So...let's talk about Time Management

[aks9]

Well, I realised a few weeks ago that so much of the way we draw has to do with the way we think.

So when drawing a figure for example, we need to learn to (among many other things):

- Draw a gesture of it
- Give figures an action line
- Be aware of the "contraposto", the relationship between the tilt in the shoulders and hips
- Be able to separate the form into lights and darks
- etc etc


And there are many ways of thinking, "drawing techniques", that help you think and look at the figure in different ways, for example:

- Drawing the figure as a set of cylinders / blocks
- Drawing the contours of the volumes
- Drawing silhouettes and negative spaces
- Dividing the form into planes
- Dividing the form into light and shadow shapes
- Know which parts of the body are usually drawn with which types of edges
- etc, etc...


and it's like, the more of these ways of drawing we *understand* and can call upon at any time, even if we aren't a master at them, then the better our figures will become.

We can practice 1 type of gesture technique for weeks on end, but it won't really improve our drawing, because to draw perfect and complete figures, we need to be aware and at least *understand* all the different elements that go into rendering an illusory figure, and there are a billion techniques that lead awareness to small different aspects of that..

Thinking about this always made me feel overwhelmed (for example, when looking at the ImagineFX special edition on Anatomy), because of my practice style of spending hours and days on a single topic, how the hell would i manage to practice and learn all these different things?

But of course the point is to understand the techniques and know how to use them on demand, not to be able to flawlessly execute perfect figures all the time... and so thats where the idea of the 20m rotations come in, because as long as you understand how to use the technique and see the way in which it influences how the figure is drawn and how you think about it, then it's purpose has been served.


When trying to learn to draw figures, I would often get stuck practicing one or two types of figure techniques, thinking that if I managed to master it, suddenly my figures would jump to life. In order to do really awesome gestures, I thought I should just do a ton of gestures, but the thing is that there are lots of different ways to think about a gesture, and if you only do one thing all the time, you're never going to become aware of all the other parts of gesture drawing and the very specific ways in which they improve your ability to give gesture to a figure.


Well, that's the idea anyway. I spent about an hour last night listing a bunch of different aspects of figure drawing that can be practiced and which lead to different results/knowledge/representation, I might post them up if they turn out to be useful or if anyone's curious.