Friday, April 12, 2013

Poodles

Sometimes I feel sorry for poodles......


Forgot to mention that most of these doodles are drawn with black Prismacolor pencils. In this particular case, black and white Prismacolor pencil.

I like these pencils because they do not smear. You can not erase them easily either.

I avoid erasing almost always when drawing in my sketchbooks. Erasing is not about drawing and is a distraction. Erasing is about making something look pretty. Drawing is about something else completely.

Before anyone might want to tell me that I don't have a clue about what I am talking about; that erasing is indeed about drawing. I want to assure you that I have and do use erasers occasionally depending on what I am working on. However, drawing is about making marks and erasing is about correcting and eliminating  things you might think are mistakes with your marks. Why waste precious drawing time doing that in a sketchbook?

One last admission .... yes there are drawing techniques that use erasers to make the mark and I have occasionally used those methods.

No more ranting....this is about the dog. :)

5 comments:

Philsy C said...

What's wrong with being a poodle? I always like to think that the cuter the dog, the more evil it is. We have a toy poodle that is adorable and I'd love to know what his inner monologue is on a daily basis... I'm sure it's mostly just plots to take over the world a la Pinky and the Brain.

Kyle said...

great post, Don. I'm enjoying your daily dogs very much!

My life drawing teacher used different kinds of erasers to "draw", but I understand what you are saying, so im not arguing, heh.

as far as mark making goes, It will be nice to get to a point one day when the marks I make aren't completely off so that I don't have to rely on erasers.

My illustration teacher, Bill Carman always pushed us to draw in our sketchbooks with pens for that reason. so that we would learn to make marks that were intentional, as we drew from life.

its really hard for me, personally, to do that, because I tend to think too much with my pen. That would be ok, if my thoughts were more precise! haha.

Unknown said...

Nothing is wrong with poodles.... I just feel sorry for them sometimes. :)

Kyle, I was just ranting a bit. :) I think the underlying thing that is important is that you pay attention to what you are doing. I really do believe you will learn more by drawing many lines than erasing and redrawing a few. :) I do think there is a mind shift when switching from drawing to erasing. We start to worry about the "correctness" of a mark. Especially in a sketchbook I think there is great value making lots of marks.
They will get better and better as you go...even if one only draws unicorns. Nah, don't have anything against unicorns. :) I think I will go draw one.

Kyle said...

haha sounds good. make sure you post it at least ;)

Anonymous said...

I have to thank you for the efforts you have
put in penning this site. I really hope to see the same high-grade content
by you later on as well. In truth, your creative writing
abilities has inspired me to get my own blog now ;)

My weblog learn to drawing