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There's a video I watched recently called "'I Don't Feel Like It' Is A Mindset For Amateurs". The video is over five years old, but it was brought to my attention again within the past week. The video, which was made by a youtuber who teaches productivity named Thomas Frank, has made me feel even more driven to work on a consistent schedule, although I'd believed in disciplined work for a long time.
More importantly I think, this video made me realize, though, was that it's okay to make imperfect, even downright bad work, as long as I'm still working. I decided to take that approach when I sat down to right my newsletter this week. I didn't know everything I wanted to put in it. I'd just write what came to me. Anything that I decide I didn't want in when it was time to send it out, could be deleted. By the way, if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter, there's a form where you can do to the side of this post. I always include at least one in progress pic of whatever I'm working on that week and a lot of times I include my future plans. Anyway I'm grateful for this mindset shift before I would feel bad if I did work that I thought was not up to par. Of course, I want to make good work, but things can be done over and revised. They don't have to be just right the first time and I don't have to share those crappy first layers or what have you with anyone if I don't want to. But I have to make them in order to make the good stuff. Here is Thomas's channel. He has a lot of useful tips on productivity and time management.
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Making my drawings more accurate is something I’ve been striving for lately, so I’d like to pass on some of the knowledge I’ve acquired to you. One bad habit a lot of artists, myself included, is that we draw eyes too big. Eyes are an important feature, after all they determine the subject’s expression. But they should only be as big as the space between the eyes. To make it super simple, take your thumb and pointer finger, measure the space between the eyes, as I show in the video, and then measure your eyes, take a pencil and make marks where your fingers are and adjust your eyes as needed. You can use organizational line to make your drawings more accurate. In this video, I include a visual demonstration on using organizational line to insure correct placement while drawing faces. I want to point out that this is a guideline and won't apply to every face. Also, don't worry so much about making both sides exactly the same. No one's face is identical on both sides anyway. I personally don’t use all those lines I show you here. I just try to copy my reference photo as best I can, which brings me to my next point. Pay a lot of attention to your reference photo or model if you want your drawings to be accurate. So many artists just glance at their reference photo or model and then look at their drawing the whole time without ever looking back at the model or reference photo. As artists, we need to spend at least fifty percent of the time that we’re working on a drawing, looking at the model or reference photo. I spend a lot of time looking at a photo before I even start working from it. Even if you look at your model or ref photo constantly while working, you’ll probably still make mistakes in your initial outline, which brings me to the final piece of advice I’m going to give you in this video. When you do your initial out line, use a light pencil, unless it's a sketch for a painting, because you can wash it off and the paint will probably cover your pencil lines anyway. I personally use a 6h for my outlines. It’s dark enough that I can see it, but I can also erase it as many times as I need to and I won’t have smears. That’s what I’m getting at here. If you’re using a dark pencil to make your outlines, you can only erase so many times before your paper is filled with smears. If you want your drawing to have bold outlines, only use a dark pencil over your light pencil when you have everything where you want it. Thank you so much for watching and reading. I hope that was helpful. I do timelapse drawing and painting demonstrations, as well as art related vlogs on my channe Saramakesartl, so if that sounds good to you, click the link in the video to subscribe, for new videos every Wednesday. I’ll see you all next week with another video post. Bye. I promise your email will not be published.
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Sara MillettPainter of portraits and wildlife Archives
March 2025
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