February Art Notes

Journaling facilitates thinking.

It takes a consistent effort to get good at anything.

Time is not really a factor in drawings.

Don’t overthink. Speed drawings work.

Practice, practice, practice should be a mantra with anyone who wants to make progress.

Rather than trying to do everything, pick a little piece and do that well. The constraint will help you to focus.

Commit to a line. Sketch in ink without corrections.

Draw from life more than from photos.

Look at lots of art every day.

Draw every day.

Fewer, more confident lines allow the viewer to fill in the blanks. Not every line needs to be drawn, only the few that represent as more important.

If you’re feeling down about how your drawings are going on particular day, end the drawing session with something you like to draw.

Add a dark background sometimes, to add contrast to clearly check the shapes on you life drawing studies.

Short poses redefine time. Fifteen seconds makes a minute feel like a long time and five minutes feel a lifetime.

Use a tiny book for sketching people daily. If you do a sketch that you are not happy with, turn the page and do another one.

Develop a sketching style that allows you to work as quickly as possible on location.

You don’t need an extensive knowledge of anatomy to draw people or animals if you learn to see and sketch visual shapes accurately.

The most essential difference between a drawing and a sketch is the speed at which they are drawn.

A sketch captures observations of small details, postures or lighting — and are a quick attempt to put your perceptions on paper.

When you sketch from life, you’re trying to capture visual and emotional impressions of a subject.

Focus on the simplest shapes to establish overall posture and characteristics.

Copying is the fastest way to improve your sketching.

Copying in order to learn new skills or refine old ones is the fastest way to get better.

In a challenging situation use watercolor pencils to record line and color together at the same time so you can do so at a rapid pace.

Shapes and contours make things easier to see.

When you sketch someone and it doesn’t look at all like them, (or worse, totally messes up how they look) and they see it, they think: “he/she can’t draw so well.” and not “oh, I look so bad.”

The darkest area of a drawing is where the eyes go first.

“Frankensteining” is making one person from the parts of many when drawing people.

Drawing develops a sense of observation.