Breaking Down a Reference Photo: What To Ignore, What To Focus On (or, How to Out-Smart Your Brain and Beat the Copycat Blues)
Let’s slice through the bullshit—using reference isn’t cheating. Tracing is only a crime if you don’t learn anything, and “drawing from imagination” is just drawing from the memory bank you built from years of, you guessed it, reference. But here’s the landmine: Most artists—especially the bold, broke, and desperate—have no idea what to do with a reference photo once it’s staring them in the face. You stare, you sweat, you copy everything like a Xerox machine on a three-day bender, and the result? Flat, stiff, weirdly lifeless.
If you want art that breathes, you need to learn how to gut a reference photo, steal the soul, and ignore all the noisy crap that just muddies the waters.
Confession: I Used To Worship Reference Photos—and Got Burned Every Damn Time
Here’s the raw truth: My first hundred “photo studies” were detail-for-detail clones. Every pore, every stray hair, every wrinkle. And guess what? All that effort, and my drawing still looked off—because I was drawing the surface and ignoring the bones.
It wasn’t until a real mentor smacked the stylus out of my hand and told me to “find the structure and trash the rest” that I got it. The real magic in reference is what you leave out.
Step-By-Step: Rust Dawg’s Reference Photo Dissection Ritual
Step 1: Get Ruthless With the Crop Tool
Most photos are loaded with distractions—cluttered backgrounds, weird angles, a dozen light sources, that annoying “friend” who photobombs everything. Before you even think about drawing, crop the reference to focus on the main subject.
Zero in on what matters—a face, a hand, a gesture, a dramatic shadow.
Get rid of everything that competes for attention.
Step 2: Squint Hard, Squint Often
Your brain is an over-caffeinated gossip—loves details, can’t hold a secret. Force it to focus by squinting until all you see are big, simple shapes of light and dark. That’s what matters. Not the brand on a soda can, not the single thread on a shirt, but the masses.
Break everything into light, midtone, and shadow.
Block in those zones first before you even think about features.
Step 3: Map the Structure—Don’t Chase the Surface
What’s underneath the surface? Form, flow, gesture, the line of action. Use a red pencil or a fat marker to draw over the bones—the lines, curves, and planes that make the subject stand up and move.
For faces: Find the tilt of the brow, the angle of the jaw, the centerline of the nose.
For figures: Swoop the spine, the shoulders, the hips, the twist.
For anything else: Find the biggest geometric shape that defines the form.
Step 4: Choose Your Battles—Kill the Details, Save the Essence
Here’s the secret sauce—don’t copy every hair, every shadow, every wrinkle. Instead, pick 1–2 details that make the subject unique—the curve of a scar, the glint in the eye, the way the light slices across a cheekbone. Hammer those. Trash the rest.
Leave the background as an abstract wash.
Let edges blur, fade, and even disappear.
Suggest, don’t spell out, secondary elements.
Ingredient Hack: Turn the Photo Black and White
Color is a distraction. Value is structure. Turn your reference to grayscale—either with a phone app or just by squinting your eyes half-closed. You’ll spot the important shapes instantly.
Print out or view your reference in B&W for value studies.
Use color only when you want to add mood, not just match the photo.
Dirty Reality: Reference Photos Lie—Fix Them Without Mercy
Every camera lens distorts reality. It’s your job to correct the photo, not bow to it.
Wide-angle? Heads get ballooned, hands look enormous.
Bad lighting? Shadows kill form, highlights wipe out structure.
Awkward pose? Stiff as a corpse.
Your eyes are smarter than the lens. Use your judgment. Bend the pose, cheat the proportions, clean up the noise. Your job is to make the subject work on the page, not worship the photo like gospel.
Personal Confession: My Best Drawings Always Diverge From the Reference
Every time I let go of copying and started interpreting, my art took a quantum leap. The more I simplified, exaggerated, and ignored, the more life I poured in. Don’t be a slave to the snapshot—be the thief who steals what matters.
The Ruthless Filtering: What To Ignore Without Mercy
Let’s talk about the art of leaving shit out. This is what separates the seasoned pros from the die-hard copycats:
Background Clutter: Ignore it. Unless it serves your composition or mood, it’s dead weight. Block it out with big value shapes or abstract it to pure tone.
Stray Highlights and Reflections: Cameras love blowing out whites. In real life, there’s subtlety. Dial back the shine—edit your highlights to support the form, not sabotage it.
Over-Rendered Textures: You don’t need every freckle, zipper, or chipped mug rim. Choose one or two textures to push for flavor, then let the rest breathe.
Harsh Edges: Real vision is soft. Blur or lose edges where the form turns away from light, or where you want less attention.
Noise, Lint, and Crap: Photos capture every stray hair, wrinkle, and piece of lint—ditch ‘em unless they’re part of the story.
Pro-Tip: The “Lost and Found” Edge Game
Master artists play a game with edges—losing them where form turns away, sharpening them where they want to grab the viewer’s eye. Study your reference:
Ask yourself, “Where does the edge disappear?”
