Artists Hoorah!

So, not much for today's post because I mostly did work today. However tomorrow will be loaded with studies.

I will discuss something that happened to me today though. I started the drawing below earlier today as a future portfolio piece. My thought process was simple, I had an idea for a battle mage or spellblade-like class and wanted to try my own take on it. So I started it like I started any of my drawings which is rough out a pose. I wanted it to be a somewhat interesting pose, not so much just him standing there. I wanted to give it emotion in some way. When I started drawing out the poses I just wasn't feeling it, I seriously for the life of me could not draw a good looking pose. And I kept thinking to myself "Wtf! Why can't I do this?!" But I didn't quit so I kept pushing with more poses and after awhile I sort of changed my technique. I was trying to draw the poses more like the way I draw my gestures when I do my 60 sec. warm ups. I try to draw each line with reason and I try to have clear, confident lines. However, by doing this my poses came out stiffer then they've ever been. After the first few poses I started caring less and less about it being accurate and more about it being alive and actually interesting. And each pose I did this with only got better and better. I went from doing stiff standing poses to dramatic magical spear throwing poses. The reason I think this happened to me was because I haven't really drawn poses from my imagination in a few days and I've been so worried about studying and improving myself that I haven't done much personal doodles or sketches to keep loose. I now realize that my worry of improving actually put me in a slump for a bit, I'm just grateful I didn't wait longer to do what I did today otherwise I probably wouldn't have figured out the problem. I guess what I'm trying to get at and teach whoever reads this is to quit being so stiff. Loosen up and try and remind yourself that what you're doing is drawing, it's not life threatening, it's not a huge deal if you don't sketch something right the first time. Keep going at it and every time you fail try and get motivated by your faults. Anyway, that's it for the wall of text, I'll post studies and more progress on this guy tomorrow :) <3