Have a quarter off from the university so I have a lot of time in my hands.
I'm planning to go back to the fundamentals of drawing; i.e, basic 2d shapes, freehand lines and circles, practicing the arm and the elbow rather than the wrist etc.
Oddly enough, a year ago, I was drawing on a level I had never expected to reach but I made the mistake of giving academics precedence over my hobbies by a very big margin. That and gaming sucked away any time I could have spent on a blank sheet of paper.
I drew now and then, when I was on the train or waiting for the class to begin but only quick doodles. Long focused studies were a thing of the past.
This time I'm starting from the ground up, going through every resource available to me on the breadth of the mighty internet. I'm trying to make it not only my primary hobby, but a habit, a part of my daily routine, an integral aspect of myself. For I see no other way; too long have I neglected this wonderful activity, overcome with ignorance towards the true nature of the craft, not to mention my overconfidence.
No more.
Drawing is more than just the act of copying an image, from your mind or the world itself; it is more than just transcribing a picture with a pencil. It is such a fundamental thing. Even these words are little more than drawings themselves, they're symbols, curves of ink arrayed in such a fashion as to evoke a sound tethered to it. Drawing at its heart is a breeze of thoughts, that feels its way through the tip of the pencil into the infinite depth of a blank page; it is the mind's way of cleaning the house where every image is to be sorted by the characteristic shapes that populate it and neatly set on the paper as true as it's place in the universe inside one's mind. Drawing is kind of like poetry where things come together in a seemingly unrelated pattern to create an impression of ideas or feelings so minute, that we don't even have names for them.
In the end, I will say that Drawing is trust. Trust between your sight and your hands, a give and take relationship, a symbiotic connection, one learning to work from the other, teaching the other its ways. It is this trust that deters most beginners because of the incessant betrayal of one to the other; maybe your eyes misjudged that angle, maybe your stroke wasn't dark enough, and so on. They are not accustomed to working with each other, but even they do not know the power they could possess if they worked as one. That, ladies and gentlemen, has been the goal of anyone who ever lifted a pencil to capture their sight. A complete removal of discord between one's sight and hand movements, a perfect harmony of motion.
I myself have given up many times in the face of this 'discord' and have constantly procrastinated and delayed the activity of drawing. Sometimes I cannot work up the will to sit at my table. Call it lack of motivation, laziness, whatever. I have no doubt it is all those things and more. There must be something...something out of my control, a master, a commander who I cannot say no to who wishes me to pick up the pencil and get on with it, otherwise I could never work up to it myself while I'm stuck in this lackluster limbo of idleness and doubt at my abilities.
I hope to make a change. No, rather, I am deadset on making a change. I will draw because it is commanded by someone of greater authority than I, someone not privy to what I feel like doing who I cannot deny. I will draw because it is bloody fun, I will draw until the breeze of ideas brings a storm, a tornado, to whirl away my doubts to high heaven and leave me in peace, in the serenity of the blank page, an arena for my hand.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Friday, July 13, 2012
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