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People often ask how I got to the point I’m at with my maps and drawings. The answer is almost always “practice”. But I often forget to mention what got me started.
Well, really, who got me started.
While I initially blame my first D&D crew and thus Gygax and Arneson, the reality is that one particular game author changed how I looked at drawing and made me start doing it even though I was horribly uncomfortable with the unskilled quality of my work.
Jonathan Tweet is the man to blame / credit. In 1992 Atlas Games published Over the Edge which was EXACTLY the game I wanted to play at that point in my life. And there was a rule in the game that you HAD TO DRAW YOUR CHARACTER.
It made a HUGE difference.
That connection, even to a crappy illustration, was big. It did engage different parts of my brain. It did make my character better. And that made the game better. And I transported it to other games. And I kept drawing things that would help connect me to these games. And all that drawing made me improve in my drawing skills and made my games better.
And that’s where this all began.
I still feel the most important part of a character sheet is the illustration box.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
I love character pictures, but I don’t want to draw them. I did draw my first D&D character and his gear and stuff. The pictures were bad, bad OD&D art kind of bad, but I kind of see your point on how the process of thinking about and trying to draw the character makes you conceptualize the character more.
More recently I’ve cheated by getting actual artists to draw characters, PCs mostly. And most recently we tend to select a found picture for characters. I think I feel the same connection as with the drawn character though I can’t speak for its effect on other players. The art is certainly way, way better.
I’m a believer. Drawing is a third way of understanding the world, alongside writing and numbers. There’s a reason that much Islamic and Hebrew magic, as well as Babylonian and Egyptian magic, includes the creation of images at the correct times of day or year — astrology plus image is highly potent in many systems of magic.
For modern references I turn to the work of Dave Gray of XPLANE, Who showed me that Darwin drew his ideas about evolution several decades before publishing the origin of species; or is that Leonardo da Vinci worked out many of his more stunning invention by drawing them; or the Thomas Edison through the first light bulb a good seven years before he knew what it was made out of. Drawing is a third way of seeing the world. End it matters that gaming has begun to integrate that third way of seeing the world alongside of its initial forays into both riding at statistical analysis of probability. I think that games that include a drawing component are absolutely essential for teaching the kinds of skills that people need in the 21st-century. I have discussed this more on my own blog of course, but you have to dig in using the search functions to find some of the stuff I’ve written. It’s mostly about teaching in schools; but it’s still relevant to the conversation.
I couldn’t agree more. I always draw something on my character sheets and, while they stink in a technical sense, they always help me to realize the character in my own mind at the least.
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
I also own Over the Edge and bought into Tweet’s reasoning. I’ve attempted to make players draw their characters (in ANY RPG) ever since. Most comply (some with slight grumbling), but it has made a world of difference.
Of course, some folks naturally need no prodding…they’ll be sketching all over the character sheets as soon as a game begins.
; )
I always write back story for my character but don’t draw a picture; there may not even be enough room for the picture. Other players I am with tend to not write back stories but are more likely to draw pictures on the back of the page (I am more likely to put whatever other text there won’t fit on the front, such as skills overflow, body part damage, curses, etc). I also don’t care so much about the picture a lot of stuff can be explain in text easily enough, and is also easier to copy and easier to fit on the page too since the text is not interrupted by a picture so that you would have to turn the page; it save paper!
If someone want to draw pictures of my characters though that is fine, but I would refuse to use an existing picture for that purpose.
Your business is to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; God's business is to draw His own to Himself
– Spurgeon
Aw-yeah, I very much agree with OP! A drawing does so much for getting a feel for who this person I’m creating really is.
I’m not a pro at drawing and can live with the multiple flaws that appear in my creations. Other members of my group seem to resent drawing their characters, not because they can’t draw, but because they feel inferior when producing something imperfect. So they’d rather google up some character sketch off the Internet, and use that. Which is a lot better than no character portrait, but I still belive that creating it yourself makes it a lot more personal and “yours”.
The paper-saving argument…. I haven’t heard that one before. There is plenty of paper, amirite?
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I’m not a pro at drawing and can live with the multiple flaws that appear in my creations. Other members of my group seem to resent drawing their characters, not because they can’t draw, but because they feel inferior when producing something imperfect. So they’d rather google up some character sketch off the Internet, and use that. Which is a lot better than no character portrait, but I still belive that creating it yourself makes it a lot more personal and “yours”.
I agree that a drawing is very important. It helps your players keep connected to their characters at a very basic level, reminding them what they originally envisioned for their character. I even recommend an ongoing visual diary of the characters changes as they go through their lives. However, I cannot demand this of my players as I cannot do this myself. I have very limited artistic talent. I do draw some of the most amazing stick figures for the paper game hangman, and my gallows is to die for, pun intended, but when it comes to the third dimension, I have about as much trouble drawing that as we have seeing the fourth dimension. I asked the artist of the group to draw some character portraits for the group, but he only did it for the people in our group that he hung with outside of the group. The rest were left with their own scratches and scribbles.
It is not an easy task to draw, and I know for some of you, you can’t wrap your head around the concept of not being able to put an image on paper, but for the rest of us, we can’t wrap our head around doing so.
So kudos to those of you who can, and please, try to help your fellow gamers, even if they don’t hang at your coffee house, or see you on a regular basis outside of game. They are just as integral to your characters story as you are, or should be, and helping each other out can strengthen bonds both within the game as well as without.