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 3×5 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
lyric
April 21, 2012 at 9:40 pmOh 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.
🙂
Alexandrite Woman
April 20, 2012 at 2:51 pmWonderful 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
landscapelady
April 20, 2012 at 11:48 amHow 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.
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