How to Start Drawing When You’re Stuck
Sometimes this happens to me, artist’s block, where my brain freezes and my hand simply can’t do the job. It’s frustrating, but I’ve come up with my own way of punching through it. I do warmup exercises.
A warmup exercise is meant to get the hand moving and the blood flowing. It’s meant to work out the artistic brain cramp, to renew confidence and do something simple when one doesn’t know what else to do. In case of emergencies, I do directed doodling, specifically, my own patented “bananadoodle”. It warms me up and gets me ready to draw. Try it. With a little practice (do a page of them until you don’t have to think about it) your hand will be managing quite well, and once that happens, your eye can hop in and run the show. You’ll be drawing before you know it.
This is a “bananadoodle”. It’s a fast movement in one direction, a switching of gears and movement in the opposite direction. You simply go back and forth without pausing.
Today I needed something extra to get me started. I stood by the window watching it snow. The landscape turned all black and white and gray and was perfectly beautiful, but I just couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, and couldn’t get anything on paper. My hand felt gummy. So did my brain. Then I remembered bananadoodles. Half a page later I was ready to roll.
Eastern Bluebirds on snow-covered oak branch. Love those warm-up exercises.
