Massive thanks to Squarespace for supporting the channel and sponsoring
today's video. From websites to blogs to online shops they are the all-in-one
platform for building a beautiful online presence and a solid business. More on
that in a little bit but for now, hello my loves! And Happy New Year :) Hope you
had a great one and are feeling motivated and positive about whatever 2019 has in
store for us. As you can see we are getting right into it, we are doing the
10 minute, 1 minute, 10 second challenge today, but I'll talk more about that as
we go on. I'm just basically here making sure all my tools are at the ready; so
I've got a mechanical pencil, I've got a pencil for shading and I've got the fine
liner that I normally use for line work. I've got my timer- ... out of breath
already!! It's quick, fast-paced video today! And yeah, basically, a little bit of
hesitation here with starting, and then I got started with the very first drawing.
So as you can tell, the whole point of this challenge is to draw something in
10 minutes, draw it again in one minute and then to draw it again in the space of 10
seconds. If you can! So with this first one I decided I'd go in drawing a house
because that is kind of my safe space, of course. That is something I thought- for
my first time doing this challenge, having no idea you know what I am capable
of drawing in 10 minutes- a little house is kind of a dead cert for me where I
feel like I can give it my best go. So here I'm just starting to
sketch it out and I really wasn't sure how long 10 minutes would be. I wasn't sure
how much effort and time to put into the initial sketch but as always I just
started with my usual process of sketching out a house; so just the big
overall shapes at first and then kind of fleshing it out with a few more angles
and bits and bobs as it went along. Also, when I got everything ready, I made sure
to have a reference up. So again, this is one that I used Google Maps for, just to
find a house. I think it was in San Francisco. It's actually an old reference
that I had saved in just an old reference folder that I have. Like
sometimes when I'm procrastinating I just spend a day going through
Google Maps, Google Street View and saving screenshots. So actually it's-... the
pink house in my miniature houses series... it's from the same screenshot. This house
was next door to it. But yeah, enough about that anyway. As I said, I
started with a little bit of trepidation. I really didn't know what to expect from
this. I've seen this challenge floating around for some time, I think the last
person I saw doing it was Kesh, who did a fantastic job so I'll leave his channel
below for you to check it out, but you essentially only get a short amount
of time to draw whatever it is that you've chosen to draw. And I don't think
I've ever done anything with this much of a time limit before, correct me if I'm
wrong- maybe I have. But it's not something that I'm really all that used to
I guess, and normally my house drawing/ paintings will take maybe 20
minutes - half an hour, so I'm not that far off with the 10 minute thing and I got
to realise that a bit more for this first drawing. I think having the time
limit stressed me out a little bit at first, but as I went on I realised that I
was kind of drawing at my normal pace for this first one. As we went, on
you'll see it wasn't that easy with the shorter time frame, but with
this one I feel like I had a good pace going and- I don't know- I just felt like
this would be a good challenge for loosening up a little bit and just
drawing without overthinking too much and drawing without as much detail. So it
was a good way for me to not worry about the little things and making
mistakes. I just had to commit to every single line and if it wasn't perfect
that was fine. But, you know, you just have to keep moving, keep going. And this is a
great challenge for that. I was constantly looking at the clock as well,
the countdown, and yeah it was a weird one because I couldn't really tell if I
was as far as I should be at certain points. Like now it's 6:50 or whatever and
I wasn't sure if- I don't know if I should be further along with the drawing
at that point or not. I couldn't really envisage how the drawing would progress
over the rest of that time and how much time each little bit would take. Here in
particular, I was a bit confused about the roof.
