Upgrading My Art #3 - 1hr Sketch Challenge

 

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed I might have actually bitten off more than I can chew with the variety of things I want to consistently work on.  Between an unpredictable day job and needing to take time to live as well, squeezing everything in can be a challenge.

As a result, while I was wanting to try and be methodical in my approach to progressing and improving my skills, I have not really been able to find the time to actually practice the so called fundamentals.  However, I think I am improving in some areas as I continue to try and create my drawings.  The PenUp challenges have been interesting exercises to try to complete, and while last weeks picture was too late for the submission deadline, I think the resulting picture was better than the vast majority of things I've done before.  The next one is well under way, and with my aim to try to improve my drawing of people in an anime or manga style, coming up with little scenarios for scenes that can include characters to still fit the theme is a bit of fun.

Bringing me back to today however, I initially had no plan or idea of what to post.  My original plan was to use this series as a way of both tracking my progress and sharing the practice techniques I thought I would get time to practice.  Instead, I had nothing.

So earlier on this evening, I decided to set myself a 1 hour drawing challenge.  While I'm still a novice, and some of my drawings recently take a massive amount of time to complete, I thought it might be interesting to see what I can do in an hour of drawing, starting from scratch.  No plan, no reference, no theme, just a blank canvas and a timer.

So, before I continue, here is the result.

1 Hour Challenge - All 4 Parts

Cropped Final Sketch

To track the drawing, I split the canvas in to 4 roughly equal parts and set a timer on my phone.

Every 15 minutes I would stop on the layer I was sketching on, duplicate it, and move it into the next quadrant, then continue for the next 15 minutes.

With 5 minutes to go, the main sketch was pretty much done, so I decided to spend a bit of time doing some basic colouring for the sketch.  This did put me over time, and result in my late blog post, but I'm fairly surprised at the picture I was able to sketch in an hour.

The resolution is only 1/4 of what I normally draw on due to only fitting on 1/4 of the canvas, and I still need to improve my shading ability, but it looks (mostly) alright.

Regarding the subject of the drawing, initially all I wanted was to draw a person in a pose I haven't done before.  The character itself, after starting off, was going to be an angel, but as time was running out towards the end I decided to make it a demon.  I thought drawing loads of feathers would take more time than I had, where as bat like wings are easier and quicker to draw.

Over all I think the idea of 1 hour challenge can be a double edged sword.  On the one hand it can surprise you and boost your confidence for drawing.  On the other, if the result falls below expectations, it could have the opposite effect of making you realise how bad you actually are.

If you're willing to learn from the experience, or you're confident in you drawing ability, then I can recommend using a 1 hour challenge for practice.  Otherwise, if you don't feel confident, or are not willing to judge your own work and learn from it, you might want to avoid trying this type of challenge until you are willing to accept the result whether it is good or bad.

If you have any comments or advice for me on learning, practice techniques or feedback, let me know.

Thanks for reading!