On Saturdays I have been teaching 8 hours of Elite Animation Academy private virtual classes. I always worry that my energy level might drop after the back to back zoom meetings. My final student of the day is preparing a portfolio for admission into a visual arts school. We were working on a still life and she was painting a stuffed Beluga whale she got on a recent vacation to an aquarium.
My student seemed to hit a brick wall with the still life since she felt it wasn’t painterly enough. Her usual way of creating art is to do detailed line art and then color it in. She felt this was making her piece stiff. We broke away from her still life and instead just started playing with brushes in Procreate.
She seemed to stop worrying about a final polished look and just started playing with the wide variety of brushes. She quickly blocked in a light blue field surrounded by dark blue. What emerged was a memory of her trip to the aquarium.
She paused when she had a head drawn on the page. I stepped n and gave her a quick example of how to use gesture lines to get the figure on the page. She quickly followed suit and drew the people into her sketch. While she worked, I blocked inn the water on my rough sketch and started painting the beluga whale in the tank. My sketch was a lesson in making a mess and hoping for the best. Control was surrendered for spontaneity. Is the sketch finished, heck no. Is it the best sketch I ever did, heck no, but it is also not the worst. On to the next.