Day 14

Here is the drawing for the day. I wanted to try something a little different. My last few drawings were more loose in the technical approach. I really wanted something more design-based. I always like changing up my technique, especially when I feel that I'm getting sloppy. My last few drawings, I felt, were getting sloppy. However, the Leonardo Da Vinci study I did last, reminded me how simple shapes done well can make the greatest impact. So after I thought about that a little, I went to the master of simple shapes - Mucha. He was the Art Nouveau poster child. Everything we know about this style pretty much starts with him. He was a true master of putting the right simple shape in the right place and making it look incredibly difficult and sophisticated.

Sophisitcated - Yes...incredibly difficult - No, not really. You have to have good muscle memory. And by that, I mean your hand has to know what line your are going to draw and quickly as your brain does. Think of it like your cell phone - when you get a new cellphone, you have no idea how to get your voicemail or how to text when you first get it, but by the end of the first month, you can literally do it without looking. Why is that? Because you have typed hundreds of emails/texts using the same buttons over and over again and your fingers has become a human sensory organ. Your fingertips know exactly what they are doing. You know how many clicks it takes to get to a certain letter, or the sequence of words from the pattern you typed in with T9, or if you have the Iphone (shameless plug), you know the feeling of hitting the top right part of the letter without hitting other incorrect letters next to it. If you think about it, you are pretty talented in that department. You have upwards to 26 buttons in an area smaller that 3 inches. You are very good with detail.

... ok, now bringing it back to art, there are only 4 kinds of lines: vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and curved - That's it! Everything can fit into those categories. All you have to do is decide what kind of lines they are, and use your texted fingers and brain to draw it in the right place. It's that simple! And yeah, you have to draw as many times as you text. Draw a hundred circles, see if you are good at it - if so, draw a hundred more, if not - draw 1000 more.

I did this drawing with that concept in mind. I started with simple circles and build off of them. If you can see up close, you'll see this drawing is very basic. It just had the genius of Mucha behind it all making brilliant decisions on where to put these simple shapes.

That's creative part. Where do you put the shapes? It's like with a great writer, they use the same words we know and use, but how is it that they are published? It's where they arrange the words that makes the difference - much like a musician.