Such a strange morning for me. I ended up working through my entire morning routine and got straight into art, but I think my body wasn’t quite “awake” yet.
My warmup just felt strange, but I pushed through and did everything, anyway. My accuracy was off, my ellipses were garbage, and I couldn’t seem to loosen up enough to draw anything the way I wanted to.
I feel like gesture drawing went fairly well today. I keep going back to the ideas from FORCE by Mike Mattesi. I have a ton left to learn, obviously, but I have better results from Mattesi’s mental models than anyone else’s.
Moving into an exercise from The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. Blind cross-countours. Oddly, I feel like this is a more accurate drawing than the blind contours. Feeling accross the form is easier to me than feeling the outer edge in a contour.
I ran out of time, though. Which is a good thing. I get ahead of myself when I’m doing the regular blind contours, following the form instead of the outer edge slows me down and makes me think. I’m pretty proud of those feet!
Beyond this, I started collecting reference images for a couple of upcoming tattoos. The first design of the week will be some dogwood blooms with crepe myrtle blooms for a memorial tattoo. The second design of the week is a large-scale Beetlejuice tattoo for a super-client. I’m especially excited about that one!
I’ll have more to share with those tomorrow.
What went well?
- More drawing time on errand day!
- Having a lot of good energy today.
What needs work?
- I really want to take my gestures to the next level.
- I need to find more time to draw on Mondays.
What did I learn?
I may try some over-drawings with the FORCE method tomorrow, just so I can think through my gestures with a bit more structure. Afterward I’ll move to some slower gestures without over-drawing the pose.
Also, I don’t know if I’ll ever really be able to have extra time to draw on Mondays (not while Monday is the family errand day, anyway). I’ll just have to do my best to make it work!