practice, etudes and figure drawing

Jennifer, 90 second gesture drawings

Practice makes a lot of sense to me. When I was just seven years old, I started a lifelong love affair with piano and practice was required. It's funny, I always enjoyed practicing. I liked the discipline of it. I liked the alone time. I liked figuring things out, spotting the hard parts, making notes along the way to guide me and to make it flow.

As I advanced in my piano skills, my practice pieces changed. At my peak, I was practicing with pieces like this Chopin Etude (Op 10 No. 4). It was a sure way to limber up creaky fingers and get blood moving!

With art, practice looks different from scales, arpeggios, and etudes. Practice in art for me looks like lots of figure drawing and figure painting. Each session seems to limber up my creaky observation skills and to get the blood moving toward interesting, dynamic, and more accurate drawings.

Jennifer, 90 second gesture drawings

Looking at these drawings today, I can see that I need to sort out the proportions of the model's behind. With music, I could slow things down, make notes of better fingering solutions, and isolate the trouble area for more practice. With drawing, I will not be able to slow things down, but I can use more sight-size measuring to increase my accuracy.

Jennifer, 90 second gesture drawings

Figure drawings are the etudes of art practice.