Comment Exchange

Leaping Lillypads! Wow, you sure are a busy little bee aren’t you? You’ve really gotten into the spirit of the community from the gate! You really didn’t have to greet and meet everyone. But I like your enthusiasm. We need people with your energy to really get the ball moving on this movement. Yes, I’m considering the CE a “movement”.

Welcome to the CE team. I know you’ll fit right in. A great many of our members are just like you. They have followed the spirit of the comment exchange even without the website and the artistic community movement behind it. This is just a place where people can come, and find those who are of this giving mindset.

I love graphite. You just can’t beat the versatility. And the stuff is everywhere. Pencils are so easy to come by. The majority of my work tends to be in graphite as well. You learn a ton more from a medium if you can’t erase though. Try experimenting with things like charcoal or conte crayon (they’re so much fun).

Once again, welcome, and have fun. ^_^

Conte crayon (if I’m not mistaken) is charcoal suspended in was (like a crayon). It’s less messy but you can still end up with dark hands when you’re done. It’s not nearly as messy as charcoal though.

Don’t worry about messing it up. Going slow isn’t much help to you. If you sketch hard and fast all the time, you’ll go through a lot of paper, but you skill will explode exponentially. When I was taking figure drawing classes they often had us trying to sketch a person in 30 seconds or less. When that’s all the time you have, you learn that it doesn’t have to be perfect. It makes the drawings you spend several minuets on a LOT better.

Oh man, it’s rough. And for the longest time I just thought the teacher was a jerk and enjoyed giving us hand cramps. But after just a few days of four hour sessions we did a few 5-10-20 minute sketches and the difference was amazing. Imagine drawing for a full four hours where you only get 30 seconds on each pose. That’s… 120 drawings in one four hour session. I’ve got to say though, this is the most powerful and quickest way to improve you skill. Just keep going fast, limit yourself, and draw a ton. Slowly increase the time you allow yourself. and always warm up with 30-60 second sketches before doing a full piece all at once.

I would probably start out doing 1-2 minute sketches and slowly limit yourself more and more. The ideal is to be capable of capturing the essence of a man falling from a building before he hits the ground. Or at least that was how our instructor told us.

I also learned that it’s a lot of fun to draw with your non-dominant hand. I’ve gotten to the point to where I can draw/paint equally well with both hands. Although my right hand is better with fine detail, the line quality of my left hand is better, and so are the shadow shapes.

Switching hands forces you to focus on the movement of your hand itself. This results in you not lazily/robotically performing actions that your dominant hand has memorized. After I got good enough with my left hand, I began to draw with both at the same time. That’s a lot of fun. People already view portrait artists as a talented and odd people. Imagine their faces when they realize that you’re drawing with both hands at once and somehow managing to coordinate the whole mess into something that actually looks like them. Fun stuff.

This is an easy exercise, and it’s a lot of fun. Just try drawing with your non-dominant hand and see what happens.