I’ve been at this daily doodle challenge for nearly 3 months now. I don’t really see any improvement in the individual doodles but I do see more ‘ease’ in doing my work related drawings. I still have the awful habit of thinking a drawing to death before I ever put pencil to paper. I am coming to the conclusion that I need a ‘planning’ phase before I start working. I guess many artists would do this planning in lots of thumbnails but doing a bunch of thumbnails has always frustrated me beyond belief. I like to do my thumbnails in my head and figure out how things should look and how I will accomplish the end product before I start.
Planning in my head sounds weird, I’m sure. And usually, what I envision in my head tends to change once it hits paper and the real world, but for the most part, I am pretty much set on what the basic layout and shapes will be before I start working on a project.
I think this comes from my years as working as a graphic designer with I-gotta-have-it-yesterday deadlines. When I was working in an office environment the concept of doing thumbnails was frowned upon as a waste of time. 9 times out of ten, I had to produce a finished product the same day I got the assignment. Sometimes I was even handed a new graphics program to install at the same time. Granted, the programs came on 1 MB floppy disks at the time and were not nearly as complicated and involved as the same programs today, but still.
Working on such circumstances got me out of the habit of doodling and thumbnails. I guess I will have to work on relearning the thumbnail process now that I have started doodling again. You know what? I find I actually am having fun doodling and not worrying about pleasing some client or customer, known or unknown. How cool is that?
To help you from over thinking a drawing you might try just drawing from life instead of from your own brain. I love to visit the zoo to just draw. It forces you to draw what is happening right now.
Going to a mall and just parking it on a bench and sketching, going to a park, or just sitting on the couch with a few of your favorite magazines and drawing the stuff you find inside. It shouldn’t be about thinking, it should just be about doing.
Hope this helps!