Speed Sketching

When you go out to sketch clouds, shadows, or people they will not be standing still for you. Sketching as you would a still life becomes more or less impossible.

You have to train yourself to draw faster. In his excellent book Art From Intuition: Overcoming Your Fears and Obstacles to Making Art, Dean Nimmer suggests an exercise of 30 Sketches in 30 Minutes: Drawing with No Time to Think.

The idea is "to make quick, line-only sketches" capturing the essential characteristics of your subject. You should be "moving so fast that you don't have time to think about what each sketch looks like."

Some of Nimmer's basic guidelines are to use 30 separate sheets of cheap copy paper so that each drawing area is at least 8" x 10." Use a soft pencil, charcoal or felt-tip pen. Set an egg timer the first few times to get used to how a minute feels, then use your instincts as to when a minute is up. Keep sketching at a steady pace. You can draw the same subject 30 times (focusing on a different aspect) or focus on several different subjects.

Because I create finely-detailed drawings and work slowly with pen and ink, I find it very hard to sketch rapidly. This exercise has helped me. It also forces you to just naturally become more observant which is what any artists needs to be.