#8minutechallenge

I’ve been following Jake Parker and I decided to have  a go at an 8 minute drawing challenge - it’s really tough. I’m not used to drawing quickly, a lot of the time I sit down to do a quick sketch and then add layers of detail and two or three hours later I’m done. 

This really forced me to forget about fine detail and go for getting the main features down. I messed up the 2 minute sketch initially because I hit the 1:00 timer by mistake and looked up and suddenly saw that I had 30 seconds left to go and rushed to get a few lines of ink onto the construction lines... So I swapped the 2 min slot to a 1 min slot and did a second 1:00 sketch after a full 2:00 min sketch. Weirdly my 4:00 sketch was rubbish in comparison to my 2:00 and 1:00 sketches. This could be because I was warmed up by then.

I based my sketch on the guy from my head turnaround exercise from a couple of days ago and my final polished piece came out after four attempts at trying to arrive at something in the style of the 2:00 and 1:00 sketches.  

So I actually accomplished the 2k words on that evening.  However I don’t feel it’s totally sustainable.  It’s like the first rush of things you know?  This feeling was supported by my next day of work which was too busy for even a blog break followed by a too busy evening.  Now I’m laid back on my porch, raging war against bugs, drinking wine and writing 264 words in 8 minutes.  Trying out that 8 minute writing habit thing.  I’m inspired by the a.m. writing tip.  So, Monica Leonelle says that writing in the morning connects you to your work for the rest of the day.