Sketch Practice

[Ena Marklund]

Ifind it helpful to do just a few of these warm ups at the start of a drawing session, it helps me to create smoother line work. And for beginning sketchers it can be helpful to loosen up and learn pencil control.

Often you will draw several loose lines in the first explorative stage, now is the time to decide on one contour line and define it with a solid line. Try to stay true to what you see in front of you.

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Hello, my name is Julia. I'm an illustrator, naturalist and I love to sketch.

On this blog I share my sketching adventures in nature, ideas for building a creative practice, how to live without social media, and my thoughts about how to be (and stay sane as) an artist in this strange world. Dive deeper into what I write about or browse the archives.

No matter how busy you are, where you are, try to sketch as much as you can.

Even a little session of 5 minutes will make you progress. Why? because you may have observed something cool, and micro study it with a doodle.

However, as a beginner, there is not anything much to process yet. ; ) So I recommend you guys to do not stop practicing for too long. Ok ? At least once a week, with no maximum time frame is best.

But when you sketch every day to simply Get Better at it, the results are closed in a book on the shelf in the studio. Instead of an instant shot of applause, the return for daily sketching effort is a slow, internal build of your own improvement.

P.S. If you like drawing portraits, and you work well with prompts and community, check out the Sktchy challenge 30 Faces in 30 Days. They start new sessions all the time, and the community is fun, encouraging and loaded with a broad range of artistic skills.

I love sketching, and then if the sketch deserves it, moving it forward into a full rendering. For me, the process is the purpose. I have a value-finder card that has been immensely helpful in creating accurate values.

I am a big Pixar fan, so I just had to try drawing some of my favorite characters. The hard thing with characters for me is hair and eyes. Get the eyes wrong and it all falls to pieces. Hands are hard too.

I take that back. This is probably my favorite picture. Here I was so proud at getting the basic structure right (sketch on the left) that I learned that if I put the time into getting the proportions of the picture right, the rest becomes a lot easier. Then it just becomes a matter of filling in the blanks and details (which can still be hard!).

Here you can see I took a run at doing the face, but faces are hard. I lack the skill to do those. But again, here I am just practice getting the body and orientation down. Faces, eyes, and hair are going to take a lot of practice.

I'm a (mostly) self-taught artist. I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I share my work, my evolving process and what knowledge I've gained on my own learning journey here, in the hope that it might help you along on

yours.

I use the Breathing Lines exercise mostly as a warm up, as the start of my practice sessions. I find it allows to to approach the rest of my practice session with a calmer mind. Try it. It takes a little while to get used to it, and you may feel the same frustration at first. But stick with it.

Thanks for the comment Mike, I completely agree with you. Our relationship to our practice is often overlooked but perhaps one of the most important things to look at seriously if we really want to make progress.

Hi!

Long time, no see ?

This article pooped in to my mailbox exactly at the moment I needed an answer to my frustration.

First I wanted to shout out on Twitter how frustrated I am, but then I calmed down DOING SOME BREATHING LINES ? they help me to calm before exercises and I use them even when I need calming down and relaxation in or after a stressful situation.

They help to focus when I have something difficult to do or to think about something hard.

Then I started to look for some helpful answers what am I doing wrong.

And then I read this post.

It helped. A lot.

Thank you Paul.

Your thoughts about studying bring back the joy and my youthfull way of working by seeing things as a game and a process in which I learn everytime I do something instead of trying to make a product that no one likes, together with studying this: (I bet you will love the books of this author)

Thanks Paul for your reaction

I have to tell my finding, so: on the way back home from the baker a few minutes ago, I did some hopping on the tiles of the street looking at the tiles and surroundings. When I came back home I imagened my key was an airplane that was flying in the lock of the back door. Made me forget about time and reminded me of the time everything was more of a game. Everything was somewhat more intense you know!

"Why are you posting these if in the last post you said that working on these without the pressures of getting approval from others is helpful?" Because I feel in sharing these, I can hopefully encourage others to be creative or just...practice creatively without pressure on how "good" it comes out or how many people will be looking. I don't care who looks, it's great just to make these to see how I do. :)

There's a neat creative challenge over on Instagram called 'The 100 Day Project'. The premise is simple: Do something every single day for a hundred days. Of course, I went with drawing - because drawing every single day for clients, projects and the like just isn't the same as conscious, focused practice over an extended period of time.

I can't remember a day over the last couple of years on which I didn't draw.

Sometimes there'd be elaborate commission pieces. For a long stretch of time (several years) I'd draw comic pages every single day. I went to art school with a focus on technical drawing and illustration. I love sketching. I doodle in my journal. Even when using Photoshop for digital work, there's a graphic tablet pen in my hand.

I often get comments along the lines of 'how nice to have such a talent' or 'I could never draw like this' and I would disagree whole-heartedly! Drawing and painting are thought of as a skill you're born with and that can't be learned if you don't have the 'talent', which can be incredibly discouraging if you develop an interest in arts (or have time for arts!) only at a later point in life. A lot of artists look talented because they've pursued drawing and painting as a hobby since they were young and the practice does add up.

Even the greatest artist of all time had to spend hours and years practicing, and while some people might be better at observation, have a very vivid imagination or are more attuned to their creativity than others, I'd still argue that this happens as and because they spend a lot of time being creative, observing nature, imagining new motives, and drawing.

If I spend the entire day working in one medium (like doing pencil drawings or inking comic pages, or just painting) I'll be much better by the time evening comes. After a certain time, it is as if my hands and my eyes had their 'warm up' and everything goes so much smoother.

It's known that athletes need to warm up their muscles, go through the same exercises again and again, to just keep up a skill level.

Musicians do scales and tune their instruments (and ears).

When speaking a foreign language you haven't used in awhile, you'll need time to get back into it.

Drawing is exactly the same. Don't be discouraged if the first 30 minutes of doodling don't produce a masterpiece - my first drawings of the day are always a bit stiff and I'll have to correct proportions or perspective a lot more than later on that same day.

The first sketch of three in a series. My three main characters from a story idea I've been working on. I like the character above a lot - her color scheme is always 'beige on beige', with her skin, eyes, lips and hair all similar. I normally choose contrasting colors for my character designs, so this is an interesting variation for me.

Once upon a time, I learned 'how to draw portraits'. I read books with that very title. I looked at proportions. I practiced drawing portraits both with and without reference pictures.

Then I went on to draw manga comics, and my knowledge of drawing people without references, from different perspectives and - especially - with different facial expressions, got deeper.

One of three character sketches for my comic story - I like drawing the three women that are the main characters in different art styles, from realism to comic style, and see how they change in each style and medium.

I'm mostly just drawing whatever I fancy on any given day, but I do tend to create little series of two to four images. It's similar to the 'do something all day long and you'll be better at it and more immersed' - trying different approaches to one theme or style teaches me more than just quickly dabble in it and then move on.

My first 'series' were simple watercolor portraits dancing between manga style and semi-realism (I should probably call it 'prettyism'). While I didn't use references for the faces themselves, I did consult different images of, for example, noses. Or lips. Different ways of drawing eyes.

I'm actually quite happy with the practice I got from these! The last one here (a fanart for Strange The Dreamer by Laini Taylor) doesn't only look better than my first attempts, but also seems to convey more atmosphere and emotion.

And what you can't see: It was so much easier to paint the later ones! I struggled less and less, had to erase fewer attempts and felt more confident in what I wanted the result to look like. I became quicker, too, which is why the later ones look more elaborate - I just got more drawing done in less time.

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