Where stippling = making an image with tiny dots of ink, recklessly applied to paper for fun. I spent today life drawing. There are two quite different reasons to draw more often than I have been. The first reason is that skills start to slip. Drawing is not a thing to learn once, and then, hey, you know it. Every time I spend a few months away from the ink and charcoal, it’s as if I forget how to see properly, forget how to foreshorten, how to draw hands to look not too sausagey. My thinky-brain has to relearn how to relax, and let my art-brain get on with it. The second, much more important reason for life drawing is that by golly heck it is a nice way to spend time. People are the most fascinating and complicated creatures.
One bad habit I’m trying to keep in check is worrying too much about results, fretting about how something will look to others, and not enjoying the process. And thinking that I should keep all work hidden away, until I can do it properly. To stop that sort of foolishness, here, from today: one of the 20 second warmup sketches, and one 20 minute dotted portrait.
A Little Art 