“Where do light and shadow blend?”
“Where do I want focus?”
Then, draw accordingly. The result: a living, breathing image that directs the viewer instead of beating them over the head with detail.
Step-By-Step: How to Build a Study, Not a Copy
Thumbnail Your Values:
Before you launch into a “real” drawing, do three or four tiny value thumbnails. Squint at the photo, block in just three levels—light, mid, dark. Ignore details. If it reads at thumbnail size, it’ll pop big.
Draw the Structure Over the Photo:
If you’re digital, trace the flow and angles right over the reference in a bright color. If you’re working on paper, use tracing paper or a window. This helps burn the underlying bones into your brain.
Choose a Center of Interest:
Decide what this drawing is about—an eye, a gesture, a wild cast shadow. Every decision from here should serve that focus. Blur the rest, even if the photo is sharp.
Lay In Broad Masses:
Block your forms in big, fast, and loose. Forget the “pretty” edges. Only after the structure holds up do you start to carve out features, textures, and accents.
Punch Up, Pull Back:
Once your main areas are in, look for one place to go hard on detail and three to let go.
The result? Instant hierarchy. Your viewer knows where to look, and your art starts to breathe.
Ingredient Hack: Use a Limited Palette or Single Pencil
Constrain yourself. One soft pencil (4B or 6B), a brush pen, or a two- or three-color palette. Less choice = more focus. It’ll keep you from chasing irrelevant details, and you’ll discover what really matters.
Dirty Reality: Sometimes the Best Move Is to Redraw and Edit Aggressively
Don’t just “fix” your reference—remake it. Chop out a head, rotate an arm, flip the lighting, mash two photos into one Franken-study. That’s how you own your references, not just use them. If the photo is broken, bend it until it sings.
Personal Confession: My Most Lifelike Art Ditched 70% of the Photo
The best portraits I ever did? I left out backgrounds, softened half the features, amped up just the bits that caught my eye. The result wasn’t “accurate”—it was alive.
Brutal Editing: The Power of Saying “No” (And When to Say “Hell Yes”)
The single greatest skill you’ll ever build with reference is the ability to edit—aggressively, mercilessly, like a director who cuts three hours out of a film to make one scene sing. If your art feels overworked, cluttered, or dead, it’s because you said “yes” to too much. Start practicing “no.”
Say NO to every detail that doesn’t serve the story or mood.
Say YES to bold shapes, gesture, and light that describe the form.
Say NO to copying color slavishly—adjust hues to match your vibe, not reality.
Say YES to exaggeration where it matters: a fiercer angle, a deeper shadow, a wilder highlight.
The Ultimate Reference Ritual: From Photo to Art
Scan for Story:
What jumps out? The eyes? The tension in the pose? The light slicing across the face? Start there. Every decision must feed that focus.
Re-Design as Needed:
Move objects, drop elements, merge backgrounds, or overlay multiple references. No guilt. Your goal is not to copy reality—it’s to build a new one.
Block In, Stand Back:
Sketch fast, squint often, step away. If the main shapes read strong at arm’s length, you’re winning. If not, start over and trim the fat.
Add the Rust Dawg Signature:
A pop of contrast where you want punch. A jagged edge for energy. A lost contour for mystery. A bold stroke where everything else fades.
Make it yours, not a carbon copy.
Ingredient Hack: Steal Like a Bandit—With Purpose
Look at five artists who use reference like assassins—see how they crop, edit, abstract, and invent.
Swipe their strategies, not their results.
Keep a swipe file: save the images, thumbnails, and markups that teach you to see, not just to copy.
Every time you feel lost, dip into the file for a reminder that editing is your greatest weapon.
Dirty Reality: Most Artists Hide Behind Reference—Don’t Be That Person
Too many hide in the comfort of the photo. Real artists come out swinging, slicing away everything that drags the image down.
Be the artist who breaks the spell—who bends, burns, and builds on the bones of reference, not the skin.
Confession: My Most Memorable Pieces Barely Resemble the Reference
The sketches that landed jobs, got published, or just made people stop and stare?
You’d never recognize the original photo.
That’s the whole point.
If you want to grow, don’t ask “How close did I get?”
Ask, “What did I find in this photo that nobody else could see?”
Ultimate Survival Wisdom: Reference Is a Tool—Not a Chain
Break the habit of worshipping the photo. Use it like a hammer, a scalpel, or a pickaxe. Tear it apart, dig out what you need, and leave the rest behind.
Your art should always have more blood, more risk, and more truth than the safest photo ever could.
See Also:
“Alla Prima II” by Richard Schmid (reference as a springboard)
Marco Bucci’s YouTube: “How to Use Reference (Like a Boss)”
“Framed Ink” by Marcos Mateu-Mestre (composition and editing magic)
Pinterest: Reference breakdown boards (see what pros do with the same photo)
Schoolism: Nathan Fowkes’ Composition Classes (for deadly editing skills)