Admin Post: Drawing Challenge #30 - 30 Circles

[goss]

Sometimes the greatest challenge is in simply getting started. Here's a neat exercise that can help with overcoming that obstacle:

Challenge #30 - 30 Circles in 3 Minutes

Start with a page with 30 blank circles on it,
and 3 minutes on the clock.

Fill in as many circles as you can, using pen or pencil. The aim is all about QUANTITY, not quality. Your circles can be random designs or variations on a single theme. Your drawings can even extended outside the circles themselves.

Remember, the goal is simply to fill as many as possible as quickly as you can. The motive behind the 30 circles is to stop yourself from self-censoring. When you go for quantity, you don’t have time to ponder whether your idea is good or bad; you can edit and further develop those ideas later. This is the stage where creativity flourishes.

You can freehand draw your own circles, or print the following template. Click for higher resolution image:


(Source: This activity was created by Bob McKim of the Stanford Design Program)

A round-up post for submissions to this challenge will be done on Saturday 27th June, 2020.

Happy Drawing, everyone! :)

Comments

[yhlee]

I love this challenge and hope I can convince myself to try it!

[goss]

Yay! I'm glad to hear it. :D

I've been dragging my feet with getting back started with my art for couple months now, and am hoping that this one will break the dry spell.

[dray]

Ah man, we had something like this project in art school: we had to draw the same thing 100 times in different ways. My topic was 'apple'. By about 20 I was dying. By about 80 I was a soggy lich hag putting a hex upon this miserable plane of existence. By 81 I did not give a fuck and had somehow burst my corporeal form and managed to get the last 19 or so finished with extremely nihilist splashes.

The moral of the lesson was that we do our most cliche work in the first 30 or so instances of an idea and get 'better' from there. Ten years later and I still don't know if I believe that was true....

The moral of this story is that I think it's all in how you approach it, and I really love that I won't be graded on this. That might just be the key, honestly.

[goss]

LOL! Ah yes, I remember doing that same exercise for one of my art classes. It was DAUNTING. D:

But I'm hoping that that 3-minute time limit, plus the lack of limitation of subject matter, will make it less of a task to fill.

I really love that I won't be graded on this

Ha! Yes, sometimes I am my own worse judge! I will have to keeping reminding myself that each circle I fill doesn't have to be the Best Thing Ever, and that the point of the exercise is quantity and not quality. :b

[abyss_valkyrie]

No time to worry over the details?!Oh my gosh!That's such a great thing!Saved the template,let's see how I fare!:D

[goss]

Yay! \o/ Good luck and hope you have fun with it! :D

[mific]

Oh wow, that'll be a real challenge for my detail-oriented obsessionality! As many as possible of thirty drawings in three minutes! I think I'll need a theme or else I won't be able to come up with enough things fast enough. Like faces, flowers, that sort of thing. Hmmm.

[goss]

It'll be a real challenge for me too, with my Perfectionist tendencies. :b

I often am paralysed to start anything, because I sit there waiting for "brilliance" to come, before I put pencil to paper. *headdesk* Hence not getting any art practice done for months on end. :b

So I'm hoping that this sort of exercise will break me out of that, especially given the time limit.

[mekare]

YAYnew drawesome challenge. Honetsly this is the perfect challenge at the righ time for me. Nothing too involved, with a template and a time limit. I haven‘t touched a pencil in weeks.

[goss]

Awesome! \o/ I know you must be so taken up with RL stuff, but I'm glad to hear you might be able to give this one a go. :D

[sexycazzy]

These are great! Unfortunately I am unable to print a copy so was wondering what size is that circle in your template so that I can draw the same size of circles?

Thanks and I look forward to giving this a try!

[mific]

I opened the file in PS and the exact measurements are:

3.44 inches across circles (outer edge to outer edge)

0.65 inches horizontally between them

1.1 inches vertically between them

Have fun!

[sexycazzy]

awesome thank you!