#30×30 : 2026 : Destruction Testing

Here’s a few sketches from early in my warmup phase of this year’s marathon.

This is a thing I sometimes do, which I call *Destruction Testing* – which is to keep painting, past the point where you would normally be satisfied – with the intention of pushing the image just a little bit past the brink of destruction – in order to achieve a new thing you haven’t done before.

Because, if you always stop when you think the drawing is done – you will never see what’s on the other side.

So:

I started by drawing a dozen or so (can’t recall) line drawings from a video by @milena_milachich, and painted them ‘as normal’ for life drawing – and then just kept going. Three, or four times over the figure and background.

All the drawings and the first-pass watercolors are now obliterated, except these two examples I put aside, and as well, about half of the ‘finished’ images were actually destroyed in the process. Painted over to the point of unrecognizability.

Fun hey?

One of the ways I judge a watercolor is if I can imagine it blown up to six feet high, and I still like it. I think these have that going for them.

I feel like the end result is something you can’t get any other way. And while they’re not really as refined as I might like – they *could* be the basis of a new painting later.

Most importantly – doing some Destruction Testing every so often rewards you with a freedom from perfection that you can use in all your work. Proof that there are gems to be found by taking risks.

Anyone who says they feel constrained, or anxious when they’re drawing, or who wishes they could be more loose – this is a cure for that.

On a more, I don’t know, ‘honest note’, as compared to yesterday’s post – I wasn’t even sure I was going to post these – but they are part of my #30×30, so you’re supposed to show your work; good or bad.

I do realize all the figure drawing exercises this year are somewhat silly for a supposedly mature artist.

These are literally what I was doing in the first year of college, just being done now with a more hand-skills and a slightly depressed sense of; it doesn’t matter, so f**k-it, just draw.

Maybe you can call this year’s marathon an artistic mid-life crisis.

Which might be something fueled by a knowledge that time is running short for my artistic lifespan, and that one’s abilities are possibly on the cusp of declining, rather than continuing to rise indefinitely.

Age is a factor, I wont lie. Art is a sport, not a science. It’s physical, and your age has an impact on your vision, your hand-eye coordination, and your processing power.

Did you know that studies have showing drawing is associated with the speech center of the brain?

Take my word for it or go browse: (Observational drawing in the brain: a longitudinal exploratory fMRI study / Pubmed) and ( The Neural Bases of Drawing: a Meta-analysis and Systematic Literature Review of Neruofucntional Studies in Healthy Individuals / Springer Nature)

Next year I will be 60, and I am noticing I am searching for words more frequently, or using placeholders (hand me that thingy, will ya?) – which is perfectly normal in aging people – but I do feel somewhat the same about my drawing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dying or something, but I can feel that things are changing. In the same way I feel my lower back when I’m gardening.

So while I do feel my marathon this year has been kind of weird and pointless – I also feel like I’m keeping in training for whatever comes next – and it’s important not to stop when you don’t see any immediate need to make art.

Whatever project that comes next is going to come out of staying active, not out of stopping, and it’s going to come out of experimentation, not retreading old routines. (Sorry Urban Sketching!).

So; that is also part of the whole psychology of #30×30.

The group motivation and the power of showing up, even when you don’t feel it. Same as the gym. Same as ‘butt-in-chair’ is the only way that a novel gets written.

It might seem sometimes that I only promote this online event just to be a bit of a marketer, self-promoting my books and classes, and that thing old dudes do where they try to stay relevant no matter what – but I hope that it’s clear that I really am doing it for the sake of the art, and that I really do think these benefits can be shared by everyone who participates.

But mostly I’m doing it for myself, and you should be doing it too :)

Hah!

~m