Art & Design

Is your Sketch Book Holding You Back?

| Donna

I’m reading ‘Think Sketchbook’ just now,  and it occurred to me that our humble Sketchbook is the key to our creative potential. If you’re thinking, “well, duh!” here me out… When we were in art class, our teachers all said their own thing when they explained sketchbooks to us. We were told to use them,  but were we all told how to use them?  Really use them, and why?

I remember hearing about exploring ideas, practice sketches and gathering reference drawings. But not the nitty gritty of recording your thoughts and random ideas as they occurred. It felt more like we were to decide what we should draw and draw it. I don’t really remember play and fun. I do remember being told my books were important for art course entry and employers.  Which landed a critic parrot right onto my shoulder!  Instead of unleashing creative mayhem in there, half my mind was thinking what I could do that was impressive. The last thing an artist needs is an intimidating sketchbook.

So I’m reading this book and it’s obvious why I feel I’m not a full member of the artist club, why I see other artists and wonder how they seem so creative and where those wild ideas come from. It’s all in the sketch books. They’re having a blast in theirs, mine feels like a job interview waiting room…

In the last few years I’ve set the goal of building a portfolio, painting a range of things till I’m comfy with that subject and aiming to draw on those experiences to work on more creative pieces. But this has been like saying, “you can get pudding once you eat your greens,” then eating greens for years. No wonder I frequently lack enthusiasm! I worried maybe I wasn’t cut out for art because every other artist seems much more enthusiastic than I feel. I had all sorts of theories for my reluctance, when obviously I’m fine, just missing the bleeding obvious as usual.

I think it’s good having goals etc, but we must allow play, sketching, doodling and recording our thoughts too. To reach the point of wild creative art we need to record thoughts as they come, not only those that match our goals or to do list. Keep paper and pencil with us always to make notes or doodle as things pop in out heads and effectively diary our thoughts.

When I was reading Julia Cameron’s ‘Artist’s Way’ I got a tiny pocket notebook and it went everywhere with me. I’d be checking my sheep and a phrase or idea would come to mind. I just had to know I had my book and ideas arrived and went in it. It filled up, as did my big notebooks indoors. All I needed was the book and an open mind. Which is exactly what I need for my art. No critic or thinking, just spill my head onto paper and see what ideas come. It might be ugly, bizarre, disjointed and seem useless. But I’ve had story ideas like that which later fitted a subsequent story. Ideas also develop, and getting them down helps me remember and ruminate on them. Every idea is worth recording, just for that.

The really daft thing is that I had a taste of this at a temp job where I had nothing to do most of the time. My boss actively encouraged me to draw because we got along so well she enjoyed my company. In between sporadic admin jobs, I had a pad and filled it with doodles, ideas, designs. One after another all day. And it was fun! That is how I need to Sketchbook!

More sketchbook scans will follow…

Sketching Sally the fidget monster!

| Donna

After a bit of cartoon practice, I decided to get some speed sketching practice with little Sally as my model.

I’m sure whenever she notices I’m looking at her, she gets the fidgets! It took a few aborted poses before I got the second sketch.  Even then, she still moved her head and paws mid way through.

Quick sketches of Sally
Quick sketches of Sally

Horse sketches

Running - speed sketch using pencil on A5 paper
| Donna

I haven’t skipped a single day of my sketch book challenge since I started.

happy dance

A few more scans for you 🙂

Horse sketch
Horse sketch – timed 10 mins outline, 10 mins basic shading then about 20 mins tarting up the shading because I was having fun 😀

Both quality and quantity are increasing already, and making myself draw EVERY day whether I feel like it or not, I’m having to find a way of working in any mood or situation.  Which was another of my goals.  I learned that being in a really grouchy mood makes for very tense, ugly work when I’m horribly critical of myself.  But after a few hours of ugly cartoon faces and a dreadful horsey, I just got to that “oh, what the hell” point and like magic a sketch flew onto the paper one bold line after another.  I look at that page with the horrible horse and the free one beside it and they don’t even look like the same person drew them.  But that day was a valuable lesson for me.  Here’s the scan so you see what I mean.

2 Horse Sketches
Left was drawn while I was all tense and grouchy, right was drawn immediately after when I relaxed and just let it happen.

I’m doing cartoon practice and also more realistic work.  I’ve always been a bit too meticulous and I love relaxing while I do very careful texturing in pencil.  You get into a rhythm and that becomes like a meditation for me.  So I have used my sketchbooks to draw quickly and choose random poses (currently horses) to challenge myself on the accuracy side too.

Sketchbook Challenge: Days 3 & 4

| Donna

Well, the good news is that I’ve been drawing every day since I started my challenge.  The bad news is that I haven’t quite filled a page a day. Still progress though, and I did have good reason for being a bit slow.

My partner had one of his bikes stolen on Friday so we had police round over the weekend and I wasn’t my calmest on Saturday to sit down and draw.  What I should have done is shading and texturing because the rhythm of that is just amazing at calming me. But I was starting a new sketch of a horse, and I just got grumpy because the outline was all jagged and tensed up.  I didn’t stop to think “how can you relax yourself and draw too.  My critical mind jumped all over the sketchpad instead. Critical mind can’t even draw curtains. The horse it attempted looked like a cow after a nuclear accident so I put it out of its misery.  Learned my lesson though.

