Coffee Break

Selecting a Sycra video to watch while sitting on the jon, I decided on Iterative Drawing - The Fastest Way to Improve. About 5 minutes in, I realized my mistake, as it's an hour long... It was interesting though, so I sat and watched for about 15 minutes when my foot started to fall asleep, so I noted the time and saved it for later.

Decided to finish it before getting started with tonight's stuff. It was really interesting. For me, mainly because he jabs quite a bit at the way I was taught and trained to draw - 'draw what you see, not what you think you see'. I've never had someone shake it up like that before. Having an open mind while watching, I  did make several connections to what he was saying - for instance, I don't like to sing my own praises, but I can draw from reference quite well. Make me draw without a reference however and I'm lost. I have a natural talent at drawing, but I never really built up the mileage like he goes over. It's probably why I also never grasped the concept of compositions, always favoring the middle, only caring that the thing I was drawing was drawn well. Start something and work towards finishing it.

While I'm still rusty creatively, I think I'm going to switch gears to prioritize this kind of work, ~20 faces a day every day, analyze each face as I go and look it over again the following day. Working at understanding what I'm drawing will probably help with getting over that frustration I get at my drawing skills when I try to draw from imagination lately. We'll consider it 'homework' of sorts...I can't work on anything else till I knock out a page of faces (or bodies, or whatever I'm building on). It'll slow my progress of building up a portfolio, but long run, I think it will be a huge help in building skill instead. And since I'm not looking for a job in the industry or applying to a school, quickly rebuilding a portfolio can definitely take a back seat to building skill instead.

David, if you read this, you should watch that video too if you ever want to try to get into drawing again. It's an interesting guide to learning to draw intuitively/creatively as an analytical person.

Ok... now to get 20 faces done.