imperfectionarts

So for this next posts, I started to teach you on how to draw still life drawing using pencil and colorized it with color pencil. I know it is not easy for you to make a transition from only learned how to find value only from grading pencil. But you learned the basic of drawing in my previous posts which were line drawing and some elements of art such as learning how to familiarize yourself with these elements which are lines, shapes, colors, forms, and shapes in drawing. We almost cover all of these elements of art. Now it is time to challenge yourself to try more advanced drawing which is to start with still life drawing.

I know that my photo I took is a little advanced for you but you have to challenge yourself in some way and try a bit harder. You can take photo that is easy for you for example a pen, a bottle or a cup especially if you a beginner in still life drawing. In my case I did still life drawing with some scattered sweets. I also will include some elements of art that we have tried and studied before such as the used of cool colors such as green and purple from the packaging of the sweets and also warm colors such as yellow, orange and pink colors.

Here is a video tutorial of how to find good color combination on color wheel and how to create one of your personal color wheel. This video is very useful for you even though if you do not want to do your own color wheel but it also help you understand how the color wheel works and for you to understand to find exactly the colors you wanted in your work. This video also helps me a lot in terms of experimenting colors by my own but still following the steps that she teach me and how to combine the color together. She also teach me on how to do my own color palette by using color theory combination and by mixing them. She also cover different issues such as how to tell the color is warm and how to tell the color is cool colors. She also teaches about the transition of the coolest to warmest and from warmest to the coolest.

From the photos above, I did experimentation on how to understand and differentiate the color theory such warm and cool colors. So from the two first and second photo were my experimentation photos of my abstract drawings using rectangular shapes. I did that is to make me understand which colors are the cool and the warm color. It is to compare and to make us understand the different and the use of cool and warm colors exactly and to know the specific meanings when we gonna use the colors in our artworks and designs. Each and every colors from cool and warm colors contains specific meanings that we have to know to visually please our eyes when we see our artworks and designs. Attractiveness of the colors playing psychologically with our audience minds.

Another post for my blog where I did another abstract drawing, but this time I did it with warm colors for my abstract drawing and it is still in rectangular straight shape. Why I did this is to make you compare and easy to differentiate the warms and cool colors I did from both two abstract drawings which is from the first one the cool colors abstract drawing and this warm colors abstract drawing. From this abstract drawing I chose warm colors including red, pink, yellow and orange colors. This time, I did my abstract drawing of rectangular shapes more accurate and precisely done to each other. Warm colors is bring the emotions of passion and excitement when we look at it so why not I try my abstract drawing with warm colors too as my experimentation in my color theory. Warm colors I chose is red represent the idea of sunlight and heat, passion and delight. It is also bring the coziness and playful idea when we use red in our art and design. Other than that, I chose orange and yellow to bring up the idea of light and temperature where if we see most of art created we can relate with the idea that the creator of the art show the idea of braveness and light in their work. I also experiment the warm color of pink where it is also represent the color idea of playfulness and girly color often related with women that brings the emotions of delicate feelings, feminine and sweet.

For my next post of my blog, I want to show you one of trial in abstract drawing using colors which is the cool colors. Colors is one of the important element in art and design. Colors playing important roles in expressing the ideas that you have in your drawing and essential to bring and create moods. In my drawing above, I tried to used shape from the straight lines and combined them to become long rectangular shapes. I used different types of cool colors such as pale blue, dark blue, dark purple and green. It took me an hour to colorized and to make the shape to become a rectangular shape. I know that I made a few mistakes when I made the lines and the shapes at the bottom as you can see it is not parallel to each other.

Even though the rectangular shape at the bottom was not drawn perfectly parallel to each other but it is an abstract drawing and it could be imperfect and bring the idea of imperfection art in my abstract cool colors drawing. I intentionally chose cool colors as a whole in my abstract drawing to show you and to make my blog’s audience understand that I used cool colors for me elaborate more on color theory is one of the art and design elements. I chose cool colors such as blue, green and purple is to bring the idea of calmness and purity in my abstract drawing. It is also bring the emotion of calm, slow down and relaxed and feel refreshed.

Next post for my blogging idea and the thing that I want to teach anyone that comes and visit to my blog, and to further my skill in terms of drawing and finding textures, lines, and shapes. It is important to practice yourself to doodle and sketch something using lines and mix them together to make yourself confident and brave to make lines in drawing. Start with doodling using pen or pencil without eraser. It is the way for you to draw something from one point to one point. So from what I did in the photo above was I used black color marker to darken the lines that I make and I start to draw different type of lines and textures and I doodling everything that crossed in my mind at that time such as straight line, wavy line dotted line, swirl line, zigzag line, and any form of lines and shapes that I capable to think of such as an eye look at the left above, square shape, triangle shape etc. Here, as you can see, I tried so many different types of lines, shapes, and textures to familiarize my mind and my hand to easily move my hand while drawing. This is one of the good practice for your hand and also for the beginner to start and interested in drawing.

Other than that, this is the best way to be expert in drawing is to understand lines and shapes. For example if you want to draw an apple you have to understand how the shape of it or how the shape is looks like. So in order to make a perfect shape of something you want to draw, it is better to understand the lines of the apple first. It sounds really easy but is really challenging and you need to know how to control your pencil and your hand together.