Ad-libbing at that point and not going along with my initial sketch so much and
so the lines weren't connecting where they were supposed to, but as I said, it's
one of those things where you can't really dwell on on the little mistakes,
you can't let that stop you from carrying on. And I think that's a great
way to learn, to just keep going because I feel like it's not a noticeable
mistake- like even looking at it now I don't think you can tell that the roof
isn't aligned where it should be, or where it was in the sketch- so yeah it's
a good lesson in accepting the little errors and the little hiccups
and continuing. And obviously in this case, I got lucky and it did turn out
looking okay, But even if it didn't, it's just something that you learn from and
the only way to learn from it is to carry on with it as, if you put the
pen down as soon as you make a small mistake, you're not really gonna achieve
anything, or you're at least gonna achieve stuff a lot slower. So at this point, I think it
was going quite well- and apologies if the lighting is changing a lot in this
video, I think we just had the sun come out then... yeah it's just it was a weird
day where the sun kept going in and out and it did affect the
video a little bit, hopefully you can still see the lines and everything
properly. We're at the halfway point here which- I mean, it's almost in my eyes
done. And also, by the way I forgot to mention, the reason I'm doing this as a
voiceover (I think most people when they do this kind of video they talk along
while they're drawing in real time) I couldn't do that! You guys have seen me
talking and painting at the same time or talking and drawing at the same time and
I talk really slowly and I draw really slowly, so I thought to give myself my
best shot- it might be a bit of a cheat- but I won't talk while I'm drawing, I'll
just do a voiceover after, which is proving to be a nice format but I can
tell that I'm talking quite quickly because I'm trying to fit in
everything that I want to say and I'm watching a countdown so apologies for
that. I know my fast-talking can get a bit
much sometimes but I will make sure to caption the video as always, so yeah if
you ever do find that you can't understand what I'm saying in my videos,
just switch on the closed captions.
(If you're just joining us, hi!)
I do caption like 90% of my videos, apart from the really long ones. Like sometimes I will
and sometimes I won't. But yeah, if I'm ever talking too fast for you, either
slow it down to like 0.15 speed- no that's that's faster, isn't it- 0.5
speed or switch on the captions. So at this point, I decided to give it a
rest with the line work- I thought I had a good foundation there- and I went in with
this, I think it's a HP pencil, just to add some shading. This is something I
haven't done in a while. I thought about water colouring it but
the way that I watercolour, I feel like I like to do more layering and I thought
that just wouldn't be conducive to this challenge- like the time limit. I would
need to be waiting for paint to dry and that obviously wouldn't work. So I used
to do this where I would just use pencil to shade it and, having done this again, I
really liked it! I do think the paper I used wasn't the best choice for this
pencil just because the paper was quite textured so it wasn't as easy to get
into the little small areas like these windows and get that detail that I
wanted but I was able to go back in afterwards and redefine the lines. But if
I were to do this again, I think I would use a different paper. I just used what
was next to me at the time. This is the same paper that I've been using for my
hue paintings- my like monochrome paintings- and I think it's a
Seawhite paper and it was relatively cheap but also a really good quality.
Yeah, throwing in some shading and at this point I think this is the moment
where I thought 'what else is there to do really with this??'. I still had two minutes
left and felt pretty much done. The initial rush was over and the main
body of the drawing was there and everything else I was doing was just to
add to what was already there. I think at this point, it could have passed
as a finished piece but, because I had that extra couple of minutes, I decided
to go in and redefine some lines which I do think
helped actually. I do you think- looking at you right now- I think it
helped to add in some lines again. But I got to this point and thought
'oh this this challenge is easy, I don't understand what the fuss is
about. I've been able to do this!' and obviously I've done a small drawing and
of something that I like drawing and draw quite often, so I get that it's
probably easier for me than it should have been.
I was kind of stalling at this point to just kind of use up the rest of the time that I had.
The thing with me and time is that it's just one of those things I'm
not good at visualising. Time and distance. You know, if someone says
something that's five miles away or five meters away, I really do not know the
difference. It's not I don't know different distances, it's more like I
can't visualise it. Like it makes more sense in my brain to say it's as far as
from your house to so-and-so's house. Like that is a lot easier for me to get
as a concept. I think it's quite an abstract thing for me; time and
distance, so with this challenge it was so weird to feel ten minutes because it
wasn't what I expected it to feel. Especially with the one minute, you'll
see how that went on! But following on from this ten minutes. I thought 'okay,
I've figured out what a minute feels like' and then it just completely got switched
upside down. So with this one, obviously I was able to follow my usual approach
with drawings and being able to do it makes me think that there is no
excuse not to draw something every day. You know, this is ten minutes,
everyone's got a spare 10 minutes. If it's a habit that you're trying to
build this year to draw every day, this is a great challenge to start with,
because it just shows what you can do with spare 10 minutes and I now
know that I can turn this 10 minute house thing-.... sorry I'm getting distracted
by my little finishing touches there- Yeah, I can turn to like drawing a
house every day if I want to , just for 10 minutes. If I do not have anything else
to draw, I've got no excuse not to put pen to
paper, and that is what building habits is all about. So that is the first one
done. I was pretty pretty pleased with that and even had time to throw in a
little potted plant at the end. And then it's time to start with the one-minute
drawing. And this one, as I said, I really wasn't sure how I was gonna approach it
or how long one minute would be. Having done the 10 minutes and it being
a lot longer than I thought would be, I think I went into this thinking that I
would have more time than I ended up having. So there's like a moment of
hesitation there, where I just wasn't sure, like it was kind of nerve-racking
thinking I don't know where to start.
