All tagged drawing

Draw/Paint Self-Portraits

One of the most challenging exercises I had to do for my first painting class was a series of 20 self-portraits. We had to do one every night for 20 days in a row. It was challenging because I didn’t know what I was doing, it took at least twenty minutes to set up all my oil painting stuff every night, and I went on vacation for a few days in the middle of these 20 days. It’s a good thing I went to Mexico on a bus and not a plane. The airport would not have appreciated my jar of gunky turpenoid very much (because it’s toxic and flammable).

Don't Worry About Style

When I started getting serious about drawing, I would look at my favorite artists’ work on Deviantart and think to myself “Man, I wish I had a cool style like them.” I would do my best to emulate their style and hope that it would look different enough from theirs so that nobody would catch my bluff. The trouble was that while I could fool others into thinking I was being original, I couldn’t fool myself. I knew what I was doing wasn’t right and it made me feel ashamed and unfulfilled as an artist. I was so focused on having a style that I put all my energy into that instead of focusing on bettering my basic drawing skills.