I have a thing about drawing. Like so many people, what I learned in art at school was that I was not artistic, and even if I might be a little creative, I could definitely not draw. However, later at Montessori college, my classmates admired my neatly drawn and coloured illustrations (we had to do diagrams for many teaching activities) and so I accepted that, with a ruler, and nice regularly shaped objects, I could get by. But slowly, I am remembering that I can draw, if I relax, and that drawing is expressive, and needn't be photo-realistic, but can express aspects and moods and impressions. So this year, I have been getting into drawing again. In fact, it started during the lunch break of Carla's class at Artfest last year. We had to choose what we would do for our afternoon series project: collage, painting, sculpture, printmaking or drawing. I couldn't believe that I was choosing drawing! Although come to think of it I had bought Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain a little before that. And in my artist book class I keep trying to draw and end up lino cutting, although I have made something very cool with drawing which I will share soon. So on Saturday I bought this:
She recommends buying an ENORMOUS sketchbook. Considering I do most of my drawing either on an A4 pad or even more often in a pocket-sized moleskine sketchbook, her recommended 18" x 26" seemed wild and unfeasible. But, in my life, whenever I hear myself thinking "what, that's crazy, I could never do that" I tend to go off and do it. Okay, it has led to some scabs and scars, bruises and broken hearts, but some fan-freaking-tastic (keeping it G-rated here, people... apparently) adventures too. So I have an enormous sketchbook. It's A2 for British paper people, and not quite as big as she recommends, roughly 16" x 24". I started my blind contour drawing tonight - I find it SO hard not to look at the paper, so it took me awhile to warm up. Keeping the weird and ugly for my own personal development, I thought I would share this. I am pretty pleased with it, especially because I didn't cheat TOO much.
