Back to the Drawing Table

This is the last figure drawing I did a couple of weeks ago. I loved focusing on the neck and face for once.

I'm SO ready to resume my daily warm-ups. Today IS the day!

Always Practice

Long time without posting any figure drawing. Feels good to keep doing them daily and it’s kind of funny to remember how that clock used to freak me out, I don’t even think about the time anymore.

I’ve been doing drawing exercises daily for a while, but all this time I've been wondering how could I incorporate the same kind of quick exercise in watercolor, to maybe round one hour of warm-up everyday.

In late September I decided that trying portraits in the warmup would be a good complement to the figure drawings, so I added a 15 minute portrait in watercolor to the daily routine.

Being completely honest I got mess after mess, they truly sucked, got discouraged and stopped for a while, then got back to it this time taking one step at a time, first in monochrome, trying to get right proportions, then trying to get some resemblance to the model, then trying to speed up the process (yep, that clock is freaking me out again, it happens if you're a turtle when painting)

I still get messes 90% of the time, tons of “aaaargh!” and “ewwww!” and “L” written next to them right after the 15 mins are over, those will never see the light of day, but from time to time I manage to get something that looks like an actual perfectly fine person.

Every time I incorporate one more change it feels like the dreaded step back but I guess it’s needed to get to the couple of steps forward, so I think I’ll keep at it since I want to see that percentage change to at least 90% of successes.

Lesson learned: if it’s too big of a piece to swallow, break it down into smaller bits and chew chew chew.

Sketching sketching sketching

Today warm up session has been devoted to self portraits, whaaaaat?!

Want a self portrait for the web so I'm just playing with some ideas lately, this is one of them.

Ok, so it doesn't seem to be going anywhere as it is right now BUT it's been fun, and a needed milestone, maybe it evolves into something that worth further development or maybe not, but either way it needed to be out and done to jump to the next one.

That's the brilliancy of quick sketches, you can try tons and discard tons and let the milestones guide you in the right way.

I used to get engrossed for weeks into drawings that might or might not work. These warm ups have burnt something in my brain, brainstorming works, rough and quick works.

I'm finally allowing myself to embrace the "just do it" "doesn't need to be pretty" motto and encourage you all to do it too.

Go draw something!

Figure drawing - More daily sketches

These are some of the daily warm-ups from May and June. I decided to take a *not completely desired* break from these during July and August but I’m ready and happy to resume them now, we’ll see if I’ve gotten rusty in these couple of months.

I’ve noticed some changes in the way I’ve been approaching the warm up sessions, now I stop, think before laying a line, even in the 30 seconds exercises, I know I know, I said that I liked these 30 secs because they made you stop thinking and start landing lines.

I’m the most shocked one at the realization that it doesn’t necessarily lead to spacing out for 30 secs, you can actually stop and think and still deliver a figure instead -ok, half a figure but still-.

So far the results I’m getting are either more accurate and clean figures or a total mess, but when it works it feels great! So next goal is inclining that balance towards the good looking ones, goes without saying, right?

Something that I didn’t expect is that I seem to be getting more unfinished figures than before, no matter the time frame, wonder why that is happening? Somehow it doesn’t feel like stopping to think is the problem, anyway  the unfinished look is starting to grow on me so I’m not too worried about it, just curious.

The way I’m approaching these warm ups seems to be evolving towards something, not sure what yet though, but I guess I’ll find soon enough, meanwhile I’m keeping the same goals and at the same time I’m enjoying experimenting with the process.

Figure drawing - daily sketches

Last sunday’s been a month since I began practicing gesture figure drawing daily, while I can’t afford going to live figure drawing sessions I’m relying on the next best thing, The Drawing Script and the Figure & Gesture Drawing Tool. To celebrate I’m sharing some of the results from this month.

The time for each pose goes from 30 seconds to 11 minutes and man, those 30 second limit really make you stop thinking and start landing lines, I never thought you could even put pencil to paper in such short period of time and I certainly can’t get a whole figure in 30 seconds yet but at least you can tell it’s a human being (most of the times).

I’ve always looked in awe at artists posting their figure drawings, such confident lines, accurate, dynamic, perfect! I want to draw like that too, confident, accurate, bold strokes, want to draw faster and get a better comprehension of how the body works, render it in as few lines as possible.





Have you heard of “fail, fail again, fail better”? “practice makes perfect”? Go figure, it actually works!