Guess what gross discovery I made last month! It still makes me wanna gag just thinking about it. You ready? Well, with the current Cura transformation afoot (you can catch up on that here if you missed it last week) I’ve ended the long neglect of my home studio and embarked on decluttering and revamping it. With me becoming a mom and then a business owner, it had suffered a sad and gradual demotion from art studio to glorified storage shed.
Picture an assortment of chairs, random cabinets, an industrial strength vacuum, hastily discarded piles of drawing pads, rolled up rugs and back-drop sheets, all shoved into whatever free space was available at the time I needed to discard them. All of it marinated with several fine layers of Santa Ana wind generated dust and… “OMG, WHAT IS THAT SMELL?!?”
To cut to the chase, that lovely odor came from a multi-level rat-condo built snugly into the full length of the studio’s left wall.
And you know what that meant, right?
We had to rip it all out. The whole wall had to come down, get cleaned out and then replaced by happy, clean, fresh drywall.
It entailed flying in my father in-law (because do you know what contractors charge to hang drywall? Lemme just say it’s more than an airline ticket), clearing out ALL the clutter, sanding and repainting all the walls, you know… it was quite the bother.
And do you know what’s almost equally annoying?
Getting too far into your drawing and realizing that your proportions are off and having to backtrack. Maybe you’re thinking “Ok Carolin, that’s quite the non sequitur, going from stinky rats and hanging drywall to a few incorrect proportions”? But it really isn’t. So stay with me for a sec because I do have point to drive home.
In this week’s video I’m demonstrating how to usewhat’s called an enveloping shape to improve your drawing’s proportions. You can create these enveloping shapes by enclosing your subject matter within 3-5 long angles connecting the main, outermost points.
Like this:
See, the reason why it made me think of the rat wall scenario is this: If your big outer shape stinks, your drawing will likely too, because it’s literally contained by it. It’ll always be affected and limited by this envelope, just how my brain would’ve been affected, limited and addled by the rat stench, had I tried to create in that environment.
See my point?
So, check out this week’s video and learn how to clear your drawings of undesirable smells. And while you have your work gloves on, I’ll throw in a bonus tool called triangulation to help you ensure things stay stink-free once your enveloping shape is on pointe 😉
Happy drawing!
Carolin