I've been thinking about my favorite subject again. Why is it that people are afraid of drawing? I say this almost every time I open my mouth in a lecture or class. We have to give ourselves permission to be imperfect. We have to give ourselves time to learn. I think it's crazy that we assume we are not an artist if we can't automatically draw the first time we pick up a pencil. We don't expect a food lover to be a Chef until after they've trained. We don't call someone an author without them first having learned to read and write and compose.
Here I am an artist- and I have to admit that I'm sometimes guilty of it myself. I sketched all the time but was afraid to draw a face because - well - it's HARD! I finally stopped whining about it and decided to DO THE WORK!
The goal was to draw a face a day for a year. I'm not so good at consistency when it comes to things like daily tasks - there is is too much "life" going on at my house. But I did fill the box. And I'm still doing it. I used 3x5 cards instead of sketchbook because they are not "precious." They are kind of junk paper. You can't ruin something if it's already junk right?
Guess what - it's paying off.
The time and effort and the work, work, work. It's paying off.
More than once in the past few weeks I've held up a sketch to show a member of my family and they immediately knew who it was. That's huge progress here. :-)
Mind you - it's by no means effortless. I still have a long way to go but it's such a fun journey to be on. What pleasure to open the box and see how far I've come.
How about you?
For those of you who followed along last year - have you seen the fruits of your efforts?
What is easier now that you've put in some time doing the WORK?
3 comments:
How did you know I was afraid of faces? This is a good idea - a face a day. When I make something with a person on it I always have to do a back view so I do t have to draw the face. I like the junk paper idea. I'm going to take my junk mail and cut the envelopes and anything else usable into the same size and use them.
Wonderful work. You really have made great progress. In answer to your question, I'm a frustrated artist -- I paint by number, sew, do needlework, crochet, but I can't draw. Yesterday, inspired by some doodling on a blog, I tried to at least doodle. One of the things I tried to do was a face. Ugh!
The answer for me is quite simple: my 8th grade and 10th grade art teachers, both of whom told me I had no talent and I shouldn't even try to draw, do art work, etc. The 10th gr teacher transferrred me out of her class w/o my approval, agreement or any further discussion.
Big
Oh my goodness how RUDE! For some crazy reason I thought the job of an art teacher was to teach students to make art. A math teacher could never get away with transferring a student out of class because they showed no aptitude - they must teach the math.
My dad was an art teacher by the way. He TAUGHT students how to make art.
So - kiss your teachers gently on the cheek, escort them through the door - then brick it up and get to work. You CAN learn to draw unless you keep believing them and saying "can't."
Start at the beginning. I have a tutee in the links page about the beginnings of drawing a face. It's very much like math.
:-)
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