If there’s ever been a piece of art advice I’ve loathed, it’s “just draw everyday”.
Drawing everyday is all fine and dandy if you have a plan as to what to draw/improve upon. Usually, when the advice is given, it’s super vague and doesn’t exactly instill a sense of confidence that I know what they’re talking about.
Thankfully, the good folks over on the DeviantArt forums have pointed me in the right direction: that I need to work on the fundamentals. I was then linked to Marc Brunet’s 30 day challenge. At first I thought I'd do it all digitally until I remembered how I learned to draw horses: traditionally, on paper first.
In order to reap the full benefits, the switch to traditional ended up being a wise choice in the end.
As you can tell by the sketchbook pages struggle with shapes. Normally I use the ruler function in Medibang Paint to get the circles- however in order to reap the full benefits of these exercises I decided to pick up a pencil and paper. Some of my spheres came out alright, but many of them look like sad pancakes.
On day 2, I had a few passable spheres. Still, not quite up to snuff so to speak. I’m proud of the couple spheres I got right, because it shows that I theoretically can draw a sphere. So I’ll take the small win.
Once again, the spheres themselves could be better. I do feel the muscle memory coming in, albeit slowly. On the 4th day, I had fund shading the spheres. Some of the spheres look a bit doughy for my liking.
For fun, I decided to draw Eevee!
Well, actually, it looks terrifying. It’s skinny and long… and soulless. I showed it to my brother and he said the head was too small compared to the rest of its body. I held off on posting onto DeviantArt for two reasons: one, talk about embarrassing. Two, wouldn’t it be more interesting to post a 30 day side by side? Thankfully, the Pokemon community there was gentle with me and for that I’m grateful. I was a bit worried I’d be tarred and feathered for messing up a fan favorite.
Shortly after that drawing of Eevee, I realized that its body was made up of three circles rather than a cylinder with legs. That was when it clicked; Brunet’s shape exercises really were helping me recognize shapes.
For day 5, we finally get started on different shapes; this time cylinders. I went a little ham on the shading this time, but I did like the end result… even if the cylinders themselves weren't perfectly identical. For some reason, they reminded me of some of my makeup kits that I own.
Day 6 was a bit frustrating but worth it.
In closing, I hope you all have a great new year! Are you going to set a new years art resolution? If so, let me know what yours are. I plan to do this challenge again come February, among other improvement challenges.
I also hope that I’ve demystified what goes into art improvement. When you decide to improve on something, you should have a plan as to what it is you intend to improve.
I hope that my blog helps and/or encourages at least one fellow artist to give Brunet’s challenge a try. It is worth it, especially for the cost of “free”.
I unfortunately can’t find my sketchbook containing the rest of my sketches, but I’d like to show you all two drawings done six months apart:
The top was done a few days ago and the bottom was done in August.Although I struggle with the focal point in the top drawing, I still think in a lot of ways it’s a step up all around. My art goal for the new years will focus more on perspective and shading. We may live in an age of AI content flooding the internet, but that just encourages me to improve even more.
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