“Draw from life.” It’s advice I hear all the time, from the web, from books, from friends.
There is something different about seeing a real three-dimensional thing in front of you. Compared to a photograph, there is so much more information to draw from. In many ways, this makes it easier to pull out what you need for the picture. In other ways, you have more work to do: What do you do with that bright highlight when all you’ve got to represent it is the dull white of the paper you’re drawing on?
Playing here with some grey wash watercolour pencils, softened with a waterbrush and a touch of fountain pen black ink.
In another way drawing from life is easier because you don’t have a finished 2D work in front of you for comparison; the sketch you produce just is what it is in itself. Mind you, now you’ve taken a photo of them you can draw these sketches from 2D too!
That’s an important thing to keep in mind: that the audience won’t have seen the original, so the question to ask is, does the finished piece stand on its own?
A straightforward copy will just underline how far the sketch is inaccurate (which can be a useful exercise when gauging proportions, values and so on) but the challenge is to do something different with it.