Back to Basics

After having been pulled away from the engaging all consuming practice of creating art for the past year (besides the interior designing of the house), my skills have suffered immensely and requires nothing less than an intensive back to basics work out. 

One can't go wrong when in a pickle like this by starting from the beginning with Nicolaides 'The Natural Way To Draw' .

The book runs through 25 weeks of daily 3 hour sessions, 5 days a week in progressive exercises designed to help one fully incorporate all ones senses naturally, almost instinctively, in the act of drawing.

I'm revising just about 2-3 days from each of the earlier weeks till I reach the more complicated sections detailed later in the book, which I have yet to complete. This practice will be incorporated in my schedule every 2 days (as usual) as I find, like when building and training ones muscles, a rest day between training similar muscles tends to produce better results.

Section 1 starts off with the basics of gesture and contour drawing. Unlike in Nico's book where the gesture sessions are usually 15 - 25 minutes of 1 minute gestures, I'll be using pixelovely.com, which is in 1/2 sessions of 30 sec, 5 min and 11 min gestures.

A few gestures (pixelovely) and contours (from life) from the last 2 sessions...

Charcoal Pencil >6min

Charcoal Pencil >12min

Vine & Charcoal Pencil about 10min

1/2 hour Contour with 3B Graphite

1 Hour Contour with 3B Graphite

Contour drawings are guided more by a sense of touch rather than sight. Without looking at the paper throughout, one has to feel as if one is actually touching the contours of the subject with the tip of the pencil, the eye moving along the edge of the subject in concert with the pencil on the page. Although the result of the drawing can look quite disjointed and unrecognizable, this exercise is invaluable in gaining an intuitive sense of proportion.

It's great to be back!.. Thanks for the visit!.. :)