RatCreature (ratcreature) wrote in slothsdraw,
@ 2007-10-01 23:55:00

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Sadly so far overall the community has been much better at living up to the "sloth" part of our name than to the "drawing" part, myself included. *hangs head in shame*

Part of that could be just that the community is still new, and doesn't have many members yet, or just hasn't hit its stride yet, but I also want to make sure that the prompts are what members expect from the community in the first place. I mean, it does take some time to assemble the posts with exercises, and the effort is kind of wasted if they totally miss the mark. Also, this community is intended to be participatory after all, so it's important that the prompts are fun and appeal to as many as possible.

So before posting the next prompts I thought I'd ask for opinions. I can't do polls here, but I'd be grateful if you could anwser in the comments. I organized some feedback options kind of like a poll though, so that you don't feel like you have to write out essays or anything like that (though of course you can, I just want to make giving the feedback easy and quick).

1. If you have joined but not (yet) posted any responses to prompts, is it because:

outside factors (e.g. current RL time constraints, random lack of motivation to draw anything, technical problems like a broken scanner...)
you found the prompts didn't work for you for some reason
a combination of both

2. Having four weeks of past prompts/exercises as sample, are they what you expected when joining and do they work for you, or should those be different somehow? E.g.:

are they too exercise-like? I.e. you'd rather have more free-form prompts mixed in (e.g. word prompts like "autumn" or "family" or "pattern" or something vague like that) or maybe challenges?
or maybe they are not specific enough?
are the topics what you are interested in? If not, what would you most like to practice?
are the scans and links helpful enough? too little? or too much extra material?

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	libby 2007-10-01 11:09 pm UTC (link)
	I've been doing a lot of the exercises, I just keep forgetting to scan anything in. ^_^; Sorry!! I've really enjoyed the prompts so far. :D (Reply to this) (Thread)

	ratcreature 2007-10-01 11:16 pm UTC (link)
	I just keep forgetting to scan anything in. That is a shame! I'd really like to see. But I'm glad you enjoy the prompts. That's good to hear. I was starting to worry. (Reply to this) (Parent)

tripperfunster
2007-10-01 11:31 pm UTC (link)

I have a set that I've done (my third) and I haven't posted them yet.

I think that there needs to be more pimping, but the comm itself is a great idea!

As for concrit, I think that you over-do the prompts. I know you're trying to give us lots to chose from, so we don't feel pidgeon holed into doing things we don't like, but it's almost overwhelming. One or two excercizes would be more... do-able and less intimidating. KWIM?

Don't change if you don't want to, but it also seems like a lot of work for you! And just so you know, if you feel bad about scanning pages from books and such, it prompted me to go out and buy Scott McCloud's book and another that he had recced on perspective, so you made them both a few bucks by putting up some of their stuff! :D

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ratcreature
2007-10-02 07:06 pm UTC (link)

Thanks for answering.

I think I may reduce the number to maybe three prompts rather than five as a try. That's still some variety, but maybe less overwhelming?

And cool to hear that the scans were successful pimping. I actually don't have many qualms about putting up some scans as excerpts. I mean, I'm dubious about all those claims that "piracy", especially simple private sharing, rather than mass production of illegal copies, hurts actual sales more than it helps in the first place (not to mention that "piracy" as a word choice is bizarre in itself for merely copying things, it's not like making a mix tape was even like physical theft let alone akin to boarding ships and killing people).

I know that I myself find it really hard to buy some drawing book (which are usually not inexpensive after all), without some idea of it is even useful and its approach working for me. But if I like one, for drawing books it is much better to have them on paper when you want to use them, and it's not like my scans have even a proper printing resolution.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

gnatkip
2007-10-02 12:11 am UTC (link)

I have excelled at the sloth part. I could sloth for my country!

1. a combination of both

I'd hate for you to think that I haven't been enjoying the educational things you've posted, because I really have, even though I haven't been drawing. I'm in the middle of a pretty labor-intensive art project right now, and all my drawing time and drawing energy is going toward that. Which I know intellectually is dumb, because things actually work the opposite of that, generally: the more diverse exercises you do, the more you are CAPABLE of doing. But gah, it hasn't been panning out like that.

For the time that I spend on the exercise prompts, I've found that I'm spending it reading rather than drawing. And it's very interesting reading! It's just that I personally haven't been able to do both the theory and the practice in the past couple of weeks. So, in answer to your second question... I don't know.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	ratcreature 2007-10-02 06:45 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks for answering! I rather like including the some material to give people a starting point, but since tripperfunster mentioned the number of prompts being too much, maybe I could do a switch to three prompts down from five per week? That woulds still give some variety among the prompts, but naturally less links and material and the like. (Reply to this) (Parent)

stellamoon
2007-10-02 08:21 pm UTC (link)

I seem to always find myself agreeing to Tripp's comments in various journals! But I agree that the prompts are a little overwhelming. Not just the number of prompts, but they seem a little too involved to be considered a quick exercise. At least for me. And though I do love to draw portraits, I always get very involved when I attempt people, and am just not cut out to sketch them. I don't know why. I consider drawing people to be rather difficult, so for simple exercises, I'd rather see much easier prompts. But then again, maybe I'm just lazy, or scared, or both.

So; answer to#1 is Both. Not much time recently ( participating in fandom fests) and prompts not really working for me.

