hey buddy just wondering if u have any tips for Go Very Fast. drawing wise. i think u are the speediest draw-er I know with such a cute style and I very much enjoy your amazing stick figures and such and would like to learn how to Do That if possible. unfortunately I’m the slowest artist I know and I get v hung up on stuff and have a hard time loosening up and just doodling. i always end up fussing with construction lines and stressing about making things much more finished and proper than I intended to even if I originally set out to just make a 30-second uggo doodle for laffs and kicks. as resident Esteemed Doodler do you have wisdom for high-strung nerds such as myself who seek the sweet nectar of Literally Just Doodlin, Learning And Improving And Stuff Ofc But Mostly Just Having a Great Time About It (not that any of your doods are uggo, on the contrary I find them all high-quality art and I would pay money to visit a fancy art gallery with your very doodliest doodles on display in all their glory)
HI! I would LOVE to talk about Go Very Fast, drawing wise!! It's my all-time favorite kind of drawing, and it is very near and dear to my heart.
First of all, let's get this out of the way: it's practice. we all know it's practice, we've heard it, we are tired of it, we are taking a nap instead of practicing.
Here's my tips and thoughts:
(1) Let it look bad!!! It's going to look bad!!! I'm sorry its just true
Sometimes it will look like the people have broken 5 bones:
Sometimes it will look like whatever the fuck this is:
oh god how did this happen:
It will even look bad when the picture looks good! For example, take a look at Evita in the lefthand panel here:
Overall the panel is nice. But if you focus on Evita's actual shape it's awkward. The arm on the sill doesn't look like it's supporting any weight, and the arm pulling back the curtain doesn't make sense, and the pose looks like it would hurt my back, and it's just not very attractive.
But its FINE THAT IT LOOKS BAD, because the composition of the whole thing is okay and the scene is clearly communicated.
Connecting to my next point:
(2) Focus on the outlines and the silhouettes!
Composition is always important but its pretty much all you have if you're working really fast.
Here are some drawings I did really fast that I think are really hard to look at:
Can you tell what I was trying to draw? Can you tell that that's ladybug fighting godzilla there in the distance? I can't. I literally drew this and sometimes I have to squint to figure out what it is. It looks like nothing. the silhouettes are not communicating "ladybug and godzilla", because ladybug is in a big white explosion, and godzilla's tail is cut off and obscured by the foreground, and also the shape isn't very good. It's so busy that your eye doesn't find the shapes I want you to find.
(compare to the foreground, very clear, adrien's silhouette is so obvious, simple, unobscured)
Here's one that's too busy to read easily:
This panel is ALL OVER THE PLACE, the silhouettes are unclear and it's hard to know where to look or even what they're holding because the shapes are so busy and undefined.
To make this better, while still drawing it just as fast, I could have:
(a) The people are the subject of this panel, so I should have made both of their heads more defined and easy to see. I would keep all of chat in the panel so you could see both his party hats (clear silhouette) and maybe given queen bee's pigtail more shape.
(b) added less detail to chloe's armful of gifts and given her actual arms more definition so you would focus on "she is holding a lot" instead of wondering what the fuck was happening in that mass of lines. Chat noir's armful is closer to what I wanted to go for.
On the contrast, here's some examples of fast comics I've done that have really clearly communicated shapes n silhouettes.
They are so easy to look at:
Look at that. NONE of those drawings are good individually and I did them all very fast, but because the silhouettes are so clearly defined its very easy to look at and understand.
Here's another. SO fast. So clear and easy to view:
It's about the CLEAR SHAPES!!
chat noir and ladybug are very very good for clear silhouettes and fast drawing - they contrast each other so good! you can get away with a ton of GO VERY FAST:
Like the silhouette in this one is an absolute lump!! but because they contrast each other you still get both their shapes really clearly.
(3) Some exercises to try
If you want to be mindful about drawing quickly and not getting caught up in details, I can recommend a couple exercises.
<>Time yourself. Give yourself 30 seconds to draw something, and if you don't like how it came out too bad!!! Try again!! 30 more seconds, new image.
<>Do continuous line drawings, to focus on shape/form. put your pen down and draw your subject without lifting the pen up. don't even vary pressure, just one long bold line, creating the entire image.
<>Draw literally just the silhouette of the whole pictures you're thinking of. And then draw it again in one continuous line.
<>Go for quantity over quality! Do a lot of sketches of your subject and try to capture the essence of it, the feel, the gesture, the gestalt, before you go in and fill out the details. Or be like me and don't fill out the details at all haha
These will look bad!!!!!! That's good.
These will give you practice, but I hope will also help free you from the idea that your art has to be perfect and pristine to be worthwhile. This isn't to knock down detailed or precise art, which I adore! It's instead to remind you that art is good if it makes you feel something, or makes you think, or makes you laugh, or if you just like to look at it. It can be anything you feel good about!! or bad about!! art is wild!
I have always been inspired by artists like Kate Beaton and Quentin Blake. Their art reminds me that I can be a valuable communicator and excellent artist just with doodling and simple shapes. They've helped me have confidence in my lumpy art even though I really struggle with more detailed beautiful illustrations, and that can make me feel like i'm not a real artist! But I am. I'm just a very fast lumpy artist.
Anyways, thank you for the ask. I love to talk about it, I love to draw fast and bad, and I love to look through my old sketchbooks for examples of bad bad fast fast drawings.
I'll leave you with this one, which was so fast and bad I had to start over immediately:
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