Today I wanted to pick up my pace and get more sketches done in a session so I finally did the 10-minute apples exercise. It’s been on my list of things to do since reading Carol Marine‘s book Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often To Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist.

I used my gridded viewfinder and noticed something right away that I hadn’t been so aware of before: when I looked up at my apple, then down to my paper, and back up to the apple again, if my head wasn’t in the exact same position each time I couldn’t rely on those grid marks. Just a tiny shift in my eye position meant my measuring and marking would be incorrect. It makes total sense! But before I started reading more about proportions and sight sizing it just hadn’t sunk in completely. So I think that’s one drawback to the viewfinder method…if I’m going to use it I have to be really sure I’m positioning myself properly.

I like this exercise because it gets me trying slightly different sketching methods more quickly. I made a variety of shading marks today, which was good because one of my goals for this project is to develop a consistent language for expressing line and value.