OK, here's a second video and the results of the exercise. I decided to try brown and white colored pencil on brown paper (read cut-up TJoes bags) and to create a video with 30 second poses of dogs in motion. Dogs have great lines and volumes, but I don't know, when I'm drawing, how the legs work.

If you have never tried drawing with white and black media on a colored paper, I would recommend it. It is a nice way to get a feeling of volume.

Let's be clear - I don't think these are great drawings, that's not why I'm posting them. I want to encourage people to post theirs, because I think you can learn things about drawing that are difficult to verbalize by looking at the results of this kind of exercise. It can help to be less self conscious and less precious about drawing, too.

OK, my at-this-point non-existent readers. Putting some digital images where my digital mouth is.

Notes - a Sharpie in the space I gave myself is less than ideal. These are 8.5 x 11 paper, folded to make 6 panes. But, in the spirit I hope to engender,  I am posting my first effort.

By the way, the music is entirely coincidental. One True Media dropped that in at random.

Gesture Video

A conversation with a friend recently reminded me of my life drawing classes in college. One of the most useful exercises we did was a warm-up. The model would strike a pose, and you were given 15 seconds to capture the flow and proportion. The model would take a new pose, and you would start a new sketch. It was useful in so many ways; it would loosen you up, give you practice, and start to train your brain. Once we had worked in this way for a while, we would take a break and circle the room, to see what the others had done. This is also very helpful: you get to see how others approach the exercise, and possibly take pointers from them. It also has a freeing effect; the hope is that you become less self-conscious.

I decided to make a quick video from public domain photos. It is far from perfect, but I wanted to put something together while the idea was fresh. Since this is meant to be an exercise anyway, the pictures don't have to be perfectly suited to work from, it seemed to me. This is a three-minute video - twelve 15 second "poses". Grab some cheap drawing media, and give it a shot. As Bill Cosby liked to say, "If you're not careful, you might learn something."

I would really be excited to get some feedback. Much more than that, I would be thrilled and eternally grateful if you give this a shot and send me the sketches you do. The best part is that your level of ability has nothing to do with how interesting the sketches are. I will post anything I get here, and you can be anonymous or psedonymous if you'd like. There is an idea in the back of my mind to possibly create animations from submissions, but I think that I am getting ahead of myself.