#2 I'd like to see more free form prompts as well as just easy stuff like animals or objects. For instance: draw a favorite animal at rest, and then in action. Or an object under different types of lighting, or to portray different moods. Or 3 unusual uses for ordinary object. Or even abstract or semi-abstract arrangements.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd like to see the prompts more simple in scope, so they'd seem less like projects to me. And I haven't really had time to check out much of the links, but they do look interesting.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

ratcreature
2007-10-02 08:44 pm UTC (link)

Thanks for answering!

Since I'm personally most interested in practicing to draw humans (exactly because they are difficult and I suck at it) there'll be always prompts for that. In the first posts I mostly offered two exercises for drawing humans and three with other stuff, though if I go down to three prompts it'll likely be one for humans and two other stuff that sometimes maybe could be done with humans or not depending on what motif you choose.

I get what you're saying about exercises that are not too involved, I'll keep that in mind, but I admit that I don't quite understand how your examples are much simpler. I mean, I actually offered some of those examples? Like "object under different types of lighting" was the fourth prompt of week 3? "portray different moods" was more or less all that the emotions and the body language prompts of the first two weeks asked for... so to me it seems the prompts I chose are about as complex as your examples? I mean, I find drawing animals in motion really hard for example, since you have much less opportunity to watch and study how they work whereas you observe humans daily and can make a movement yourself as long as it is nothing extravagant, so any (good) animal action drawing would be a project for me that requires searching for reference, possibly even video to see how an animal looks like.

I admit that I have no interest in doing abstract art myself (though I love looking at it), so I find it really hard to come up with potential exercises for that, unless someone would appropriate rather general composition prompts like the one for spotting blacks from last week for abstract art (I mean, the prompt just said "Draw an image with an interesting pattern of black areas and shadows" you could do that without drawing objets). But I'm more than happy to include prompts suggested by others, so if you have good ideas for abstract one, I'd love to hear them.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

stellamoon
2007-10-02 09:10 pm UTC (link)

Ha Ha! Isn't that crazy? I know my ideas were similar to a couple prompts posted, but I think I was just overwhelmed with the scope of the prompts all together. And thought that it was calling for something quite complex. I particularly remember the different human poses expressing different emotions. Wow! I was intimidated by that and didn't even want to try. Partially because examples given had attempted so many! And then one called for different objects - lots of them, I thought - to portray something like abandonment for instance. Yeah, that seemed like a major project for me.

Now, I don't particularly remember the objects under different lighting one, but I'm thinking of something like a ball, or a shoe, or a seashell or a hairbrush. One very simple thing maybe with lots of light and one with little. Or from the left vs. from the right. Perhaps your prompt was that easy, I'm sorry I just don't remember it. ANd I think that's because I get a little intimidated reading the post. Sorry.

I don't draw anything, hardly even doodles, without some sort of reference at least as a starting point. That's just the way I am. So for me, the drawing humans prompts would all involve searching for reference, anyway. But I have lots of pictures I look at all the time when searching for inspiration.

I'm sorry I missed the one about making the negative spaces - the blacks and shadows. That sounds great to me. It's one I'd probably attempt.

I'd love to draw a little something every day. That's why I was drawn to these posts in the first place. But all of us work a little differently and have totally different comfort zones, I guess. Hmmm.. I wonder if posting them as easy/quick ranging to harder/more involved, and having only one example of each? Also, I'd be glad to hunt down some ideas for more abstract prompts. I prefer semi-abstract anyway. You know...it actually looks like something! LOL

Also, I bet lots of people want to participate, they just don't want to all the time, and are waiting for a suitable prompt or the time to do it. There haven't been too many posts, yet, for us to choose from. Give it a little more time and I bet you'll see more participation.

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ratcreature
2007-10-02 09:31 pm UTC (link)

I think my idea is more that people can make their responses as simple or as elaborate as they like, you know? For example my own response to the body language prompt was all very simplified outlines, barely more than stick figures, just showing the gesture, but someone else might have wanted to draw "proper" humans, so I wouldn't want to exclude either.

As for the overwhelming, I'm starting to think that it may come across that way because the way I draw and respond to prompts is different-- like the lighting prompt did include examples of a face and of an abstract skull with just the planes indicated, because that were the example series of methodical light changes I could find. So there were a great many images true. But it wasn't meant to imply that anything this complicated would be required, like doing a lengthy series, but more so that people who don't want to do research for an exercise doodle could have just taken simlar light source and shadow pattern and copied that from the reference. I.e. to see an example for "light source from above" and one for "light source from th side + ambient light" and not have to do any more, but already have a starting point. Same for the moods, I posted charts with systematic emotions so people could just pick one from a chart and know how it looks like in principle and copy it in their style without having to search for a reference for how "concerned" or whatever might look like themselves. The examples and links and such are meant to save work for participants, not create it.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	stellamoon 2007-10-03 12:04 am UTC (link)
	Well, we artists are a neurotic bunch. (some of us, anyway) But, I totally see what you're saying. And I think it's wonderful what you're doing with this. It's certainly not your fault I'm easily intimidated! I'll try to do better. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	ratcreature 2007-10-03 08:02 am UTC (link)
	Heh. Well, that I felt the need to ask after just a couple of issues probably says something about my own level of neurosis. G (Reply to this) (Parent)