Who, me?

Another one down!!

Started off very exercise heavy. These are figure study simplifications of the torso here:

Explored a few animal charicatures:

And then finished the book out with meditative automatic drawing:

My next one is a bigger sketchbook, so I'm excited to have more room to play. :)

Something I'm still learning is to keep more play in all of my creative practices.

Maybe that's surprising to anyone looking in from what I share! But it's true — it's still a challenge to turn off the critical brain when I'm playing an instrument or drawing.

With drawing, I was just doodling and messing with shape at the start. Lately, I've caught myself leaning more towards filling all of my drawing time with exercises and course. If I'm aiming for the 50% rule, I'm really only hitting 25% play. Not entirely a bad thing, but it leaves little room for experimentation and just enjoying the act of drawing.

An experiment I'm trying out to really loosen up is automatic drawing, as demonstrated by Tim Gula here:

Watch on Youtube

The end result is beautiful, but the result isn't really the point. Its meditation for the mind, playing purely with shape, line, and values.

The irony is that, in messing around, a lot of growth happens at the same time: Line quality improves, control over shape develops, and a relaxed brain allows for those periods of focus to be more energized.

Most exciting for me, though, is that when I'm just doodling outside of any coursework, I can shrug off the pressure of it having to be impressive. There's room for experimentation and simply enjoying putting pencil to paper!

I'm trying this out with music too. Lately, I've been spending all my piano and guitar time playing out of books, leaving no time to write or improvise. So now I have a notebook for jotting down improvised chords, melodies, and mini-tunes. Not with the goal of making another album. Just for the space to enjoy sound unto itself.

At the end of the day, sound and line are purpose enough.

Happy as a hippo with how this guy turned out!

Not going to lie, I can see the difference of spending nearly 6 months on lines with the Proko course!

I'm doing the 250 box challenge right now. It's the namesake for the website drawabox.com.

The gist: You draw lots of boxes in 3 point perspective. In pen. And you extend your lines at the end to check that the points converge towards a vanishing point.

Brutal.

The exercise looks like this:

The point is to get familiar with perspective. And every now and then I stop and ask "am I doing this wrong? Are there any tips? Am I just not looking at it the wrong way. Maybe if I find another guide..." It's a question I've had for most art. If I find the right strategy, I'll just know how to do the thing.

But, in my experience so far, there is just some intuition that comes from repetition. There's no real strategy aside from "do it again, but try another approach."

On a practical level, what helps me is to plot a dot for where I think a line will go and then ghost it like crazy. I'll intentionally plot one that I know is parallel as a reference if I'm really unsure.

But, for the most part, it's like learning a sport or an instrument: the more you do it, the more your brain will learn the fine-motor control of what you're trying to do.

That's what really struck me! Just like I have to practice scales, I have to warm up on drawing lines.

I kind of wish the challenge was called "Draw 250 boxes (mostly badly!)" since that's the intention behind it!

All this to say: Art, especially at the beginning, is just as much a physical skill as it is a design skill.

Study after Bill Watterson.

I've been reading Calvin and Hobbes. I grew up collecting lots of Garfield, but man, these comics are just so dynamic for a newspaper strip! 🐯

"Draw everyday," I said! "It will be a great way to enrich your memories!"

Yet, I couldn't tell you why I sketched a wedding cake with a turkey groom last week. 🦃

Line study after the amazing Tillie Walden from her book "Are You Listening." So wildly beautiful, you gotta go see the colors!

Also, a peak from Toad on the next page! 🐸

🦥 Animal sketches from a recent visit to the Dallas Aquarium... none of them fish, though!

Thinking of my childhood home 🏡

The stack is growing!

This one was filled with more studies as part of the Proko courses I'm taking.

Lots of bean studies as part of the figure drawing course:

On to the next one!

Mmmh, Apples! 🍎

A little late, but here are some quick little easter sketches!

Barley and Board in Denton is pretty yummy, y'all!

My favorite studies on animal construction! Lots of sturdy looking body with noodley legs! 🍜

All part of the Drawabox module on animals.