The Self-Isolation Residency 12th may 2020: Day 44

What to do-odle?

As you may have seen in my post on Facebook this morning I have spent a great deal of today adding to and improving my website; I really want to give the #artistsupportpledge a big push so I've added a new section to my gallery page dedicated to this. This has unfortunately meant that I have had far less time to spend on my project work today, so I decided to work on something quicker and simpler that I could share with you tonight. 

It hadn't been my intention to run these posts as a series of tutorials, however with the nature of my artwork and teaching I felt that it was inevitable that there would certainly be an amount of crossovers into this field.  Today's work. and therefore my post. is a very good example of this. When I used to run regular drawing classes, apart from the projects that I set for my students in class I always tried to give them an amount of 'homework'. One thing that I always have to make clear to students is that drawing is a skill and if you don't practise on a regular basis you will get rusty. To encourage my students to draw between lessons with me I devised simple project that they could pursue everyday, using the minimum of time, equipment and 'muses'. 

The best of these homework projects is the simple hand drawing exercise. The idea is for you to drawing your 'free' hand, if you are right handed you draw you left hand, in simple but varied poses everyday. Each drawing should take no more than 10 minutes and ideally a lot less with practise. In this way there is no difficulty finding something or the finding the time to draw. I also encourage student to use whatever materials are to hand, excuse the pun! An A4  sketchbook and a 2B pencil is the ideal for most people, bu a standard sheet of A4 printer paper and a biro will work just as well.

The principle is to keep the drawing fast and free, spend 90% of you time looking at the hand that you are actually drawing. not looking at the drawing that you are doing. Try to work in a continuous-line style, in other words once you pencil contacts the paper to start the drawing do not remove it form the paper, unless you have to sharpen it, until the drawing is complete. This style not only helps with the freedom of the drawing but it also helps you to keep track of your drawing without constantly looking at it due to muscle memory.

As example I have done a couple of quick hand drawings to show you what I mean, the drawing at the top in done with compressed charcoal, one of my favorite mediums and took less than 5 minutes. By contrast the drawing below is a little different, it is don't with a standard blue biro on A4 and took a full 10 minutes, maybe even slightly more, but this is because it is a slightly harder subject. On this occasion I wasn't drawing my 'free hand' but my 'active hand', in other words I was drawing the hand that I was actually drawing with. This is definitely a more difficult drawing to execute and I would generally only set it as a project for more advanced students. I must say that I hadn't done this myself for quite a long time before today and I think that it show that even I need to keep in practise.