detailed modified contour drawing

2 hours.

the index finger is *very* close to what i actually see ... it's just a
really weird angle to view and therefore looks wrong.

modified contour drawings

these are all felt tip on glass.

pure contour drawing

my left hand.

my 10 year old house?

we're asked to draw a house as we did when we were 10. apparently the
average student can just crank it out when asked to -- in fact, only 10%
of ms. edwards's students *can't*.

but i don't have a good solid memory of doing it ... and my memory is
*way* better than the average person on most things, but not here ... is
it because i just block out painful art experiences, or is it because it
wasn't important to me, or what?

i know the house would have had 4 windows (even though the 1 i lived in
didn't). and the sun would have been in the sky, not the corner. the
birds are *definitely* right - i liked drawing those because they seemed
really real and stylized.

the tree may not be right. i think instead i drew pine trees as a
series of slashed lines.

the mountains i *think* were pointy instead ... maybe with a horizon
line.

the car might have been a convertible and would be bigger. OH AND I'M
MISSING A SWING SET. that would be on the right.

i didn't like drawing people, so my "basic" wouldn't have had them.

i'm also getting a bit polluted about the concept by reading ahead -- so
it's possible some of the other images and words are brushing off on
me.

it's not important, but it is puzzling.

hmm.

quote of the moment

"the majority of adults in the western world do not progress in art
skills much beyond the level of development they reached at age nine or
ten."

-- betty edwards

headless horseman vs. ian anderson

another inverted drawing of an original by frank duarte.

several firsts here:

* first landscape layout (my choice)
* first "process" (my word, not ms. edwards's) item not in the book
* first heinous centering misjudgement

he's too damn skinny and well off-placement (which is ironic since i had
a starting point and then intentionally moved up). other than that, not
bad.

my horseman is the champ of this set ... i just wish i'd hit his right
front hoof/leg a bit better.

inverted (and shaded!) horse

another inverted drawing ... this a 16th century horse of unknown
authorship that's been converted to a line drawing.

although shading wasn't an exercise here, i went ahead and did that as
well.

i was faster this time @ 75 minutes and cheated somewhat in considering
what the part was i was drawing as i drew it, speeding over the "less
important" parts (e.g. the helmet plume).

i'm really happy with it.

inverted stravinsky

i'm very familiar with this particular piece we were supposed to copy --
a line drawing by picasso of igor stravinsky done in 1920 ... making it
harder for me to "forget what you're drawing" as i copied the picture
upside down.

i spent over 2 and a half hours on this ("budget an hour of
uninterrupted time") and it just flew by. it's interesting to see how
the fundament mistake of not having the left chair arm far enough out
ended up making igor look like he was trying to reposition himself.

i spent forever on the hands and they came out really nice.

one more vase face

i walked past my drawing pad and decided to give it one more go.

it's easy to create the "face" on the left. i follow a rough pattern in
the book and it just flows. i re-trace it twice audibly saying the body
part as i trace it.

but i have trouble with the spatial copy on the right. if i scored the
paper i'm certain i could do it but that seems too heavy handed.

this version i erased a lot.

i understand the exercise, i just am having trouble completing it to my
satisfaction. i'm supposed to write the strategy i use, but at this
point i'd say that strategy is "move to the next exercise."

being tired doesn't help, i'm sure.

vase exercises

if you're right handed, you make a pre-described line face on the left
(retraced 2x more) and copy it inverted on the right.

doesn't make much sense without the text.

puzzled

my general aim here is to keep a steady pace and work my way through the
book. what i'll usually do is read up to the next drawing exercise, do
that and then stop for the day. with holidays, travel and other
projects i'm involved in, there'll almost certainly be large gaps. with
my obsessive behavior, it would be very* easy for me to force feed this
stuff 16 hours a day and be done with the book in three days. i think
it's better to breathe deeper and let things stew -- the learning will
probably be more solid.

but here's what i don't get ...

i did that self-portrait yesterday and it's really not that bad. i've
spent *decades* not drawing anything for exactly the same reason i've
spent decades not stepping on nails. it hurts. i don't like it. i'm
not good at it. and there doesn't seem a whole lot of point in
practicing.

so where in the hell did that drawing come from? the point of this text
is to be shocked WHEN YOU'RE FINISHED, not at the start.

here's some possible fodder for the drawing fire:

* i like modern art. i've seen a lot of it and can actually talk a
reasonable game around it. it's not directly related to the stuff i'm
doing here, but probably comes into play.

* my wife was a hardcore fan of classic art. enough that we had tomes
laying around the house dedicated to it. just like national geographic,
i never read any of that stuff, but i've looked at all the pictures.
and i've spent a considerable length of time in the great art musea of
the world -- if it's north of the equator and is famous for something in
it, i've been there. so maybe part of it is just osmosis.

* i've spent a LOT of time working with and on human interfaces. my
specialty tends to be flow of use but over the years i've become acutely
aware of shading and shadowing in the UI. (q: what's the light source
in a standard GUI -- say windows or mac? a: upper left hand corner.)
it's work i've always liked and have an eye for.

* i've taken drafting since i quit drawing, but that too was decades
ago.

* i've spent countless hours watching people draw. when they draw
something i always think "okay, that's a table and that's a leg. oh!
they just drew in that reflection/line/shadow/whatever that i would
never have drawn. it doesn't 'seem' right, but it 'looks' right."
this, by the way, would be a classic right brain vs. left brain moment
(to use an edwardsism).

i really hate false modesty in a person. i believe it's a low form of
both conceit and lying. consider that when i tell you that i really and
truly couldn't draw. i mean not really at all. laughably bad. kids
laughed at what i drew and i laughed right along with them to keep from
being embarrassed about it all.

I COULDN'T EVEN CENTER MY DRAWING ON A PAGE. i can't tell you how many
times i had to ask a teacher for another piece of paper because it was
off-center, too-small or whatever the hell. i have a stuffed whale that
i did out of construction paper in the 60's hanging at my mom's house.
flip it over and look, the original drawing was too small.

WHERE THE HELL DID MY ABILITY TO DO THAT COME FROM?

on pages 18-20 there are before and after drawings by an entire class of
adult students of ms. edwards. it's a class of 16 people and it's
telling because (if i take her at her implied word), no one was weeded
out for being overly lame.

now in that class, my drawing would sit in the solid middle of the
"before" world. i just find that almost unimaginable. because this is
a class of people who have CHOSEN to take a drawing class. meaning
they're either fearless, have way too much time on their hands or MOST
PROBABLY HAVE ARTISTIC TALENT ALREADY.

and i don't qualify. or at least i didn't think i did. but it turns
out i'm wrong. you know this whole deal isn't wholly removed from
having bad BO -- it's not comforting when there's something about yourself
you don't know (and others might).

i came into this hoping to find a secret backway to my inner van gough,
not to discover that the gate had been open and flapping in the breeze
for n number of years.

the good news is that my drawing is worse than ALL of the final efforts
by a considerable margin. so if i'm happy now, i should be
buzzy-ecstatic by the end.

it does make me cast my doubts about just how far forward i can go -- or
at least the joy associated with it. some of the class-success shock
has already been taken away by my self-discovery and i doubt i'll come
away drawing like miró.

i find myself simultaneously giddy and suspicious about all this. like
falling in love very hard with a girl. you think it's great, you know
how you feel. but you wonder how you got there and aren't certain that
it's actually real or if you're just making stuff up in your head.

i've never felt this way about anything that wasn't a person of the
opposite sex.

and that too is unsettling.

goddammit.