It's literally them

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. 

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings! 

How on earth are you supposed to draw from a sholder? might as well tell me to draw from the foot. It makes no sense

https://youtu.be/pMC0Cx3Uk84

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

:3

Reblogging to save a wrist

i dont think i posted these but here i made a little frog pattern to make tiny frog toys with my grandma

this is the first lil guy I made while still learning how i should sew it

AAA ok so a lot of people have been asking for the pattern to this, tho I’ve been using just these two little papers to do the cut outs lol

i tried my best to translate it into digital so that people get a bit more accurate look at them. Tho bear with me I’ve never done an actual pattern design sheet before!

so basically my hope is that anyone could print these out to any size of their choosing and get the same result, but ive never tried anything larger than approx. 3 inches with these sooo idk if you try it tag me!

the goal is to sew the backs together to the lines at the tip of the head to the middle of the butt. then leaving a space along the belly piece near the butt end and sewing from one side of the butt including all the legs and the “mouth” to the other side with its legs to get back to the butt. if that makes sense

i usually pause sewing up the body once the head is fully sewn together,, usually after ive sewn both arms and ill yank it inside out where ill start sewing on the little poofball eyes so i know theyre in a good place, then resuming the body, and then pulling the whole thing inside out and pushing out the tips of the limbs with a skinny blunt object like a dull pencil until i can see the stitches. if you attempt this piece definitely make sure you stitch up the arm and leg crevices very well!!!!

then just stuff the lad and sew up his back end and its done :)

one suggestion for fabric is always try to use a stretchy soft fleecy fabric with these because its much easier if mistakes are made during sewing and to hold the ROUND shape better

Overall its a very good use of scraps if you’ve accumulated a lot and don’t know what to do with them 👍👍

So I made a frog (huge)

I literally can’t I’m losing my mind over the sheer girth of this frog.

Absolutely incredible.

11/10 and godspeed.

Skybox TNG Season Four trading card number 335, "Remember Me," 1996.

TONIGHT. WE’RE DRINKING FROM THE POND.

me when i get to hug friends