Understanding shapes and lines also to practice you and lead you to draw the pretty lines you wanted in your drawing. But remember if you try this technique you have to be fun with it because it is just a practice and you have to be creative and artistic and try new lines and shapes that you can think of. My drawing above is just a rough idea that I can show you and just my simple idea that I had fun doodling with it. If you comfortable with lines that you created so can connect those lines and try to make shapes out of it by connecting the end of those lines together and you drawing can be form as an abstract drawing.

For my second trial of contour blind line drawing, I try to draw not only facial drawing and self portraiture of myself but I also step up my drawing by adding two self portrait of my youngest brother and my sister in it with half of our shirt drawn. This photo taken when we were in a restaurant having dinner together and then my brother took a group photo of us since we were sitting near to each other and I was in the middle of the photo. So I tried to draw this photo to challenge myself not only using one facial self portrait of myself like the previous post but this time I’m gonna use 3 persons as a whole and try it with contour line drawing to spice up the challenge from the combination of 3 persons to show the imperfection of this art challenge to myself. I also excited to see the outcome of the drawing come along together and how the composition will look like and how the perspective and the final look at the end of the drawing. In order to start the drawing I need to stare for a while and have a close look at the photo my brother has taken to understand how the lines meet each other.

Apparently, the final product of my drawing is quiet satisfying for me even though the facial expression is not that good as I wanted and I will keep practice on this. In terms of the composition and the sequence of us siting next to each other in the photo matches the look and the composition in the drawing that I created which is not really showing the wide gap to each person in the drawing. The facial expression is to rough for me and too much lines crossing going on. The drawing of our facial expression also still need more improvement like I need to smooth it a little bit to show less lines that can possibly bring the roughness on the face especially the lines crossing too much on my sister face and on the nose of my brother face also can be smoothen a little bit.

This is my first contour blind drawing trial, I used my selfie photo that I took from my phone and to begin, I simply took a simple selfie without expressing to much expression on my face because I just need to include all the features of my face sketch down to my paper. When I started to do the self portrait blind drawing of my face I feel really awkward to not looking at my drawing paper and the perfectionist of me always wanted to look at my drawing paper while I am drawing my face from my phone. I also not really comfortable to practice the drawing without lifting my hand  and always wanted to erase the look I have been creating because in my mind I know it will look messy and ugly but that’s the point of contour blind drawing and that is the way this drawing is all about, to feel uncomfortable and to make the drawing look messy and to make you feel imperfect. It is to practice you to make mistakes and error on your drawing in order to practice you from always wanted to draw in perfect look and never feel to make some mistakes in your drawing. This is the blog is all about to make sure I feel perfect in way of producing imperfect look of drawing and practice on it. The idea of imperfect makes me feel certain ways and relate the idea with all things in the world that all is imperfect but reality we change the idea of all is perfect to make us feel comfortable and secure.

Other than to know the tonal value and transition from the dark and light shadow of your pencil, one technique you need to know to break free of not to afraid to make mistakes in making drawing. Line and Contour drawing is one of compulsory method to make yourself feel better when you make certain mistakes in drawing. First of all, this drawing method is to make your drawing look better even if it just a line drawing of a face and it seems to be imperfect or it looks like a face of a turtle but it is your face apparently, but this method is to practice you and your hands as a beginner artist to be better artist and understand how the line drawing works for example of how you start from one point to another point and never lift up your hand. Imagine of you drawing your palm of your left hand while your right hand is drawing your left hand on a paper continuously never stop until it’s fully drawn. The method is to draw the object in front of you and never look down or even lifting up your pencil on your drawing and your hand keep moving until you feel the drawing is done.

How to practice Line and Contour or Blind Drawing:

1) Find a calm and comfortable space.

2) Get yourself a blank paper and a pencil preferably light grade pencil such as HB or 2B to practice from light pencil first other than dark pencil grade.

3) Set timer at least 10 minutes to make yourself rush to finish the drawing and to break free the “need to be perfect” idea.

4) Find a first point of your object to start the drawing on your paper for example if you drawing palm of your hand find the start point as a starter point like begin from your thumb finger and your wrist is the end point of the drawing.

5) Make sure your eye keep looking at the object that you drawing and your hand keep drawing what you see and never lift up your drawing hand and never look at the drawing until it finished.

6) Blind contour drawing always look weird especially if you are a beginner but it is good to break free the idea of perfection.

Hi! and hope you guys have a good day today! For the beginning of my blog, I will share a little bit of my journey as an art student. Ever since I took an Art and Design subject in high school which is one of my very very favorite subject for my ‘O’ level era. I started it with the study of tonal value and understanding the color theory. When I was a kid, I wasn't born to be an artist or specifically a painter, I only knew how to draw and make a stickman from a craft paper or making an airplane and a boat from random and origami paper. 

Unintentionally, when I was in high school I chose to be an art stream student because I thought creatives are unique people. And at that time, I still remember I entered the art classroom for the first time and I didn’t really know what I was doing and I wasn't familiar with the tools and the art supplies that I was holding in my hand when the class started to begin. My first class started at about 10 am in the morning, with only a box of graded pencils and an A4 sketchbook that I bought from W.W Mart in Beribi. I was really surprised that we only have about 7 students in my art class at that time, and I felt that is a good opportunity because this class is going to be so quiet and I can even get more focus doing all my artworks with larger space for each of us. First thing we did was, we learned about tonal value and how it really important to create a quality artwork. ‘O’ level was easy for me because we only thought to know how to do shading and observing things and stuff that we gonna draw especially we often did still life and observational drawing such as the observational drawing of a crushed soda can or a pair of shoes and we need to be creative to take second hand photos and observational photos to get an A grade.