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How to Reboot Your Brain (Art Version)
This started as a comment on someone else's DW but it got too long for a comment.
When you get stuck in an art rut, you end up doing the same thing over and over and over, and getting immensely frustrated because you're not improving, but the problem is that you're doing the same thing over and over and over.
The solution?
Force yourself to do something different for a while. The problem is that your brain likes to shortcut, and so it creates grooves and sticks to them. You have to drive at 90° angles to the grooves (metaphorically) to create new ones.
My grandmother (this is the one who died when I was about 2, so I don't remember her) painted and took painting lessons a lot. Her instructor, at one point, had her throw all her brushes away and confined her to palette knives only to paint for a while, to force her into doing something different.
That's a bit drastic if you're not being mentored in person, but the basic idea is sound.
Something one of my instructors had us do was to hold our pencils in a different way.
Assuming this is the usual way you hold a pencil. It's (close enough to) the way most of us were taught in school. (Excuse the pen; I didn't have a pencil nearby.)
These are two ways he'd have us hold them. Note that these work better if you're using an easel that holds the paper way more upright than a sketchbook in your lap, but you can prop a sketchbook up at a good angle for it.
Way 1: Forefinger tip on the pencil, fingers holding it against your palm. Hand, and therefore pencil, held mostly upright, perpendicular to the ground.
Way 2: Similar, but forefinger side on the pencil, fingers holding it AWAY from your palm. Hand, and therefore pencil, held at a 90-ish° angle, parallel to the ground.
What both of these do is, essentially, take your wrist out of the occasion. They force you to draw from your elbow and your shoulder, and keep your from being able to easily do tiny details, and make it easier for you to do grander gestures that encompass the entire paper instead of, as usually happens when you get stuck, being too tight and too focused.
In practice, once you get used to holding the pencil different ways--and I'm talking over several drawing sessions, not just a few minutes-- you figure out what strokes work better with which hold, (and which holds work better with which media) and you start shifting your grip to fit which strokes you're doing at the time.
But before then, it forces you to work in a different way, which make your brain and your muscles grow and change.
So! If you draw, pick up a pencil--even if you normally use a pen or a tablet--pick up some scratch paper or a sketchpad that you don't show to anyone because you're not going to get fabulous pictures out of these grips until you get used to them AND THAT'S WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. Pick random shit in the room around you to draw, and go for it.
Next post: the dreaded still life!
When you get stuck in an art rut, you end up doing the same thing over and over and over, and getting immensely frustrated because you're not improving, but the problem is that you're doing the same thing over and over and over.
The solution?
Force yourself to do something different for a while. The problem is that your brain likes to shortcut, and so it creates grooves and sticks to them. You have to drive at 90° angles to the grooves (metaphorically) to create new ones.
My grandmother (this is the one who died when I was about 2, so I don't remember her) painted and took painting lessons a lot. Her instructor, at one point, had her throw all her brushes away and confined her to palette knives only to paint for a while, to force her into doing something different.
That's a bit drastic if you're not being mentored in person, but the basic idea is sound.
Something one of my instructors had us do was to hold our pencils in a different way.
Assuming this is the usual way you hold a pencil. It's (close enough to) the way most of us were taught in school. (Excuse the pen; I didn't have a pencil nearby.)
These are two ways he'd have us hold them. Note that these work better if you're using an easel that holds the paper way more upright than a sketchbook in your lap, but you can prop a sketchbook up at a good angle for it.
Way 1: Forefinger tip on the pencil, fingers holding it against your palm. Hand, and therefore pencil, held mostly upright, perpendicular to the ground.
Way 2: Similar, but forefinger side on the pencil, fingers holding it AWAY from your palm. Hand, and therefore pencil, held at a 90-ish° angle, parallel to the ground.
What both of these do is, essentially, take your wrist out of the occasion. They force you to draw from your elbow and your shoulder, and keep your from being able to easily do tiny details, and make it easier for you to do grander gestures that encompass the entire paper instead of, as usually happens when you get stuck, being too tight and too focused.
In practice, once you get used to holding the pencil different ways--and I'm talking over several drawing sessions, not just a few minutes-- you figure out what strokes work better with which hold, (and which holds work better with which media) and you start shifting your grip to fit which strokes you're doing at the time.
But before then, it forces you to work in a different way, which make your brain and your muscles grow and change.
So! If you draw, pick up a pencil--even if you normally use a pen or a tablet--pick up some scratch paper or a sketchpad that you don't show to anyone because you're not going to get fabulous pictures out of these grips until you get used to them AND THAT'S WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. Pick random shit in the room around you to draw, and go for it.
Next post: the dreaded still life!
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Position #2 makes more intuitive sense if you're holding a conte crayon, a stick of charcoal, or one of those pencils that's all graphite with no wood, but holding your pencil that way shakes it up a bit and also forces you to use more than just the point--you start using the side of the lead to get different strokes as well.
In position #1, if I was standing up at an easel drawing on a large sheet of paper, I'd often find my hand twisting so my palm was facing more to me than to the paper, which is fine as long as you've got a long enough lead. XD
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Yes.
And I have gotten used to pens, pencils, digital "brushes"...
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