Anyway, here are 2 scans from the sketchbook. The first horse on the second sheet actually looks like the kind of freaky horse I drew as a kid.  I think he was Saturday’s freak horse come back to haunt me.  Glad it’s not Halloween!

Sketchbook Challenge Day 3 - horse sketches
Sketchbook Challenge Day 3 – horse sketches
Sketchbook Challenge: Day 4 - More horse sketches
Sketchbook Challenge: Day 4 – More horse sketches

Sketchbook challenge day 2 – Wensleydale sheep gets a rasta hat!

| Donna

This is your fault, mum!   Remember that hint about wanting a pic of your new sheepy?   I might have gotten a little carried away…  Though I now expect you to knit him a proper Bob Marley hat for Christmas hehehe.

I thought I’d try drawing a sheep in striped hat, similar to one Bob Marley had.  Because black Wensleydale sheep do look like they have dreadlocks.  They just do….

So um sorry mum, but I will do a proper Marley picture later *giggles*

Rasta Wensleydale doodles

Pencil sketch of Jinty, one of my Highland ponies

Jinty - a pencil drawing of a highland pony's head in profile
| Donna
Jinty - a pencil drawing of a highland pony's head in profile
Jinty – Pencil sketch of a highland pony

Jinty – Highland Pony – Pencil sketchI posted this on DeviantArt yesterday, then forgot to blog here too.  Whoops!

I’ve always found it harder to draw cobby type horses and ponies. When I was at school I spent hours sketching and painting dainty arabians because they just seemed to move like magical creatures. I learned to ride on Highland ponies, and adored them, but I’ve never been able to draw any of the stocky native breeds.

So, for some practice and a challenge I drew this portrait of my biggest (and certainly fattest!) Highland pony, Jinty. She’s a challenge just in the gold highlights of her mane and the dark stripes and spots on her face.  There’s a real satisfaction in making myself do something out of my comfort zone, if I get really brave I’ll draw the other side of her so I can get her full mane drawn.  I pity the 4 horses she stole hers from, I really do!

I’ve been playing around with my scanner and installed Simple Scan – it makes a lovely clean pencil scan, so I’ve just had to touch the levels and change to greyscale in Gimp.  In Jinty’s case I also moved the sketch into the centre of the paper so there’s a clear margin for framing.  But I’m much happier bringing my pencil sketches onto the PC now it’s just a quick tweak in Gimp.  No excuse for not scanning in my sketches now, and very useful when I start working on cartoons from my sketches.

Time to unleash that wayward multi-tasking artist

| Donna

I’ve noticed recently that my interest in artistic work isn’t what it used to be.  My work output has just been deathly quiet for a long time and I really struggle to get any work done.  I just can’t feel enthusiastic painting and drawing as I did when I was younger.  I suspected this was just a result of me becoming older and losing that buzz, or that my frustrations with other aspects of life had just dampened my enthusiasm.  Those seemed like reasonable explanations.

So this general feeling of “meh” led me back to doing my morning pages – writing stream-of-consciousness for 3 pages each day.  And some meditation each morning too.  I wanted to find out what the problem was and return to a more productive workflow.

I did my morning pages today and realised that I had a much simpler problem.  I’m bored!  Instead of letting myself create different types of art and crafts alongside each other, my sensible side decided that I must focus on one discipline and not deviate from it.  No matter how much I wanted to stop drawing and make some jewellery, I didn’t let it happen.  I forced myself to specialise. One by one my specialities were abandoned after the forced specialisation got too frustrating.  My mind simply resents being told it must stick on one path, stamps its little foot and tantrums.

I admire anyone who is genuinely delighted that they do the same thing each and every day.  But for me it’s like some advanced mind torture. Rather than improving my output and making me into a better artist, it drove me crazy, killed the output and made me worse.  Screw that for a game of soldiers!

So, I had a think about this and here’s what I decided:

  1. I’m miserable if I stick on one path.  Even my sensible side admits this was dumb 😀
  2. Each time I leave crafts and favour a speciality, those skills get rusty through lack of practice.
  3. Rusty skills mean wasted time practicing to get back up to speed.
  4. Considering 2 and 3, it’s better to have all my skills sharp at any given time.
  5. More sharp skills enable mixed media/technique work which would make me stand out in the artistic crowd.
  6. I would have a range of stock to sell at different venues.
  7. I’m not going to be putting all my eggs in one basket depending on 1 single discipline for my income.
  8. Variety during the day will prevent me sitting too long in one position which is better for my body than sitting over the same thing all day long.

So it’s official… I’m going back to multi-tasking!

Moving forward I’m going to return to a previous workflow that I enjoyed.  Where I allow myself one project for each discipline – one knitting thing, one crochet, one painting and so forth.  Then I can switch between activities for variety but I don’t accumulate a ton of unfinished work.  I’ll probably be more relaxed than that – I’m very good at finishing work even if I don’t feel it’s going well.  But I am certainly going to let myself have variety in my working day.