pose. The first one is Lewis Trondheim, illustrating Poppies of Iraq.
Jim Steranko, Steve Ditko, Paul Smith, Peter Max...I'm trying to remember who did the William Carlos Williams tribute...it's driving me nuts. I'll include Renoir, here, an Impressionist who used oil to make the color impression, used depth...but did not slavishly limit things in lines. Real people and flowers don't have thick lines around them at their limits, after all.

Depending on the story, or your tastes in portraits, you might like one of these over the other:


This last one, Rackham, drew things purely from imagination. INspired somewhat by nature, but super-normal, as Mattheson once put it.

You really have to ask yourself 'what's my purpose, this time out?' Sometimes, you are simply out to discover what's inside. In that case, decide how you feel about it later. What are you asking of your vision: what's your vision look like? Developing that sense of inner vision is the ultimate creative goal.

Do you want something never seen in real life? Mojo here, an Arthur Adams visual design, is an exaggeration of feelings we know all too well: what does his face tell you? What kind of world do you think he inhabits?

Yildiray Cinar, here, illustrates something unreal, but lights and crafts it in a way that lets it exist powerfully within its own reality.

Youka here, by me, was inspired by a real person. I wanted to express her warmth. I used a photograph- but she also represents a fictional character of mine.
Now this pencil drawing, including a mirror image, was inspired by real life model Max Wasa and her love of Dr. Who. But the vision came from my head, rather than copying a photo of anything.

Here, Emmryza DAwn, who you can find under the name, The Marc Kane, used a small book to sketch this image based on real life, but drawn from her vision- from purely her imagination. She is much stronger at this quality, in my opinion, than I. I can capture many loving details, but I never get to draw long enough to really develop an ability that comes naturally to her. It's a self-imposed, or predisposed, limitation.


HEre is a still life. I didn't use a medium I could erase, and my figure moved quite a bit. You can still get a sense of the real person.

This was made with no planning, really, to go in a Christmas card. NO photo reference, but, the style was done to evoke an effect (funny, I hope).


I will be honest with you: reference is great. IF you want to draw a real person or object, it’s best to start with basic layout, a stick-figure type underpinning, then add details. You might even make a cartoony style to represent these things, in which case you change details such as proportions. Mastery of realistic anatomy is a great start to drawing perspectives that seem to bend the rules.

When you say you ‘can’t draw without reference,’ what you literally mean is, you don’t like the results. They don’t satisfy your need to represent the subject in question.
So my advice is two-fold:
1. Learn to like what you make up from your head. Don’t expect it to be completely realistic. Let art take you on a journey: discover your imagination. Let your art represent things that have never been, in styles we don’t see in day-to-day life.
2. If you are still getting the basics down and want the option of being realistic, nothing replaces a good book like, Bridgeman’s anatomy guides, or a book by Burne Hogarth, or some other classicist. (Classicists are people who draw with realism in mind, primarily. Experientalists are on the opposite side of the wheel: they want to express states of mind and emotions, fantasies of form.) Practice drawing body parts with classic style; practice shading solid objects. There’s no replacement for practice, when it comes to producing these things from your mind. Conversely, there is no substitute for letting your mind flow- let go of the need to match a realistic standard and discover how to express yourself in your own style. I really recommend looking at ARt History and seeing the different approaches. You will see how artists uncovered secrets of perspective, especially in statuary, long ago- yet new movements arose that represented reality with different values than solid realism.

Be Chill, Cease ill