The week’s almost over, so I thought I’d share the week’s creations with you in this post.
1. Learning to Draw Pumpkins
Up till now, the way I’ve been drawing, is by simply applying one basic rule I learnt a long time ago: forget what I know and follow the line. It has served me well except when I draw, it most often, feels rather random and all down to intuition. Though this can be good, it has its own limitations: I never know how to build my subject gradually therefore with confidence.
So, here, as I wish to improve my drawing confidence, I picked a simple subject – the pumpkin – and I’m going through practice, learning, observation, etc to improve how I draw these. Above all, I want my drawings to look satisfying to my eyes and draw with greater confidence.
My long term goal is to be able to draw things with confidence because I know how to build them up on canvas, not because I have the real thing in front of me nor I have a photo of it. All the pumpkins I show you in this post were drawn this way. The learning is real and definitely going! I’m loving the drawing power I’m gaining.
There is more learning going on behind the scene, Procreate drawing practice for instance. I had a little fun too with my learning and created those cards with coloured pencils and drawing pens. It enriches the learning experience for me. Once my neck starts feeling tired of looking down, I move to Procreate drawing. I have hurt my neck with too much analogue drawing in the past (looking down for too many hours), so these days I’ve got to be careful how much analogue art I do, hence my working mainly digitally.
Each time I’m at it, I learn something new and I love it this way. The above cards were my practice of what I learnt the days before (setting down some oval layers and the angle for the pumpkin to guide my drawing; this is the thing that I found the most helpful the past few days. It really changed the way I feel inside when I draw pumpkins now).
I ended up making the sort of thing I’d love to become better and better at in the future:
It took me quite some time to arrive at these. The hardest wasn’t per say the drawing but rather the style and brush to go for. Yes, when you think you’re improving, boom, you hit yet another new learning curve. I tend to be quite a perfectionist and often end up in Affinity Designer with perfect smooth shiny lines that I’m increasingly growing averse to. Producing this set was no different. I’m finding that, for certain types of art, I can’t stand perfection. Generally speaking, more and more I seek looseness, freedom, capturing the essence and embellishing as I see fit. No realism and no perfect finishing and lines. I seek personality, soul, not technical perfection.
One thing for sure: spending time studying subjects really start increasing my drawing confidence and it suits me like a gem.
2. Watercolour Foliage
This week I also found the method of removing the white textured watercolour paper background from my canvas that works for me, so I was able to produce those that I now sell on Creative Market.
I’m trying to develop small daily creative learning habits here, so it all feels a little messy but this is what I managed this week and I’m proud of myself. It’s not a lot, it’s nothing complex nor too fancy but I see progress and good learning and that’s what matters the most to me at the end of the day. Why? Better art makes me happier, it grows my creative confidence and sells better, quite simply.
Whereupon, I hope you enjoyed these illustrations and wish you a lovely week end.
Alex
