The Kimon Nicolaides exercises makes as much sense as two smurfs sailing a rubber duck.

Still on Kimon Nicolaides book – The natural way to draw. It’s getting harder and harder - the soloing is problematic, basically I got no idea if I understand his exercises correct and they are pretty… out there. 

Lately I’ve been working on some weight exercises which go into some modeled exercises, but the problem is exactly that, these exercises builds on each other, so if I don’t understand wtf is going on than the whole foundation which the next ones will be built on could be utterly bullshit.
In short; the frustrations of not having some kind of mentor or teacher to steer my learning in the right directions… is getting quite frustrating.
In the weight exercises your supposed to mass up your object from the core and out, getting a feel of mass and weight/energy - fair enough, but ffs if I’m looking at the model or object then I can’t fucking mass it out and get the feeling of sculpting out the thing, so when I look I can get the feel which is the intention, but then I might as well be “drawing” a ball, because all sense of form and shape is out the window, likewise if I’m looking at the drawing then I lose the sense of massing it out, because then I’m drawing from imagination more than observation… that’s a problem.

Some examples of my weight drawings.

Now comes the modeled exercise, you spend the first 10 minutes massing it out like in the weight exercise, then you’re supposed to “feel” the object and draw like it was cross contour, first vertical and then horizontal, darker representing depth – again, I get the meaning, but if I’m drawing for example a body and I’m supposed to get the sensation of drawing and touch being linked together, then I HAVE TO LOOK!!! But back to the previous shit, IF I’M FUCKING LOOKING AT MY OBJECT THEN I MIGHT ASWELL BE DRAWING A BIG FAT FUCKING DARK HOLE!

Some more gesture (60 second gesture from photo reference). This is one of my problems; my style goes from one direction to another, I know there’s no right or wrong, but there’s a slow way and a fast way… that I fucking know and me swaying from one extreme to another can’t be smart.

I got so mad about those modeled exercises, I just had to do something else, so why not jump in the completely other ditch and make some smurfs sail a rubber duck? At least it would be imagination for once.
I wanted to make the water and duck look more “realistic” but yeah… no, I’m not sure I’m willing to spend hours upon hours trying to figure out that procedure… O.o In a perfect world I would like to come back to it and correct some of the mistakes, the duck and his huge hand for example… - but you know what they say about big hands… and smurfette does look pretty content - still her skirt should be more animated and he needs a right hand as well etc. blab la blab la bla

... and yes my smurfette got juggs hahaha - I couldn't help it.

Yeah, I had to make a few alterations, moving up the beak on the duck, giving the male smurf a right leg... still no arm, some alterations to the sky and water, plus a little island/beach shit :)

Okay, okay, might as well just continue to do these small updates... :P Still working on the MS FUCK-A-DUCK, it's really really fucking hard to make that bloody duck work, the reflection/shadows kinda help though, but still not satisfied - and no I don't really wanna start a shadow project on the smurfs, I like them to stay somewhat 2D and in a perfect world work more on making the rest seem more "living".

Just looked at the first draft again, I think that duck got downs syndrom or something... O.o

Good fucking night! :)