Christopher’s 100 Day Challenge: Building A Solid Foundation

[Christopher]

Day 6.

As usual some perspective some dexterity excercises and some form practise from the beginner course.

I might consider to reduce the dexterity excercises to one page per day or otherwise working through the courses will continue to be so slow.

[Debbie H]

Hi Christopher. Your challenge is a good one and you’re doing a great job. I’m also doing the perspective course, just not posting as it’s not part of my challenge topic. Erik is very thorough and your exercises from his classes look really good. You can’t go wrong focussing on fundamentals – it’s something I should do more of too. It’s difficult to fit everything in isn’t it! Keep up the good work!

Deborah

[Christopher]

Thanks Deborah,

and yes it is difficult. I always find myself thinking that I’m not doing enough especially considering some of you doing whole studies + things that you don’t even see in the challenge threads. I just can’t believe that such simple exercises take so much time for me 😅

Day 7.

Not that these would be more interesting to look at but finally a bit more form pages. It’s pretty difficult to stay patient if you progress so slowly through this courses and therefore don’t have any subject matter to draw for so many days. As I said I was thinking of maybe adding the beginner head drawing course into the mix. But I’m still not convinced that this is a good idea if it’s already taking so much time to work through the current courses …

[Christopher]

Day 8.

In the moment my focus is on getting clean looking lines and forms. I don’t know why but I find it to be frustrating that the lines and curves look good while doing the excercises but as soon as I draw objects like forms, therefore the lines having a purpose, my linework gets really ugly and unconfident. Further do I find it really difficult to darken lightly drawn curves and ellipses.

The next “problem” are the cubes drawn from observation. I don’t know if it’s because I’m sitting or because the cube is below my eyeline but the top planes of my cubes always end up being narrower than what is in front of me. Also if transferring angles to the bottom of my page the angles seem to get “distorted”. If for example one angle is pointing up from left to right it’s sometimes the opposite if holding the needles against the bottom of my page. But since I use a tabletop easel my viewing angle is perpendicular.

That’s in summary what I need to work on if someone has or had similar experiences and therefore might have a excercise or hint that would be nice 😅👍

[Christopher]

Day 9.

Day 9 was a bit unfortunate but since I didn’t wanted to do nothing I at least filled three small din a4 pages with more simple forms.

[Debbie H]

Hi Christopher. Something I’m really enjoying about this forum is that everyone is here to practice, unlike social media where it’s about having something to put on display. So don’t worry about your pace and what you have or haven’t done – just take the time to learn what you need to learn and we’re just here supporting each other on the journey.
I haven’t drawn cubes using needles as I’d already done so many in Erik’s class. I’m not sure what to suggest except to make sure you’re sitting at the same height (ie sitting up straight) when you take measurements so you’re the same height each time and so seeing your cube from the same angle. The cubes you’re drawing also aren’t that big – I think taking measurements with the needles would probably be easier with a large cube as the difference in angle will show up more over a longer line. I wouldn’t be too concerned about line quality at the moment. I’m pretty confident that will come with drawing miles. Keep up the good work 🙂!

[Jean Carlos]

Hi Christopher! Loving the practice you’re putting out! These are great exercises which we all benefit from. Ellipses is something that I just can’t draw very well, can’t really place the axis correctly 😅 so I should really exercise that more. Keep at it!

Cheers!

[Christopher]

@Deborah

Thank you for your encouragement and yes that’s something I like about this forum too. Posts on many other platforms start for example with something like “portait drawn by me – tell me if you like it and follow me on IG: xyz”

Here you got so many different people sharing not only their finished work but also their wip and progress which motivates others to ask how somebody achieved the seen improvement.

About the measuring,

Yeah I only got a tiny wooden cube and I still don’t really enjoy the whole measuring process but if so many resources say it’s important to use measuring to improve your observation skills I as beginner/intermediate beginner think that I should trust the more experienced artists, so I guess I have to torture myself a little bit longer 😅😭

@Jean

Thank you,

and yes even if it’s often boring right now I’m really curious to see where I end up after the 100 days. I only whish I had done any kind of finished piece beforehand to compare to after the challenge 😅

Days 10 & 11

So after a few days without perspective the next days or even week will be perspective heavy. Since I finished chapter 2 I revisit every diagram, reorder them and do my own version for my perspective notebook. That will take some time. I did the same for chapter 1 but that was right before the challenge.

It’s kind of repetitive doing it twice but I really want to ingrain the information into my brain 😅

[Christopher]

Day 12

More perspective and I now got questions about two specific diagrams but since most questions got answered in later diagrams I’ll wait and trust in Erik Olson’s teaching 👍

[Debbie H]

These look great! It’s good you’re pushing beyond an exact copy of what Erik does. It does help solidify the information in your mind. Good job!

[Christopher]

Thanks Deborah!

And yeah I thought even if it slows down the process this course is full of information so it’s best to make sure I understood everything before moving on.

Day 13, 14, 15 & 16

The last days if not the whole week I was really unproductive and often found myself procrastinating but at least I did something each day. So if it’s about short term goals I just hope to get back on track soon.

Maybe I should also include a minimum amount of pages I have to do, like others do in their challenges, to make things easier … 👋

[Christopher]

Day 17 & 18

More forms while still trying to get used to drawing lines without rotating the page. Additionally some real objects.

[Christopher]

Day 19

It seems mundane but I really want to get at least more comfortable with my lines so more basic forms while focusing on line quality. I even started using ball point pen which makes the pages look even worse but if that type of mileage is the price for better lines I’ll pay it 😅👍

[Christopher]

Day 20 & 21

More ugly pages with ball point pen/fineliner + more object drawings.

[Christopher]

Day 22

[Author]

Posts