Hoo boy folks. Have I ever learned something about myself today. I decided to do an art challenge on a Discord server I’m a part of. The challenge was to do timed figure drawings. So, since I didn’t really have anyone I could get to pose for me in a life drawing session (at least, not at short notice), I chose four images from my time at Wreck Beach to do. I decided to give each figure 10 minutes, and see what happened.
Well, in the image above, you can see what happened. I started with the figure on the far left, and each figure to the immediate right was done right after the other (the two figures running were done as a single 10 minute piece.). What’s interesting to me, is the progression of the drawings, and how each one after the first two really started to degrade.
What happened was, I instinctually and subconsciously started to fall back into my regular drawing style. Focusing too much on pose and proportion and less on just getting the figure down on paper and sussing it out naturally. As you can see, this actually caused the drawings to become less natural and accurate, I had less time to put into lighting and shadow, and it ended up looking like I had actually diminished the time limit for each subsequent figure. By the time I got to the last figure, I simply couldn’t figure out how so much time had gone by, when I had done what looks like so little.
This definitely gives me food for thought. Where did I go wrong? One thing I can think of is that I messed up by trying to do a 2 figure drawing as my third attempt. This forced me to go a little too quickly in order to get both figures in. So that one makes sense that I didn’t get to the shading and tweaking. However, once that happened, I slipped out of the sketchy part of my brain and the “PERFECTION!!!” part of my brain kicked in. The problem is, the more I focus on perfection and the less on just flowing and drawing, the worse it always gets. I end up doing to much erasing and fixing and not enough just putting pencil (or stylus) to paper (or screen).
So, in the end, while it was a fun little challenge, it was also enlightening. I shocked myself how good those first two figures are, but equally shocked myself by just how BAD that fourth figure is in comparison. Same time limit, but vastly different outcomes. All because somewhere, my brain switched.
Which is what happens a lot of the time with my regular ‘ink’ lineart drawings. I get too focused on stuff I shouldn’t be focusing on. I lose the ability to do freer, more flowy and sketchy underdrawings and try to go for perfect proportions right off the bat. In the end though, that intense focus causes me to LOSE perspective, and things often go quite awry.
So this was a good challenge, and I need to do more of it. It would be very helpful if I could do more of it with live figures. I do have some people that are willing, it’s just a matter of getting the time and energy. It’s time to really start training my brain again.