Paul’s 100 Day Challenge; Sketchbook

[PaulDidier]

Here’s today’s, (Day 07), warmup sketches. Again, from the NMA Daily Drawing exercise.

 

 

[Josseline Jeria]

I like your drawings Paul. Always a pleasure to see them. I admire you doing these drawing sessions in pen.

[Birgith Schei]

I agree with Josseline

[Birgith Schei]

You mention, NMA Daily Drawing exercise. Is this special series of exercises you find in NMA, or is it exercises you chose your self?

[PaulDidier]

Thanks Josseline. I used to avoid doing these in ink, but forced myself to start doing it and gradually began to really love it. I also like doing a page of large, really loose, figure gestures with sharpie pens. I found that, since there’s no correcting due to it being ink, I gradually stopped being so cautious and hesitant. I may post a page or two of the sharpie sketches if you think it may be helpful. They’re definitely much looser than the ones I’ve been posting from my sketchbook.

[PaulDidier]

Hi Birgith,

If you go to the NMA “Images” page, ( https://www.nma.art/images/ ), at the top you’ll see this image;

 

Just click on the triangle. There are, I believe, 34 Sessions.  Also, I’ve downloaded many images from their image library, (Rajiv is particularly good), and then I use Faststone image viewer, (it’s a free program), to view them as a timed slideshow. Great way to start your day. Enjoy!

[PaulDidier]

Hi Josseline,

Here are the quick warmups I do using sharpies in the morning. Sometimes I’ll do animals, sometimes perspective, sometimes portraits.

The important thing I want to impress on you is these are NOT gestures the way many instructors emphasize doing them. These are first and foremost WARMUPS, to get my eyes and brain into a good place to start doing art. I’m pretty zoned in the morning. Doing these helps wake me up, (along with my cup of coffee and maybe a couple of chocolate covered espresso beans).

I compare this to doing warmups before playing basketball or tennis or some other activity. Instead of being preoccupied with all “do’s and don’ts” of drawing- line quality, shading, even proportion, (although I DO try to do them well while doing this, I just don’t see a mistake and stop and go, “Damn! I need to fix that before I go on!”), I just let it flow and try not to worry about any mistakes at the moment. When warming up for basketball it would be like just trying new movements without worrying if the ball goes in the basket every time, or in tennis just letting go while trying new serves to see what happens without worrying too much if the serve would have been in or not. You’re still hoping it goes in, but you don’t stop and critique yourself.

I’ve always tended to be a bit of a perfectionist, at least towards myself. I’d do a drawing or painting and people would compliment me on it, but all I would be able to see was the ellipse that was a little off, or the line that was too heavy-handed or too wimpy. I had a teacher once who finally asked me, “Wow Paul, do you ever ENJOY doing art? All you seem to do is look for something to criticize yourself about. You need to have fun! That’s how you improve, especially over years of doing something!” He was right.

So these warmups are really special times for me to just let go and have fun. I don’t usually post them or show them to people. They’re just for me.

Anyway, hope this helps. Your gestures look fine! Don’t be too critical of your efforts and have fun. Also, NO ONE doing this challenge is going to make fun of your efforts. We all know how hard it is. As Steve Huston says many times in his tutorials, “Art is hard!”

So here’s my warmup in the first stage. I’m working on an 18″ x 24″ sheet of newsprint. I downloaded some of the images of Rajiv, then made a slideshow with it set for 30 seconds for each image. I used a partially dry sharpie that leaves a lighter line and just went as fast as I could to capture the overall feel of the movement of the pose.

 

[PaulDidier]

Here’s the second stage. I go back in the slideshow and go through it again, spending one minute on each figure. Again, not worrying about all the “rules” of drawing, but, of course trying to fix and refine things in the limited time I have but not worrying too much about it.

 

[PaulDidier]

Finally, if I feel like it, I’ll go through the slideshow one more time. This time I spent about two minutes on each image. Nothing to brag about. It’s just a nice way to loosen up and get my eyes and brain awake and my blood flowing. At this point I’m often really excited to sit down and do some more careful drawing and rendering, paying attention to all the things I didn’t pay attention to while doing these.

 

 

[Josseline Jeria]

Paul, thank you so much for your generous and encouraging words. Thank you for mentioning the sport warm-up analogy. I come from a sporting background (powerlifting) where the warmup efforts have to be very deliberate and approached in the same manner as you would for your top weights/performance. So I think that’s how I have been approaching the timed gestures. So feeling my gestures as performative rather than warming up was placing pressure on myself that made me feel nervous and uncomfortable.

Thank you so much for providing all these examples of how your approach your gestures. These are very useful for me to see. The way you approach doesn’t appear too disimiliar to Karl Gnass’ approach that I’ve been learning, but could also be my untrained eye. I like how Karl teaches a stage approach. It allows me to better understand each element better, but I’m finding attempting to doing so is difficult for me – I just can’t get enough in in time. What you achieve in 30secs is what I can do in about 2 mins, haha.

I can empathise with the perfectionism. I show my husband my work and though I may feel happy generally speaking for my efforts, I always find and focus on what I didn’t do right, and discuss that with him rather than what I like about it. He always says I’m way too hard on myself. I will begin to see my gesture work as you do – for fun and time for myself. I will aim to do gestures x2 daily, morning and evening once I get more and more comfortable with it.

I was very hesistant at first, but I’ve only been met with kindness and support here – it’s been wonderful. I’ve already found how this community is helping me. This is going to be a great 2+ months 🙂

I like the idea of using a sharpie and larger surface. I don’t have any newsprint, so I will get some soon.

Thanks again Paul.

[PaulDidier]

It’s my pleasure Josselyn. We seem to have some perfectionist tendencies in common. It can really get in the way, not only of enjoying what you’re doing but, at least in my case, of doing my best. I always found that when warming up with my drawing and painting or, in tennis, just rallying, I hit better shots than when playing a game. Invariably when I was playing the game I’d tighten up and not do as well. The same with my art. So I’ve been working hard at relaxing and enjoying myself, which involves not “working hard” and tightening up. It’s a real catch-22 for me. I know many people don’t have this issue but I do.

One other comment. The way I do these warmups is different from when I do my more focused gestures. Those are the ones I’ve been posting before on the toned paper. In those, while still having fun, I’m paying more attention to proportion, contour, line quality, etc. If you look at Steve Huston’s “Life Drawing Demonstrations 1” he does some awesome quick sketches using sharpies, pens, charcoal etc. The Sharpie drawings begin about 7 minutes into chapter 2 and go all the way through chapter 3. Achieving this level of gesture drawings are what I’m striving for with the sketches I’m posting in my toned sketchbook pages.

Here’s a link to Steve’s video tutorial;

https://www.nma.art/videolessons/steve-huston-life-drawing-demonstrations-1/

[Lucas a.k.a “Roams”]

great advice paul ill keep that in mind also 🙂 im in the same boat as ye when it comes to the perfectionism xD

[PaulDidier]

Hmmm, looks like stuff isn’t posting. I put two images up on teh same post and they didn’t appear. It seems like the forum doesn’t like multiple images on a single post.

I’ll try it again with separate uploads.

Here’s my gouache studies for day 08.

 

[Peihong Jiang]

Hi Paul, I really liked the texture! Eye-opening for using Gouache to achieve that.

[PaulDidier]

Here’s today’s (Day 08) gouache studies;

[Author]

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