How Drawings In A Series Creates Calm and Focus For Artists

 

Developing Drawing Skills: Process And  Therapy

Musicians and singers will practice scales. Runners will run to prepare for races. Artists practice their drawing skills to fine tune their eye, hand (or whatever their instrument) and brain connections.

But artists and athletes have access to a powerful mental skill. They can become so focussed and at one with themselves that nothing can disturb them. This pure and natural form of concentration is often referred to as 'feeling the flow' or 'getting in the zone.'

Being in the flow can be similar to meditation, it helps you relax and enjoy what you're doing.

Consistent Availability Of Artworks

Creating a new artwork isn't always possible and that's okay. But if an artist wants to earn money from their artworks, they need ways to make sure they always have a supply of art to sell.

Encouraging Trevor To Imaginatively Repurpose An Artwork

Intellectual Disability slows Trevor's art process down and means he takes a few weeks to complete a drawing. It takes him longer to consider each mark he makes and then he needs time to observe if he is happy with what he did.

Trevor can be a neat freak in the studio! Groan! It's taken a lot to get him to be comfortable with messy paint and sculpture. But over time he's become more experimental and open to working in different media.

Once Trevor completed study drawings of a delicious monster, he started playing around with colour compositions. Teaching Trevor the process of composition building and complicated terminology such as 'perspective' was going to be a killjoy.

So Trevor completed several pastel colour exercises on A2 sheets of paper to get him to learn about how to blast an artwork to epic proportions!

Artwork Creation Is Journey: Sequencing Creative Composition Exercises

The study drawings encouraged Trevor to carefully look at the plant and to try capture as many tiny, interesting details as possible. 

To break out of the comfort zone of now understanding the structure of the plant, we followed these steps:

1. Kickstart Your Series: Drawing 1

1. Select the drawing you want to redraw.
2. Bring your sketch book or paper. 
3. Select the sheet you will draw on and divide it into six equal blocks.
4. Select a light pencil crayon and very faintly outline your drawing so that it is spread across the six blocks.

2. Cleanest Colours: Add Primary And Secondary Colours

Do it like this:

1. Use only reds in color block 1.
2. Purples in block 2.
3. Blues in block 3.
4. Greens in block 4.
5. Yellows in block 5.
6. Oranges in block 6.

3. Now Scale Up Your Imagination: Drawing 2

Look at your completed drawing and admire the different colour tone blends you created. Now let's take it a little further:

1. Select Two Blocks: A New Composition 

Choose any two blocks that are next to each other. 

2. Draw the Two Blocks

You're going to draw the two blocks on a sheet of paper. The sheet of paper should be the same size as your first six block drawing.

This teaches you how to scale the best part of an artwork up so that you can turn it into a whole new artwork. When we say 'sale it up' it means to make something bigger. You're going to take the two blocks and make them big and interesting.

3. Complete The Blocks

The first time Trevor did the exercise he copied the yellow section shown in the image above.

He enjoyed the process so he decided to redraw all 3 pairs of blocks. However, the second and third drawings show how he reimagined the blocks and started to change them.

Changing things up is the same as scaling it up - we love it! :)

Artist Lessons Learnt

1. Knowing how to use your primary and secondary colours adventurously can make artworks more interesting.
2. One artwork can lead to the creation of a series of connected artworks.
3. If you're disabled and have difficulty creating artworks consistently, just reimagne and reproduce your successful artworks in a series.

Let us know if you did the exercise and send us pictures we can share!