As a musician, one of the things we learn early on is that practice does not make pefect; rather, perfect practice makes perfect. If you play the same phrase over and over, with the same mistakes, you're teaching yourself to make those errors every time. The more ingrained they get, the harder it becomes to correct them. I think this holds true for how we practice and see things in art too. This is one of the reasons why it's harder to see issues in our own work than in the work of others. Mistakes that we make again and again become invisible to us. When we play back a recording of ourselves playing a piece, or look at our art in the mirror, we get a new perspective on what we've done. Mistakes jump out like a sore thumb.
When I was practicing circles and ellipses, I was concerned that I'd develop faulty muscle memory if I drew a lot of them that weren't exactly symmetrical. I was afraid that I'd stop seeing the symmetry if I got it wrong. (See my previous post, "Lines, Ellipses, Perspective, Cross Contours," if you haven't already.) Apparently, this concerned somebody else too. I searched around the internet and
found this website post by Ethan Nguyen, which addressed this issue. There's a video that accompanies his post, as well as templates for circles and ellipses that you can print out and trace as part of your ellipse/circle practice.
Here is a link to the Circle template to print.
Here is a link to the Ellipse template to print.
I printed both template sheets in slightly larger sizes, so that I could practice larger circles and ellipses. I also laminated those templates, and used tracing paper over the top, rather than having to print out new ones all the time. (Toner is expensive!) If you have a light box, that would be another great way to use the templates.
These templates, along with some straight line work in all directions, became my go-to daily warm-ups during Project Megasketch. (I kept working on the lessons and exercises on the Draw A Box site also.) I'd go over each size ellipse several times, until I felt my pen tracking evenly along its path. I did it in both directions for lines, circles and ellipses. We need to be sure that we're not stuck in one direction when we draw.
It's now a year later, and I still see great benefits from having done all that practice, even if they're not perfect. Writing up this post makes me realize that I'd probably benefit even more if I went back and revisited these exercises on a more regular basis.
If you start practicing ellipses daily, I'd be very interested in hearing about your results after a few weeks. Please post your thoughts about them in the Comments section, and let us all know. I found the differences to be dramatic improvements, not only in what I drew, but also in what I saw. Keep in mind that initially, it takes a huge amount of time to commit to doing these and straight line work every day. The line and circle daily warm-ups I forced on myself took about 40 minutes or so, and I didn't count them toward my pages for the day because there were so many pages of them!
If you stick to it for several weeks, it gets into your muscle memory, and you don't lose it. After a layoff, you may be a bit rusty, but it's like riding a bike; a few minutes of practice brings it back. That makes it well worth the effort of the practice.
- For an overview of Project Megasketch and what it entails, see this post.
- Here is my previous post about drawing lines, circles and elipses.
- To see all of the Megasketch posts, click here. They will appear in reverse chronological order, with the newest posts at the top.
- I try to post Project Megasketch installments on Mondays, under the subject heading "Megasketch Monday", but I reserve the right to be late from time to time! ;)
- If you'd like to be sure not to miss a post, you can subscribe via email by entering your address on the right sidebar of my site.
Great post, Jamie. It's always seemed to me that too many believe that "practice" is doing what you normally do but doing it a lot. Urban sketchers go out day after day with their friends, creating sketches and thinking that they're practicing. Truth is, they're doing what they know and how they know it because, at the end of the day, they want something to show to their buddies. This may provide small increments of improvement, but as you say, it can also generate bad habits.
ReplyDeleteYour use of "muscle memory" bothers me as a biologist but it's a typical use in the art world. Muscles have a memory but for their resting state. They can't learn how to draw (grin).
As an aside, ellipses are often mis-drawn because they're drawn in "standard" configuration, which assumes no perspective. The second you put perspective in the mix their shape changes simply because the far side of the ellipse is further away than the fore side of the ellipse. Even so, the practice you suggest will improve the ability of your motor cortex to direct your hand to draw ellipses (grin). I'm still training mine.
Hey, Larry, thanks for tuning in! I agree with everything you've said. I understand about your biologist's view of "muscle memory," but I think the rest of us think of it as described by Wikipedia:
Delete"Muscle memory is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition, which has been used synonymously with motor learning. When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed with little to no conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems. Examples of muscle memory are found in many everyday activities that become automatic and improve with practice, such as riding a bicycle, typing on a keyboard, entering a PIN, playing a musical instrument,[1] poker,[2] martial arts or even dancing."
Regarding the elipses, yes! The Draw A Box website lessons discuss that in the 250 Cylinder Challenge, but recommend that not be done until the completion of Lesson 5. The worst tendency I think is for artists to make that football shape on perspective cylinders; perhaps that's why they want it covered at a later time. I think variations of the symmetry are better accomplished once we can see and draw the symmetrical object, and I'm sure you'd agree with that! The change is very subtle in perspective, and you know how we artists tend to go overboard with everything. LOL Thank you for your comments.