In The Beginning There Was Apprehension and Procrastination

We have all felt apprehension at wanting do something but not knowing how it is done, where to start, the all too common doubts about at your own abilities and fear of anyone seeing or catching you off-guard.

This transcends most aspects of life be that social skills, work-related tasks, programming a computer or Art.

Our lives are a long journey of learning; you only can’t do something when you give up trying to learn how it’s done. Im here to help show you nothing is to be feared and that you can literally do anything you want, if someone else can do it then why can’t you?

The best bit of advice I am going to give you is, everything has a method and everything can be replicated; you just need to get out of your comfort zone to learn it.

Actual art related content below

Lets jump straight in I have a short attention span as im sure alot of you will do aswell but bare with me.

After seeing the speed drawing videos on youtube and realising there is a process that goes into every drawing and painting it dawned on me, I can do this.

I found a website that had structured tutorials and it insisted I start with the ‘fundamentals’, before I knew it I was drawing lines, boxes, curves and circles, circles inside boxes inside curves and boxes inside circles aaaaaahhhhh!!#!, the point of this exercise being pencil control, allowing my body to utilise hand eye coordination and muscle memory.

If this sounds boring, it was and not long after I gave up.

Giving up was a mistake obviously in hindsight but I hadn’t realised that as-well-as learning the fundamentals, I ‘fundamentally needed’ to keep myself interested and focusing ‘just’ on lines doesn’t cut it for an absolute beginner.

Enter learning by observation and by procrastination

With hindsight I have come to understand I didn’t really give up, I just needed a boost to keep an interest and I procrastinated watching speed drawings/paintings and the odd, long-consciously-forgotten tutorials.

Luckily for me due to the psychology of learning by observation when watching the videos I was ‘seeing’ the process and subconsciously picking it all up and throwing myself in at the deep-end even though I wasn’t filling up lots/any sketchbooks it was still interesting enough to keep me wanting and to some extent seeing how they moved their hands and canvas I do believe it was helping with hand-eye coordination.

Fast-forward a year, a massive stress load later, I needed to relieve my stress and again (with the same sketchbook still at this time 98% empty) began doodling and I came up with this and it surprised me that I could just blurt it out as terrible as it is.

Or scared me im still not sure which one yet but it was proof of the concept that observation is king and doing/practice is the queen, both complimentary to the process.

Drawing from memory

As I was new drawing from memory was almost non-existent, still is to be honest but less so by the day.

So I decided I needed a new learning aid and it came to me in the form of Andrew Loomis Fun With A Pencil 1939, written back in the days where physically drawing was a larger part than today in publishing.

Almost immediately I was drawing badly proportioned faces, this was a massive confidence boost, it didn’t look ‘right’ but it looked like a face and not a boring line, circle or box.

The first few lessons in this book showed me the process people use to draw from memory and more importantly it had me out of my depth challenging me and that kept me interested.

But as a beginner it wasn’t enough to keep me going to the end of the book page by page, it involved a lot of repetition and that's not fun to be honest, it taught me the good lesson of jumping ahead when your bored.

After a bit of practice I skimmed the rest of the lessons, this spawned me to look up figure drawing, quick poses is where it led me. I had fun with these but my lack of any idea on what I was doing it led me back to proportion and how the body can be broken up into ideal-sized sections.

I ironed out the creases and I now see that jumping ahead with the creative part then having to go back and refine the technicals did something to my learning process that kept me wanting more.

I learned the basic proportions of the body and quickly moved on to Andrews other book on Drawing the Face and Hands, still yet to get to the hands part, not that I haven't drawn hands(that will be in the light and shading section) I just took the fundamentals of proportions and perspective enough to keep me drawing.

But these books were to learn to draw from memory something that is not easy even for the seasoned artists who usually have several reference photos to hand.

Getting something on paper, anything will do aslong as your excited about the result

There are many methods to actually getting something on paper, mostly it involves copying a reference photo and techniques like the grid method, several forms of tracing which I am using currently, projectors, proportional divider or what a lot of people advocate is a line of action and just blocking in shapes, seasoned artists do this with ease but im new and my attention span descended like the stock market.

Luckily like the stock market though my plunge protection team/desire to challenge myself came to the rescue in the form of light and shading, it wasn’t continuity but it was a life-saver to my attention-span and more importantly another fundamental that now allowed me new levels of excitement.

Believe it or not but practising these basic geometric shapes have led me to do my self-portrait in a very short time.

Keep in mind the year period that I waited to start drawing again ended last month in March, by pushing myself I went from the badly proportioned faces to a somewhat decent self-portrait in just over a month, something I used to gush over and denounce myself as having no ability to do.

The main point im trying to get across to you is have confidence to throw yourself in at the deep-end, it’s a life fundamental that is great in many situations and is symbiotically apart of the learning process.

On that note Il leave you until next time as I need to go procrastinate, we are about a third of the way through the journey to the self-portrait in my introduction post and I hope to see you in the next section.