Today I’m in between Fandom Fitness drawings so I spent most of my time on Pocahontas Research. The rest of my time was on practice.
I really enjoy doing these videos because it allows me to get my ideas out quickly and passionately. I’m not a great writer at all, not even close, so the videos help with that.
In the video I talk about going beyond the surface and diving deep into emotion and ideas. I feel in my heart that this component in art is essential if you want to reach the upper echelon of the greatest artists in history. But, like Nicolaides says, it has to start with the surface and the skill.
The balance between obtaining skill through intense observation and communicating an idea through personal introspection is difficult to achieve, so I must practice it as much as I can. I do this through these Fandom Fitness drawings, for now, and I’ll do it with the any other projects that come up in the future. I want to say something. I want my art to be more than just images skillfully done. So I practice, daily.
What do you want to say in your art?
Let’s step out of our comfort zones together and communicate something impactful to the world!
The normal 15 minute warm-up in graphite.
The extended gesture study from the The Natural Way to Draw book is an exercise that I feel I will continue for a long time. Honestly I could use this method as preliminaries for my fandom fitness work.
But, today I’m was having lots of trouble with this drawing. I’ve drawn the figure so much I know which poses I’m not so great at and this is one of them. I have a lot of room for improvement on any standing pose. In the future I plan on hammering a ton of standing poses so I can shore up this hole in my skill set.
I had a great time this morning doing some Pocahontas research and finding the perfect person to portray this historical figure in my next drawing.
I need to put in a lot of practice on standing poses.
I may begin a list of my shortcomings in figurative work and plan to practice them diligently and persistently until they are an asset.
