Mental Exercises?

[funfetus]

This may be a silly question, but: Does anyone have any suggestions for "mental exercises" that you can do for your art, when you can't actually do any art at the moment? I have 8 hours a day at work that I feel like I'm wasting because I can't draw. Sometimes I'll make a conscious effort to stockpile visual information -- the way the light works on this or that surface, etc. Any suggestions for anything else one could do?

[Farvus]

If you could see life drawing just as a way to focus on observing how something looks like then ultimately it is possible to go throught this process entirely in your head. More precisely I mean analysing the proportions, major volumes, values and other such things.
When going home back from work I sometimes imagined what would be the movement of my arm with pencil when I could be able to draw somebody or something in front of me. Well...it might sound stupid but it almost feels like really drawing from life.
Somewhere in TV there was documentary about human mind and sciencists asked athlete to imagine that he's running. After some time they done tests and it turned out that he has stronger muscles. I don't know if they are telling the truth but you don't loose anything if you try :)

[Seedling]

What Farvus said. And you can practice seeing value and color. What colors would you mix to reproduce what you are seeing? If you drwe the room in front of you, what would be the darkest and lightest parts of your drawing.

Also, you can practice seeing 3D spaces as being 2D shapes.

[funfetus]

Thanks -- those sound like good suggestions. Especially abotu value and color. It's going to be difficult without the Photoshop eyedropper to check on it, but I guess that's a crutch I need to learn to live without. :)

[HunterKiller_]

I trace images in my head when I can't draw.
Focus on an object, and imagine my hand drawing around the contours. If I really focus and get into it, it will just feel like I'm actually drawing.

[Seedling]

Thanks -- those sound like good suggestions. Especially abotu value and color. It's going to be difficult without the Photoshop eyedropper to check on it, but I guess that's a crutch I need to learn to live without. :)

It's better to practice without the Photoshop eyedropper there as training wheels. When you pick out the darkest value in what you are seeing, you also are forced to choose how much of that dark area should be represented in your image by pure black. Say you are looking at a doorway into a dark room. Should the entire opening be drawn as a big black rectangle? Or should the interior of the room be drawn in a range of very dark grays? There is no right answer, and these sorts of decisions should not be made by a computer.