An Exercise

As I hadn’t put pencil to paper other than for doodles for more years then I care to mention, I thought I’d best refresh my skills. Oh boy, was I rusty! I can draw recognisable things but they were lifeless.

I posted a drawing of my hand that I drew using my tablet on www.animationforum.net. I had greatly overused the pencil tool on Serif DrawPlus8, but I was reasonably pleased with it. Then n00b set me a challenge to do a couple a day and see how I improved over a week.

It was so nice to get some actual criticism, that I did it. The next one was damned with faint praise – the thumb was good. It was true.

I sucked it up and took my anger out on the brambles with my shears and got a huge burst blister bang in the middle of my model. Sore, I dashed off another one just using negative space. This time I was asked if I had traced it – result.

My smugness did not last long. I had a day off and then did two using pencil. The first one was crap. I thought the second wasn’t that deadly, but again it was rightly pulled apart as it didn’t show enough volume.

Next a lecture with diagrams was posted for me to learn. In my heart of hearts I know where and why I’m going wrong, but it is practice, or lack of it, that’s failing me. It didn’t help that every time I moved my hand it would split back open along the same line, even when I was sleeping thus waking me up.

Grumbling, I did another one. I knew it was doing me good, but I was tired from being woken up by my model and after doing my day job, it was a real effort to do anything. Better volume, but then a review showed my third hand was the best – the one I dashed off!

I changed the lighting a bit and my next effort was posted. The pads of my palm looked puffy. That’s me saying it.

Anyhow, I thought I should do some life classes, get my shoulder moving again, so I googled (my favourite occupation). I found www.meetup.com and there are a number of groups in my area. Woot! Signed up for one and might be able to go along tomorrow evening. It’s difficult trying to concentrate on drawing with kids, husband, housework and cooking all calling me. Getting a few hours away to do this would be bliss.

The whole exercise has been very illuminating. The one thing I have learnt is not to put too much thought process into drawing and over kill it. I love Matisse’s line drawings and used to try to emulate them. The ability to create volume without any shading is perfect for animation and I need to get back to where I was once.