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! :)

Finished with the two first schedules in Kimon Nikolaides - The Natural Way to Draw

Two first schedules done!!!!1 (DEAR SUPERMAN IF YOUR READING THIS - PLEASE NO MORE CONTOUR /pray)

Not really sure what to think so far, I seem to swing from ”A-ha” to ”uhm… this can’t be right”, so it’s very confusing at times to say the least.

It’s very weird not to be “drawing” in the normal sense, but instead scribble things down furiously and then slow tortured with the blind contour.
I do have some fun moments though, like when I’m trying to mimic/feel the gesture and impulse, for example someone doing a stretching out pose and suddenly I find myself drawing in a heavy *sigh* preparing for incoming muscle pains, or when the pose switches into something more battle orientated and out of the fucking blue there's a small growl and clenched fist… goddamn you feel stupid as fuck, but at the same time that sense of immersion is prolly part of the shizzle – I can’t really say it changes much in the sense of the outcome, it gets a lot more engaging sure, but also 99% of the pose gets lost in the process. That’s the thing I can’t seem to find the right balance between chaos and figure, either it’s a drawing of a “spaghetti bowl” or it’s at least in the ballpark of looking human.
 

What I wouldn’t give for some actual face-to-face  tutoring - it’s the sense of being caught in the rush-hour traffic , well knowing that somewhere there’s a road where you can fucking floor it.

Anywho thought I would at least upload some of those 60 second gesture “scribbles”. These ones doesn’t show the whole spectrum obviously, I’ve gone through my 500 arks of A4 paper and a 4B pencil now (using both sides of the paper ofc.) and the style varies… a whole fucking lot - to put it mildly.

*edit - I can't be 100 % sure, but I think the above pose is the same as the one I posted some days ago, back when I started this -> old sketch

It’s been a week and some days now and I haven’t drawn anything other than 60 second gestures and marathon contours in this time, so when I was watching an episode of Californication and got the urge to try and capture the gesture or feel, I kinda had to run with it.
I can’t say for sure how much time I spend on each, I put “Katie Melua – If you were a sailboat/It’s all in my head” on repeat and I would guestimate each scribble was about a song or maybe two in length – fairly short and done with the style as my gesture drawings with a little more focus on shapes, but not getting overboard, just trying to zone in and let the pencil do the drawing (Hank Moody’s story in essence is just fucking sublime in my humble opinion!).
The outcome is kinda weird for me, without the connection to the gesture it’s just not the same (for me that connection is out of the window the second I move on), but it’s liberating nonetheless to actually draw something in a short and furious action. Go back just two weeks and I wouldn’t have been able to let go like this, it would have been all analytical, measuring proportions, checking perspective and then “maybe” do a very trembling careful line or two here and there, the thought of starting a line without being fully aware of where it might end, would have been utter alien tbh… so that’s new at least :P

Studying Kimon Nikolaides - The Natural way to draw

Still very much here and still working hard!

I’m busy with “The natural way to draw – by Kimon Nikolaides”, it’s a goddamn extreme program or schedule to start on. Each block of exercise is 3 hours and the last hour is drawing a single blind contour sketch – HOLY FUCKING SHIT ON WHEELS!!! That’s the biggest test of mental strength and focus I’ve ever fucking done EVER, half-way through I want to stab out my eyes with a very fucking dull wooden spoon… and so far I’ve done 6 of those 1 hour sessions - they don’t get any fucking easier… just more agonizing, blind contour = torture, waterboarding got nothing on blind contour if you ask me.
But fuck it, I rather have a red thread to follow than just sitting and waiting for some epiphany, though I do feel Kimon Nikolaides took me on my word when I said I would draw 10.000 circles if that’s what it will take for me to draw a decent circle (not sure if I ever said that… if I didn’t then I meant to and that makes it legit tbh!), I’m not sure how many A4’s I’ve gone through so far, but I’m almost done with my 500 stack :( and that’s with drawing on both fucking sides!!!

Here’s the stack so far, I can’t even imagine how big it will be when I’m done… Anyway, the exercises aren’t really meant to be shared and they would make very little sense I think, just take the cross contour, those exercises are literally just lines on a sheet of paper, I don’t follow some outline, instead it’s just from A to B and “oh lets go up now… hey why not go right and hmm up looks fun, oh top of the head now… np lets jump back to the waist and go down the leg a bit…” the outcome is unintelligible even by myself.
I love the gesture exercises though, the fact that it’s supposed to be done “furiously” without stop and never lifting the pen off the paper and not bothering with outlines ofc, is really refreshing.

It's proved a bit hard for me to multitask, meaning I don't get around to draw anything other than these exercises atm, I hope I'll be able to scribble a drawing here and there, but when my motivation and focus are this concentrated I know from experince I need to run with it. :)