And then yeah, got started eventually and I think I instantly honed in on details
a bit too much. I think like I just started with the exact same approach as
before maybe going a little bit quicker but
I hadn't really streamlined my approach that much. I maybe did a little bit less
of a sketch and I think it helped just having already drawn it, I knew
the main shapes, but I did have a look at the time and realised 'oh my gosh I'm
almost halfway through now and I've barely made a dent in this drawing' so
that's when I really started to rush and I really started to get an appreciation
for how short a minute is. Every time I glanced over at the clock I was thinking
'oh my gosh, this is going so so quickly! This doesn't even feel like real
life! This doesn't feel like real time!' and like you can see right now, I'm just
putting in these little details that don't need to be there; the paneling on
the side of the wall when the whole foundation of the building isn't
even there yet and there's a couple of seconds left. So this one, 100%
it was a failure, but I think I needed this as a practice to get an idea of
what a minute feels like so- you may think that this is a cheat- but I decided
to give myself more more chance with the one-minute one just because I really
didn't know what a minute felt like until I did this. So take two! And with
this one minute drawing, I just decided to
go straight in with pen- no sketching, because that was a complete waste
of time- and really block in just the main shapes, really simple. I was being
quite considered with where I was putting the lines because I thought, if
this is gonna be the whole drawing, I want it to at least look
like some thoughts got into it. I still think I was being a bit too
finicky with little bits, I could have just drawn a box and then triangles
on top and then kind of filled in a few more details here and there I do think I
waste- like I'm drawing the plant now!- I wasted a lot of time on
things when the windows aren't in, the door wasn't in, and
I'm drawing the steps. So I think that is something that I have learnt just from
stepping back and looking back at my approach to these drawings. But overall I
think I learned that it's a good way of showing
things with limited lines and detail, which is something I've been
desperate to work on style-wise anyway. I really struggle with that muscle memory
of doing things properly, so this was a great way to break something down into
the most basic shapes and lines that would still paint a picture of what it
is. So with the final drawing, I did take a little bit more time to plan my
approach and think about what very few shapes and lines would work. It's
super basic but it still reads as a house. I always thought this half of the
challenge would be pointless, like this 1 minute or 10 seconds, thinking 'what can
you get of value from a 10 second drawing?' but what I learned is that this would be
a great way for me to work on stylising my work more and not relying so much on
detail, just getting to know which shapes to tell the story and being able to add
style on top of that. I literally have been hesitating so long to do this
10-second drawing, because I really spent a lot of time just thinking
about how I would approach it. But anyway, I would encourage you to give this a go.
Even right now, like after this video ends! It only takes a few minutes and I
guarantee that you will enjoy it. I was relatively happy
but at least it looks like a house and the three of them together
I actually think looks pretty cool all lined up. And I really I really enjoyed
it, I really feel like this is something that I will do more, especially if I'm
working to stylise something more and I'm struggling with that. I will draw it
how I would normally draw it and then maybe re-draw it with a time limit and
then maybe redraw again with an even smaller time limit. So, before we go, a
little bit about Squarespace. If you follow my vlogs, you'll know that I
made the switch to them from my website back in June. As I said in that video, I
was looking for a platform with a more intuitive back-end, somewhere I could
make a nice-looking and easily customisable website, because I really
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complicated to make even small changes- like make a header on my shop
to say that was on holiday or something- and moving to Squarespace has truly
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it's a bit of an adjustment getting used to a new e-commerce platform but I
honestly haven't looked back. Having everything all-in-one my website, my shop
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I know you've heard about Squarespace before and if you've been thinking about
taking your business to the next level, if you're looking to start selling your
art or your prints or anything like that, I really couldn't recommend it enough. If
anything just give it a go with the free trial and see what you can do. To try
out that free trial, you can head to Squarespace.com and when you're ready
to launch you can go to squarespace.com/minniesmall to save 10% off your
first purchase of a domain or website. Thank you so much for joining me today,
please let me know if you give this challenge a go, and yeah I'll see you
soon for the next video! Bye!