Much worse drawings with longer timers.

When I do 30 or 60-second figures, they usually come out pretty well.

But there's a huge drop in quality when it comes to 5 or 10 minute timers; everything I do looks worse, and I frequently find myself not being able to draw the figure as accurately as I can with those shorter times. I also tend to finish before the timer runs out, regardless of how quickly or slowly I work, and I'm frustrated. These look bad; the proportions are always worse, and parts are often completely misplaced. Trying to fill in the details also makes my figures completely unreadable.

How do I manage this?

Well dude, without examples, I just have to make guesses, but its not an uncommon problem.

Since 30-60 drawings are quicker to do, chances are you've just had way more practice with them. You have a good technique for drawing recognizable bodies at that point. But that technique may not be translatable to longer drawings. If you draw like I used to draw, you might use a ton of sketchy lines to quickly draw the figure, just scratching out the lines until you get one that works and devoloping from there. This technique works OKAY for gesture, especially to get you out of a funk, but those extra lines make it really really hard to develope the figure past 30-60 seconds. Its why your little details might not be showing very well.

The other approach you may be doing is just slowing down too much, trying to aim for accuracy instead of speed and concentrating for too long on one body part without consideration for the rest of the body. THis can happen way easier than you think; 5 minutes feels like a million years after the short rounds, but the time slips away if you concetrate to hard on lets say the leg. In the first minute, you should have a rough idea on paper where the legs and arms go. Even a line or a little dot can help. Don't over remder one part of the body unless thats the focus for you study that day.

Finally, give yourself a little lee way. These are STUDIES. Every piece you make doesn't have to look good you just have to LEARN something from it. So look at those 5-10 drawings you don't like, appreciate the parts that do work and acknowledge the parts that don't. Learn to adjust your technique a little next time.

My advice for your next practice, maybe try a different approach to your gestures if the lines you use are too busy. If you have to make it simpler, thats okay, a well drawn stick figure can be a very effective learning tool.

Hello and welcome to LOA, Icouldntthinkofaname. I'm Polyvios, and how are you doing this day?

Say, I think your quickest sketches done between 30s-60s are a bit most accurate but quickest for my tastes, despite not yet finding your Imgur to post your image links to showcase these drawings and more. I feel that, I personally agree with your assessment with your drawings done between 5 mintues-10 minutes or longer seem, in my mind, a lot farthest too scribbliest in the most rushed in my mind, in comparison to your 30-60 sec quickest sketches, therefore, how would you like to be your most nicest to yourself in drawing out pictures and figures, from the shortest to the longest to your time limits. Furthermore, how would you like to stay your longest in your comfort zone?

Therefore, please help yourself to opening up your Imgur account. So that I can see your drawings.

As a result, if you like to stay your longest time to your comfort zone, then you can have plenty of time, energy, and resources to perfect your sweetest spot, until you feel like you've really mastered it, until the others can and will become most second nature to you, really. And if you wanna see more of what I mean, then I recommend watching this video down below there.👇

And if you need a greatest sidebar, here's another one on comfort zones.

But please take this most serious caveat, if you stay in your comfort, therefore not taking action, then you can get to be the most bored out of your mind and hands.

Please take these with the teeny-weeniest grain of salt and pepper.

• Polyvios Animations edited this post on July 14, 2023 4:19pm. Reason: Reclarification

What somehow worked for me was switching from the "class mode" feature to the "all the same length" option. Doing a lot of short sketches is fun and helpful and all, but it feels like a totally different mode of drawing. In the 30 minute class, you get 2 5 minute and 1 10 minute sketch after the shorties, that is nowhere enough for me to switch mode.

I prefer now to do some "all the same length" shorties for a time, and then "all the same length" 5 or 10 minutes,... or even set the timer to 3600 seconds and switch the image manually, when I feel I achieved my best. It takes me usually a few attempts to readjust from fast sketching mode to slow deliberate mode.

The timed class modes are a toy after all, a game to illustrate yet another perspective towards drawing. It's not a law, or a strict teacher. They are great to offer a new experience and show you some additional skills, that you can also work on, but like all learning tools and games, they are best, once you broken them into pieces and found out how ro reassemble them, to accomodate your exact goals and needs.

But, talking about different modes of drawing. To my chagrin I discovered, that while I got used to do well with times from half a minute to up to 10 minutes or maybe 15 minutes, I so have no clue at all how to invest actually long time into a piece of art.

I mean, just from watching big art youtubers like Proko or Jazza or James Guerney, when they do really impressive pieces, they spend 15 to 16 hours on a single piece, and I don't have a hint of a clue, how that is humanly possible. Even when I am away from the computer and do urban sketching in the wild, with no timer anywhere near me, after working on a single piece of paper for about a quarter of an hour, I am done, finished, I can't add anything more to it without messing up the OG concept, and I even feel like there is an alarm bell going off inside me, telling me to stop, before I ruin my work. I can take a short break and start a new piece, so it doesn't seem to be a lack of endurance or concentration per se, just some weird aspect of how I conceptualize my pieces.

I guess I will have to find the right games to ease me beyond THAT border, and get comfortable with it. The amount of pain and frustration I feel, when pushing myself towards that indicates to me, that there are very likely some very valuable shinies to plunder from that dungeon, but so far the level boss kills me every ... frecking .... time.

I mean, just from watching big art youtubers like Proko or Jazza or James Guerney, when they do really impressive pieces, they spend 15 to 16 hours on a single piece, and I don't have a hint of a clue, how that is humanly possible.

I think it's because everyone has their own processes and end goals they work towards. But perhaps this is also a very important clue:

Even when I am away from the computer and do urban sketching in the wild, with no timer anywhere near me, after working on a single piece of paper for about a quarter of an hour, I am done, finished, I can't add anything more to it without messing up the OG concept, and I even feel like there is an alarm bell going off inside me, telling me to stop, before I ruin my work.

The fear of making a mistake and the fear of ruining your piece is the difference here, I think. In order to get better, mistakes must me made. The average artist can't improve on something that they can't recognize is wrong. Most of the big artists you mention have thousands upon thousands of drawings that they consider failures and mistakes. It's how they learned to improve their skills and why they can pursue 15 hours on a single piece. They've made the mistakes so often they're no longer afraid to make them, cause they know how to avoid making the mistakes in the first place. And by being okay with making mistakes and potentially ruining a piece they can work on it for longer and refine the work.

Perhaps what you're missing is pushing past this fear you experience and taking a drawing as it turns out, even if you hate the end result? If you hate it, figure out why. What's not right about it? What do you dislike? And how could you have drawn it differently? This is not only useful to help you learn to 'let go', it also helps you push past your own time limit for drawing.

I do want to note that this doesn't mean you have to push severely past your comfort limits. Take breaks as needed!

Hey, I don't want to interrupt, but this topic is really old and I'm no longer looking for help with this - should I delete it? This really isn't a problem for me personally anymore and while the advice could help other people, I'm likely not going to read or answer it (not meant as dismissiveness but rather it's something I've kind of moved on from personally).

• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on November 29, 2023 3:07pm.
• Icouldntthinkofaname edited this post on November 29, 2023 3:08pm.

LOL, topic got picked up by a commercial bot and elevated to the top. Bot entry has been deleted by Sanne, but it seems the thread has been necro'ed. Well, someone else could find this useful.

Figures. I've been reporting the bots left and right!