3 drawings in 3 minutes!

 

While researching drawing techniques in animation, I noticed that quite a lot of drawings appear rough and sketchy. When drawing, I usually put a lot of thought into my subject matter and techniques. Most of my drawings are very precise and take hours, sometimes even days to complete. While looking over the work I have produced over the duration of the last six weeks, I thought back to a project I did last year, The 100 Drawing Project, and thought about how time affected the way in which I worked and the outcome of the drawings I made themselves. I learned from my Stage One project that the more you drew a subject, the more familiar you became with it. For instance in that particular project I chose a potted flower as my subject and had to draw that flower 100 times on A5 paper in one week from different angles. Before I even got half way through the project I knew my subject so well that I could draw it without even looking at it or even think about it.

Sometimes a drawing that took minutes to create can be just as good, if not better, than a drawing that took an artist weeks to produce. From this, I decided to create some drawings using a fine-liner pen and water. I work best when I set a challenge and I therefore set myself the task of creating 3 drawings in 3 minutes (one drawing per minute). My subject choice is extremely relevant to my project and they are all drawings that I have drawn at at-least one point during the last six weeks and therefore I was somewhat familiar with what I was drawing and did not need to think much about what I was doing. Precision was not important during this small project.

My first drawing (left) took me 62 seconds when timed which was slightly over the time I aimed for but I could make up for that with my next two drawings. My second drawing (middle) took 46 seconds which is actually a lot less time than I needed which was great as I was under-target. Finally, my third and final drawing took 58 seconds which totaled 2 minutes and 46 seconds making my 3 drawings in 3 minutes mini-project slightly under-target but hugely successful as my aim was to create 3 drawings in the shortest time possible. Really this mini-project should be titled, 3 drawings in 2 minutes 46 seconds, but that title really doesn’t have that same ring to it!