To encourage my Elite Animation Academy student to loosen up I abandoned the painting I was working on and instead did a quick 10 minute study where my primary goal was to make a mess and try and have fun. Color masses were thrown down with abandon and line was only thrown down at the bitter end.
Since I had no intention of pushing the painting to a final, I could just relax and encourage the student while I played. After seeing this mess, my student began a piece by just playing with brushes. A wave pattern brush was discovered and I was asked if using it was cheating. Nothing is cheating if it works, was my reply.
I stopped painting and watched my student work. I was pleased to see a wide variety of brushes being experimented with. Things progresses quickly until it came time to draw the people in the scene. Things ground to a halt. I did a quick demo to show gesture, the curve of a person’s back, rhythm and flow. It is a bit like explaining how to play jazz on a trumpet to someone who has never toughed the instrument.
Regardless we pushed forward with the goal of getting the sketch completed well enough so that we could put it aside and start another. Progress come from completing thousands of sketches rather than obsessing about any one piece. Accepting that there might be flaws and imperfections allows for far more acceptance, so long as it is not the worst thing ever created. A sketch by definition is never complete.