Loosening up?

[toonMom]

I need to loosen up my work! Does anyone have any exercise to help with this. My work is just too stiff.

[Mauri]

Yo ro yo ro,

Just like the way that sounds.

Something you can try is when you are drawing hold your pencil way back by the eraser hold it as though you where holding a paint brush. Another exercise is once you put your pencil on the paper don't pic it up until the gesture is done..Hope this helps you out.....

[dedder]

Yes I agree. Mauri ,you've beaten me to it.I draw many times the complete stucture of a face,by holding the pencil in the upper CM.Just between the tips of my fingers.I do it mostly when drawing a caricature of a caricature.
About the drawing ,I do sometimes a complete drawing without even lifting the pencil,even shading with the many lines you're drawing. I picked this up after seeing drawings of Alberto Giaccometti.I'll do a Google search to find some of these.

[toonMom]

Thanks! I'll try both techniques and see if it helps. I was also thinking about trying to do quicker caricatures, like setting a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and just doing a quick rough sketch. Not sure if that would help some or not, but it could be worth a try.

[corky]

definitely try some gesture drawings. use large newsprint (18x24), stand in front of it so you're arms length, and time yourself. if you give yourself only 2 minutes to draw, you're forced to look at the essential movement of the person or animal that you're drawing. don't take your pencil off the paper...just keep drawing over your lines, rapidly.
another thing i've tried is trying to draw something realistic (a still life) but in a completely different way. so i'll try cubism, or just drawing circles, or using a tool that you haven't used before. i once did a drawing with chopsticks...just to see what would happen.

[WATCHTHEBIRDY]

A great exercise is to do a caricature; then use that caricature as the subject and do another from it, exagerating the elements (i.e. if a neck is thick, make it thicker) and then do a third one using the second as the subject, further exagerating the elements (by now the thick neck fills the page). You'll be surprised how much you can exagerate and still have the caricature resemble the original subject. Give it a try.

[itsadam]

That would be a great excersise. Have one person from the forum do a caricature of a subject, then another person does a caricature of the caricature etc.

It would have to be organised so people are in a list, so that you dont get two people caricaturing the same caricature if you catch my drift.

Of course it would be a lot harder for the people towards the end of the list.

Show of hands, who thinks we should give this a try, im very willing to try it out, sounds like a heap of fun.

Adam

[Mark]

yeah, sounds fun, I'm in.

Mark

[toonMom]

I don't have time with school starting and all but it sounds like a great idea, I look forward to seeing the results.

Adam - go a head and get it all set up. You're in charge!

[itsadam]

I'll try to get it set up for saturday. I think im busy most of the day but I might have some spare time.

I shall pick a random mug that I find and do the first shot. I'll then choose someone who has to do the next shot. then that person will choose someone else to do the caricature of their caricature and so on.

So get the pencils ready.

Adam

[toonMom]

Count me in Adam, I'll make the time.

[toonMom]

I think this is a good topic and we have some new members since it was last talked about. Let's get some more input on this!

I still have the problem of being too tight. The other day we were drawing green peppers in art class. It was supposed to be a very loose drawing. I drew it loose, but then when it came time to shade, my lines got very tight and uniform. I forced myself to loosen up some, but I kept going back to certain areas and adding more line until it looked "right" to me. The result, uniform, tight lines.

BTW- I tried some 1 minute sketches of people, that was sort of fun and it helped to get a good sketch of them.