Making Something From Nothing
Sketchbook Adventures, Part 3
This week, I wanted to create an exercise that would force me to work through unexpected inputs to get unusual outputs. Simply put, I wanted to work with boundaries to get my creativity going. Mileage may vary, but I think this is a useful way to get yourself drawing when stuck.
First off, start with some paint or markers (basically anything that will give you an organic, loose shape). Now start filling up a sketchbook page with blobs. Spatters. Bursts of color. What have you. The key is to get down a bunch of illogical shapes. Go as abstract as you can at this stage and don’t overthink.
Done? Now walk away for a little while. Make a pot of coffee. Pet the dog. Pull some weeds in the garden.
Now that you’ve had a break from the page, grab yourself a few colored pencils. I’d recommend no more than three, just to keep things simple. Proceed to get back out that sketchbook page. See those random dabs of color and nonsensical lines? Take a look at one shape and think for a minute. What does it remind you of? Think of this as akin to lying on your back, looking up and spotting dinosaurs and trains in the fluffy clouds above. Or, if you’re of a less romantic persuasion, it’s like a Rorschach Test: what do you see in the painted shapes on your page? At this stage, bear in mind two things: there is no right answer and there is no wrong answer. Whatever you see, you see.
Full disclosure: I groaned when I started looking at the page. Everything was just… too weird. I tend to work very tightly, avoiding overly expressive brushwork and bold expanses of color. So this exercise? It even makes me cringe. But after staring at the one chartreuse blob, I got to to thinking that the small band of white in the middle reminded me of a very narrow house. And maybe this narrow house is surrounded by narrow trees, so up grew some poplars. Finally, I reasoned that you can’t get to a house without a pathway, so flagstones grew up from the grass. A bit of smoke coming up from the chimney finished off this little home.
The red blob felt decidedly rodent-esque. I don’t like rodents. Maybe that’s why he looks antagonistic.
The long band of pink felt like a salmon needed to swim off the page. And it’s a French salmon. Why, I don’t know. Again, no rhyme or reason is needed for this exercise.
Finished! In addition to the aforementioned salmon, rodent and house, there evolved a woman with an unusual hat, koi fish of varying emotional states, Prickly Pear cacti and a floral headdress. None of this is anything I’d have sat down to draw by choice, but all of it evolved when forced to pull something from nothing. An interesting postscript to this exercise would be to take one thing you’ve drawn and find some time to render it more completely in your style. For example, I could take the wonky peacock and fix him up a bit, but keep those unexpected colors and the naive quality of the sketch. The original doodle would serve as a springboard for a more finished illustration.
Happy making! Hope you enjoy drawing the unexpected and strange. To quote the Talking Heads, “Stop making sense.”
Previously: