Tuesday, October 11, 2011


Here is something about drawing that I've noticed since I was a kid: such a lot of pencil-waving before you make a mark. Watch the first bits of the video. He does a lot of wavewavewave-mark, wavewavewave-mark. High waving to marking ratio. I used to watch my grandma draw and she always did tons of waving with the pencil before there were any lines appearing; I guessed it was sort of like practice waving so you can figure out where the line is supposed to go. Which it more or less is.

Also, got to get me one of those precision pencil-eraser things for the wee teeny erasing bits.

One of the things I like best about this is all the cool little gadgets and neat things you get to buy. They all have a really high retail therapy delivery payback in that they don't, individually, cost very much... pencil holders and fancy charcoal-by-the-piece, but have a lot of concentrated coolness per piece.

(Yes, yes, I did do some work today. Experimenting with toned charcoal drawing...I'm DOING it already!)



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1 comment:

Mark S. Abeln said...

Freehand drawing requires lots of eye-hand coordination. It's like sports, but with a very small playing field. You have to make your muscles behave properly without having to think about it.

This reminds me of the parable of the Emperor, Artist, and Fish: http://www.homemadeparachute.com/blog/learning/2011/03/22/emperor-artist-and-fish

I'm a compass-and-straightedge kind of drawer, which means I can't draw anything like that from sight by hand.