Obsession and Frustration With Quick Sketch
12d
Dan Blodgett
I'm obsessed. I admit it. There's nothing I want more right now than to execute a quick sketch session and not feel like a complete amateur when I'm done. It's... a process. And I feel like only one out of maybe forty drawings comes out with any semblance of decency. The rest of the time I'm beating my head against the wall. It's driving me crazy, haha. But I'm trying. I think there's improvement in my ability to spot proportions and angles better. Five minutes still feels impossible, but my gesture continues to improve with those shorter times at least. I think. Below I've attached a couple tens that aren't complete garbage. Seems to be my sweet spot at the moment. I'm trying to push to make full figures, but damn, is it difficult.
Those of you out there who are getting good but feeling stagnant should give the Watts method of quick sketch figure drawing an earnest try. If you haven't really studied it before, it'll knock you out. If you're a beginner... I'd say give it a go, but get ready to get frustrated, haha.
What is see is that your drawings are very busy. The hierarchy is muddy because you give every line equal importance and there is not enough variety in line quality. Try experimenting with only emphasizing lines that you feel are the most important to communicate what you want to communicate with your figures. Is it a movement? A shape? A cast shadow? Don't be afraid to exaggerate this choice. Looking forward to seeing your results!
I see what you mean, and you're absolutely right! Part of that is I bump the contrast before uploading drawings to the interwebs so they pop better on a monitor/phone. In person, the lines aren't nearly as oppressive, and the variety is better. Not great, but better. Of course, the other part of that is my heavy hand, which is... heavy, haha. The results speak for themselves in that regard. Especially under the pressure of timed drawings.
The nuance of this style of drawing is mind-blowing to me. To master it seems impossible, but for the evidence of others who have mastered it. I actually did something more like what you're talking about a couple of weeks ago with a five-minute figure, but I can't seem to replicate it again. Don't know why. I must be psyching myself out over these...
Anyway, thanks for the input! Appreciate it! I'll try to keep in mind during my next session to relax and simplify, and keep it varied.
i get it. i love doing quick sketches and then am disappointed with how the sketches turn out. things that have been helping me are: 1) sketching other stuff (not just naked people, lol) 2) letting go of the "quick" part and just letting the drawing take however long it takes to get to the stage i've aimed for 3) aiming for accurately recording the body position and proportions (little perspective cross contours help me with this) 4) developing my own little system of simplified doodles for recording body landmarks like elbows and knees and whatnot 5) taking a moment to figure out how the gesture/pose/object makes me feel and focusing on that and 6) sometimes i just decide to draw a part rather than the whole thing, like the head or a hand or something, because it caught my eye
Thank you for sharing your tips! Three and four are actually my primary concerns when doing these, as I have a hard time judging things like rib cage/shoulder/pelvic tilt, and mainly the length of things. I always make the torsos too long and the legs too short. So, doing a lot of these quick sketches is helping me to work on spotting proportions without falling into rendering hell, haha. Which is what I do when there's no time limit. I'd rather do 10-20 iffy drawings that are better proportioned than one or two well-rendered drawings that are way off.
Plus, it's good to feel humble every once in a while, haha. Don't want to let Dunning-Kruger get me.
Appreciate you!
Your obsession with details is what's holding you back. For a quick sketch you are adding too much anatomical details and shading. The goal of quick sketch exercises is to train yourself to instantly see the gesture of the pose. That's why you are only allowed enough time to put down the gesture or line of action of the pose. So when doing 1-5min sketches don't try to draw the figure, but put down the rhythm lines of the pose.
You could watch demo videos to better understand the process. Proko has plenty of demos even in the free edition of his course, and Mike Mattesi also made a great demo video explaining his force method.
You can also do a combined session to practice both quick sketches and long studies. In a 2 hour session you could do 45-50 min of quick sketches followed by a 10-15 min break and then an hour long figure study.
Alas, I am a slave to my desire to complete quick sketches like Jeff Watts and Erik Gist. I crave that mosaic, anatomical, and shadow-mapped look they get with their quick figures, so I spend my time on that and end up with an incomplete and inaccurate drawing when the time limit is low. Which frustrates me. But I'm finding that it loosens my perfectionism and simultaneously gives me a good dose of humility when this occurs. Both of which I need, haha. So, you could say this is a deliberate humiliation ritual as well as an opportunity to get in a lot of figure drawing practice, all in a shorter session.
For these particular drawings, also, my aim was to improve my ability to see and design anatomy quickly and believably, to see general proportions of the figure more accurately (something I struggle with), and to train myself up to where a regular long figure study is a cake-walk by comparison. Like weight training for athletics. Not necessarily to work on finding just the pure gesture of a pose, which is not very difficult for me.
But thanks for the input! You're absolutely right. I should whittle it back down to basic gestures, maybe for a while, so I don't lose sight of that. I'm in danger of missing the forest for the trees, so to speak, as you wisely point out. Appreciate it!
