{"id":467,"date":"2015-03-20T13:56:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T20:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=467"},"modified":"2016-06-03T14:14:54","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T20:44:54","slug":"the-value-of-dicking-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/the-value-of-dicking-around\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of Dicking Around"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do you do when your drawing skills are so rusty you can barely draw a straight line and get hand cramps in less than half-an-hour? Discomfort with my drawing tools (including learning all new illustration software) has been a big hurdle to getting back into design. So I\u2019ve been doing something about it: going back to basics. My first step is drawing exercises<\/a> that are equivalent to practicing scales.<\/p>\n

After spending a week repeatedly scribbling on my tablet and clearing the page, I started noticing interesting textures coming out of it. I opened a large page in Pixelmator and scribbled until I\u2019d almost filled the page with black. Then I hit save, and the scribble journal was born.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The scribble journal is more than just a hand exercise. It\u2019s a meditation\u2014an exercise in doodling without an end result in mind\u2014and it\u2019s been liberating. The other day I watched For No Good Reason<\/em>, a documentary about Ralph Steadman, and noticed how much he feels his way through every illustration. I\u2019d completely forgotten how. Every time I sat down with an idea, in recent memory, I\u2019d grow frustrated as it didn\u2019t come out the way I wanted. The scribble journal helped me remember how you can make something interesting without wanting anything specific out of it. It\u2019s been an act of doing a thing I (currently) suck at, and not beating myself up about it.<\/p>\n

First I made some ground rules:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. One layer a day with no fills, so the whole becomes a composite of conflicting scribbles.<\/li>\n
  2. One scribble file per month, because otherwise the file-size will bloat to unopenable proportions.<\/li>\n
  3. Only one color\/brush per layer (with pen pressure for variance).<\/li>\n
  4. Only one color per scribble file, plus black and white (this rule might change after a few).<\/li>\n
  5. No erasing, unless it\u2019s the entire point of the day\u2019s exercise.<\/li>\n
  6. Only one exercise type per layer: one day circles, another cross-hatching, etc.<\/li>\n
  7. Each session must be between 15 to 90 minutes, to get the most of out it without wasting time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    While making scribbles, I also notice things I\u2019m doing that aren\u2019t quite rules but reveal my own artistic process. For example, at first I\u2019d hide the layer underneath so I could concentrate on one exercise without being distracted, but found sometimes it more valuable to leave layers visible and build a pattern that uses the former patterns as a guide.<\/p>\n

    I also found myself unconsciously inventing rules for each session, such as \u201conly right angles\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t cross lines.\u201d However, it could turn monotonous once I noticed them and tried to follow them too strictly, in both a mental and aesthetic sense. Hemming myself in isn\u2019t good practice, so I started purposely breaking rules every time I detected one becoming rigid. If what I\u2019m doing in general starts getting samey, I may break out my box of Oblique Strategies<\/a> and work with whatever card I pick.<\/p>\n

    So I suppose I\u2019ve been turning this into an art project of sorts. I have no idea if anything concrete will come out of it, or if it will just become a resource\u2014another part of my growing texture library. At the very least I\u2019ll regain my muscle memory so I can draw stuff<\/em> again. This exercise has other advantages, such as giving me a way to listen to podcasts. It\u2019s visually engaging enough to keep my mind from wandering, but not so distracting that I stop listening, which has been a problem that\u2019s kept me from getting anything out of podcasts or audiobooks in the past. This exercise is also a great way to give myself momentum on days when I feel blah.<\/p>\n

    I used to scribble in my notebooks all the time in school, and I didn\u2019t realize how valuable that practice is. I\u2019d forgotten how doodling is the foundation for drawing. When I was teenager I used to hate art classes that made you practice brushstrokes over and over\u2014but I wasn\u2019t rusty back then. I\u2019d done my time without knowing it. Now I have to do that time all over again. Here\u2019s hoping something interesting comes of it.<\/p>\n

    Note: the image at top is the current composite results from this month\u2019s scribble journal.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What do you do when your drawing skills are so rusty you can barely draw a straight line and get hand cramps in less than half-an-hour? Discomfort with my drawing tools (including learning all new illustration software) has been a big hurdle to getting back into design. So I\u2019ve been doing something about it: going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[15,32,28,25],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-bullshittery","tag-creativity","tag-drawing","tag-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":911,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}