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Here is my advice. You need to loosen up so, I would suggest that you work with gesture sketching. Start with fifteen second sketches, then thirty seconds, one minute and five minute sketches. This will force you to look at the entire figure and take in as much as possible. You won’t be able to get detailed and throw away any erasers that you have because, you won’t have time to use them.
Don’t worry about making mistakes just go with the flow. My next suggestion is to work BIG. Too often I see students that work with a small format and they get caught up with detail. It’s like getting bogged down in mud. The more you try the slower it gets. An 18″ x 24″ or larger drawing surface should work fine. Also, if you use pencils, graphite or charcoal, sharpen them with a knife (unless you are using woodless) and don’t worry about a fine point. Vine charcoal, any kind of pastel or crayon is even better.
Next, don’t sit at a drawing table while drawing. Stand at your easel. You won’t be able to rest your arm on anything other than the drawing surface. Also your “chi” flows better in the standing position because, your spine is straight.
So, that’s my advice. The more you do it the easier it gets. You should find that it helps to break the barrier when it comes to moving forward. It will flow over to how you approach other mediums as well.
As a first year art major, I disagree that you are just starting your art career. You’ve been doing it since you were a child so, you were an artist before you started college. After all, you were expected to have a certain level of talent and ability before you started college. :thumbsup:
So, give it a try and see what happens. Don’t worry about getting something exactly right. What I’ve suggested will help to warm you up or loosen you up.
I hope this helps.:)
You can't put art in a box.
www.gdkrause.artspan.comTalent will get you to the foot of the mountain. It’s a long trek even to the first ridge.
Oh Keith… you will notice that I suggested that neither approach to painting… tight & polished or loose & expressive is easier. A single mark can unhinge a more painterly painting as easily as it might the more polished work. As such, I wholly agree that effort, patience, and care are of the utmost value. I can personally spend over 100 hours… sometimes well over 100 hours… on a single painting. There are instances when I find one mark “throws” the whole painting off. There are times when I repaint an area 10, 15, 20 times in order to get just the right color harmony. I agree with artyczar that there are fortuitous mistakes… but there are mistakes and the there are MISTAKES, and the idea that there are no “mistakes” is as absurd as the notion that there is no “good” nor “bad” art.
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
One’s “approach” to the art is only one part; the final look of the piece is what (for me) must be primary.
Far more important than the “approach”.
The final look ‘for’ you or ‘to’ you Keith ?
I have watched artists casually dismissed as ‘loose’ spend hours merely sitting and looking at a piece before moving forward to apply one or two strokes. If they are like me (a poor example I concede) they are visualising the look of the finished picture and working to achieve that harmony. Looseness does not imply speed and ‘impulsiveness’ but often, at the hands of a master such as titian or rembrandt or picasso or rothko, a distillation of the skills acquired over time.
Not, of course, in every case
…there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so…?
Saintlukesguild-http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea."- John Ciardi
Like the old artist from “Amelie Poulain” who was doing a copy of the same painting of Renoir every year
now there’s a film that approaches perfection
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