Lesson 5 and I still struggle with this

9:24 PM, Sunday June 4th 2023

I took about a six month break from DAB and I started getting prepared to continue and something I noticed I'm struggling with (and before the break as well) is the sausage forms that are so vital to the course. My sausages usually come out very uneven or wobbly or one side is almost straight or way bigger than the other side ect. Even just drawing an arbitrary sausage on a page turns out like trash. How do I stop sucking at them? I literally cant draw them.

2 users agree
12:52 PM, Monday June 5th 2023

Not too sure how much this might help but maybe this could give you something to work off of. One thing I found that helped me consciously work towards getting a noticeably better and more consistent output on my sausages was to experiment as to where I started drawing them and to take a mental note as to which approach worked best for me. This might be a no brainer to some, but it took me a while to notice that I was drawing better sausages when I would start with the inward facing curve rather than the outward one. Also maybe another no brainer to some but I didn't fully realize that rotating the page could help in this context too, making sure I was drawing in a position where my hand wasn't blocking where I was drawing helped me here if that makes sense.

0 users agree
3:21 AM, Thursday June 8th 2023

How are your single arc lines? Can you do a single, confident arc while following a set path? Maybe try the frayed lines exercises, but for arcing lines (small and large). Sausages are basically a set of two arcs, but connected.

The other thing is I've found is that is seems everyone has a "Goldilocks speed" for drawing (if you are familiar with the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the three bears)--not too slow (wobbly), and not too fast (inaccurate). Just right. If you experiment you can probably find your own current, personal "Goldilocks speed."

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Printer Paper

Printer Paper

Where the rest of my recommendations tend to be for specific products, this one is a little more general. It's about printer paper.

As discussed in Lesson 0, printer paper (A4 or 8.5"x11") is what we recommend. It's well suited to the kind of tools we're using, and the nature of the work we're doing (in terms of size). But a lot of students still feel driven to sketchbooks, either by a desire to feel more like an artist, or to be able to compile their work as they go through the course.

Neither is a good enough reason to use something that is going to more expensive, more complex in terms of finding the right kind for the tools we're using, more stress-inducing (in terms of not wanting to "ruin" a sketchbook - we make a lot of mistakes throughout the work in this course), and more likely to keep you from developing the habits we try to instill in our students (like rotating the page to find a comfortable angle of approach).

Whether you grab the ream of printer paper linked here, a different brand, or pick one up from a store near you - do yourself a favour and don't make things even more difficult for you. And if you want to compile your work, you can always keep it in a folder, and even have it bound into a book when you're done.

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