Everyone's a critic

Some Travis fans clearly not impressed with my Fran Healy caricature. The lovely Lavena describes it as "The shittiest 'artistic' rendering of Fran ever." A bit harsh I think! Anyway, that link is my number one source of visitors today, so she's done me a favour really. Thanks Lavena!

Tags: caricature, critic, travis, Fran Healy

Bruce Lee Caricature - First Attempt

Here's a 5 minute sketch I did last night of Bruce Lee. I definitely intend to do a full-sized acrylic painting of the little dragon, but I'm going to try a few different sketch versions first to make sure I get something I'm happy with. It will probably involve his upper body, since it's so distinctive, but I first need to learn how to caricature bodies!!

Bruce Lee - the Legend

I quite like this sketch, considering it took literally five minutes, and I usually spend a lot longer. That's the beauty of digital - no pencils to sharpen, no scanning required, and no problem if you make a mistake! The only problem is I think he looks too young, and maybe his eyebrows are slightly too high. I'll work on that next time.

Tags: bruce lee, caricature

Overcoming procrastination

I read a good article by Steve Pavlina recently on overcoming procrastination. This has always been one of my biggest problems, and this article gave me some insight into why I always put off drawing, and how I can overcome procrastination.

Sometimes, I'll have a day or even a whole weekend free, with nothing special I need to do, the perfect opportunity to catch up on some painting or sketching. But all too often, the day comes to an end and I find I haven't even picked up a pencil, little things have kept getting in the way, watching a tv show, getting some lunch, doing laundry . . . and suddenly the day is over. Why would I keep putting off doing something that I enjoy, until there's not enough time left to do it? Well, I think my biggest problem is perfectionism. I hate it when I draw or paint something that doesn't look quite right (and that happens a lot!) so I think that when I'm preparing to draw, I'm subconsciously worrying that the end result might not be as good as I want it to be, and that doubt puts me off starting the task. Steve recommends "replacing perfectionism with permission to be human." i.e. accepting that not every piece of art that I begin will be perfect, and allowing myself to draw imperfect drawings. Each imperfect drawing will likely be better than the last, until I approach something that I'm satisfied with.

Another problem I have is convincing myself that I don't have enough time to do what I want to do. Maybe I have to go out in 30 minutes, so if I have to prepare the equipment, squeeze out some paint, then afterwards wash the brushes and get ready to go out, that only leaves me with about 10 minutes painting time, and the leftover paint will go hard, so it's just not worth it. To get past this way of thinking, I have to "replace 'finish it' with 'begin it'". So instead of thinking I don't have enough time to finish my painting, I should realise that I have 10 minutes to work on my painting and get it one step nearer to completion than it was before.

There are other causes of and solutions to overcoming procrastination, but the two I've mentioned are the ones that I've really noticed about myself. Hopefully acknowledging this will help me to be less of a perfectionist and maybe I'll get more done! We'll see . . .

Tags: steve pavlina, procrastination