Weekly Art Dispatch, No. 12 🎨
Welcome to Vega’s weekly Art Dispatch, issue twelve.
Mission accomplished! The month of February is over, and I’ve finished both the Big Art Project and Figuary 2021. Much to celebrate!
Big Art Project
Piece #4 of the Big Art Project is finished! Here are the previews.
Life this week was extremely busy. The Art Project was one of many deadlines I had to meet; plus, I left the hardest art piece to the last, and Art Piece #4 had a bit of a tough start. I don’t think I would’ve been able to finish it while juggling all my other RL responsibilities, if not for a new development that happened last weekend: I acquired a drawing buddy.
Every day this week, this online acquaintance and I met up at a set time every day through private messaging on Discord (chat server), and we did at least one cycle of four Pomodoros together to reach our individual drawing goals. I’m usually pretty good at managing my time independently, but having an accountability partner is doubly good because their presence helps me maintain my productivity focus, and prevents me from slacking off around the edges.
So I finished Piece #4 on the back of daily Pomodoros – and comfortably ahead of the project deadline too. With such a busy week, I don’t think I could’ve managed to stay focused on my art project without the help of this drawing buddy. Many thanks! :) And it worked out so well that we’re going to keep at this drawing practice every day.
I didn’t get to finish any fun art this week, but…
Figuary 2021 (Study Art)
…I also caught up with Figuary through those Pomodoro drawing sessions.
Day 19, 1 minute quick sketch.
Figuary has been fantastic and instructive! I enjoyed doing these quick sketches, they helped me hone my gesture drawing skills: simplify the figure, capture the essence of movement in fewer lines. I used pen and pencil for figures, and pen has definite advantages: I slow down and take more care with placing linework, and don’t scribble as much. And the more I slow down, the more I take time to actually measure and establish landmarks, which means better proportions in my figures.
Days 20 and 23 (1min each), 24 2min and 5min.
My figures definitely have proportional issues, and I think most of it lies in the torso, and getting its size/length proportional to head and limbs. This is a recurring issue that I noticed through doing 2-4 Figuary videos in a row like drawing drills. Next time I practice gesture drawing again, I plan to do longer gesture studies to practice various techniques: estimation, angle-sighting, and establishing landmarks before laying in lines.
Day 25 2min; Day 27 1min.
And… that’s the end of February! I will do a fuller debrief on Big Art Project when the exhibit opens and I can finally show off the works. Now that this and Figuary are both over, I’m ready to go back to my usual art projects, and begin Lesson 4 of Draw A Box.
Thanks for reading this week’s edition of the Art Dispatch!