#192 - Develop Better As An Artist By Working In Private And Not Showing Everything Online
Practice Drawing This Draw-along.
n the past, we didn’t have the internet or social media. Putting your work in front of people was much harder. But it had its advantages.
Artists could experiment. Nobody saw your work, and there was not much at stake.
The online world tempts us to show everything we make, and getting more views is the reward for publishing in volume. But for the development of artists, it is healthier to do a lot in private.
Keep a private sketchbook, one in which you can do anything, one in which there are no rules. And promise yourself that you won’t show it to anyone.
Later on, you can choose the things you want to show from it if you want, but make not showing anyone the default.
You can also keep a ‘public’ sketchbook that you show to other people—one where you only make ‘good’ drawings. But the most exciting things will probably happen in your private sketchbook.
Sketches I made during the cylinder video premiere last Sunday.
This Week
I am pleased with how the latest drawing exercises on Practice Drawing This have turned out. I’m proud of them! I do them every day for around one and a half hours. The parametrized randomized 3D models and the art flashcards system are great.
The challenge I am running into is raising awareness for all this FREE coolness.
As you know, I work in “campaigns”: a campaign has a beginning, middle, and end, during which I try something and evaluate it.
For this campaign, I want to see if the age-old adage in writing, “show, don’t tell,” holds. It is way more powerful to show something so the audience concludes than to tell them. They think that is just your opinion.
To show off the drawing exercises, I am trying two things:
- Long YouTube videos with timed sessions and 3D drawing models show off how cool the parametrized randomized 3D models are and how useful they are for drawing practice.
- Photos where you see my drawings after doing my drawing exercises, adding my mobile phone with my Art Flashcards page or a 3D model on the screen to convey that I am doing the exercises myself, and showing the results.
I had some fun optimizing the process of generating the videos. Initially, I recorded the videos at real-time speed, but I realized that if I sped up the video eight times, I could record a twelve-hour video in one and a half hours. The video then needs to be post-processed to slow it down eight times. It takes a half hour on my computer, meaning I can make a twelve-hour video in two hours! As I write this, I made three twelve-hour videos today! This means I can comfortably keep up a weekly schedule as I can easily create a buffer of videos.
For at least the coming few weeks, I will pester you with these long YouTube videos with drawing exercises and images that show my drawings after I do the exercises with my mobile, with the drawing exercises on screen.
The long exercise videos do surprisingly well. I hadn’t expected that! In the graph below, the grey bar is the typical performance, and the line represents the number of hours people viewed the rotating cylinder 3D model reference video.
I would have thought people would prefer entertainment over exercise, but the videos so far outperform my other videos by a wide margin. You guys really do want to draw!
A twelve-hour video with objects in rotated boxes for drawing practice will premiere this Sunday, March 30th. It will run from noon until midnight, Central European Time, so there is no excuse not to join!
First, check out this video demonstrating one way to go about drawing an object inside a rotated box:
Then join me if you can, and we can chat while we draw!
