I find that a common problem of people learning to sculpt (and draw) is the tendency to focus on the tiny details of what they are doing instead of the overall composition. Since one of these people is me, I came up with an exercise for myself to get away from my detail obsession. There is probably an artistic term for this exercise, like “gesture drawing” or “contour drawing” or something.. I forget. I just call it “drawing different”. The goal is the same; to force yourself to think your way out of your artistic rut.
This means whatever way you normally draw something …do it different. Don’t attack the subject from the same point of view. Try drawing only the background, or draw only the center of the subject with no outline, or draw the subject and background, but without a line going around the subject separating the two. So, you always need an outline? Who says?
This sort of stuff is fun to do with kids if you can get their attention long enough, but you can do just fine on your own if they are all too busy. There is a great book I found called “Drawing with Children” by Mona Brookes. It has projects that encourage all sorts of crazy “drawing different ” approaches. I find it simply wonderful!
interesting, I’ll have to look the book up. 🙂
That’s pretty helpful. o.o I might try that next time I draw. We did have to do contour drawing in some of my classes…I think that’s what they called it when you used just one continuous line for something? Or maybe that was when you just blocked in the parts that would be ‘shaded’…well, I forget too. XD They also went on at us a lot about focusing on the negative spaces. Calling all of this ‘drawing different’ seems much easier!
Interesting, next time I attempt to draw something, I’m going to try a “drawing different” approach =]