After three years of daily collage, I decided to shift gears in 2016 and have my daily art be drawing. I've bought a little sketchbook and am filling a page every day. But I've done something even more radical and signed up for ART 101 at University of Louisville -- the first formal art course I've ever taken in my life.
So for the first time in my life I find myself with a serious big sketchbook, not the dinky, unthreatening little ones that I am hesitantly becoming comfortable with.
It's an online course, which makes life a whole lot easier than shlepping to campus. But taking a drawing class at home requires different kinds of assignments, of course. Even if you have a husband or roommate on premises there's no guarantee of a live model willing to sit still for you on demand. So this week we're drawing our own feet, plus an irregularly shaped vegetable and a glass bottle.
I had to go out and buy a whole raft of pencils in different varieties, and have discovered that I like the charcoal pencils better than the graphite. I'm trying to become confident with a darker, bolder mark, wrestling with my inner wimp who wants to make teeny weeny faint lines so nobody can see my hesitations and mistakes. I'll keep you posted on how things go.
If you want to follow along with my daily drawing, I'm posting once a week to my daily art blog. But maybe you'd rather wait till later in the year when I get a little better at it.
OMG! You are already better than me...but you may have inspired me to finally take the time to learn to draw! It sounds like fun! Keep those pencils handy!
ReplyDeleteI went to art school and I can tell you "perfection" is NOT what you are aiming for. Personality is. And your tea bag is VERY good. So, just draw. It's exercise for your hand and eyes. You are training your brain to draw.
ReplyDeleteLa felicito. Son bocetos muy aceptables. Y lo mejor es que su evolución es rápida y buena.
ReplyDeleteKathy-after being inspired by your daily art project, I am finally doing one. I am wearing only clothing I have made every day for this year starting with my birthday which was Friday. The art part is really the documentation of how the entire thing is going to go down. It just makes you think about things differently which is a good thing. Good luck with your drawing.
ReplyDeleteWow Maria! That knocks "Me Made May" right outta the park!! Great job. :)
DeleteYou are articulating a process (learning to work big) that I'm still going through - it really does require a shift in mental gears, which takes practice.
ReplyDeleteSomething that might help in the big sketchbook is to fill a page with lots of little things - not all drawings have to take over the whole page on their own!
As for buying a raft of pencils ... have you discovered pastel pencils? I've been using a white one over pencil lines (outlines of shapes) - lovely effect...
Kathy, I find it so fascinating that we all are so full of fear of a line on paper but it seems to be universal until an artist works long enough to push through it. But why? Where does this fear come from? But it is real and powerful. Remember, it is just a line on paper....no one has to see it other than you unless you choose to show it anyone. Congrats on starting something new to shake up the creative juices!
ReplyDeleteI like charcoal too. It is almost freeing that it does NOT have an eraser on the other end. And yeah, know what you mean by the sketchy little pale lines in case it isn't 'right'. I took a class once called "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" with the accompanying book of the same name. It was fun. Like anything, it's all practice. No one gets good at anything in 5 minutes. According to Malcomb Gladwell, it's 10,000 hours. However, I can win Pictionary, and I don't have anywhere near the requisite practice time. Good enough is all relative!
ReplyDeletethis is what I wanted to concentrate in this year. I have been humming about a short course (bricks and mortar university ) for the first semester.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I will.
Ack! I really need to dive right into something like this, though to be successful I think I need to set aside 15 minutes. More and I'm likely to spend more time on these exercises than on the art I should be making. Hmmm, now I'm getting lots of ideas and need to stop thinking out loud here.
ReplyDeleteVivien -- I rarely spend as much as 15 minutes on a drawing (at least while I'm working in a tiny sketchbook). this is nice, after three years of collages, which took a lot longer.
DeleteGood to know, Kathy.
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