For our FINAL lesson in this series on Drawing Your Life, we come full circle to where we began. This actually is the KEY to continuing. The WAY to keep on chronicling and celebrating your life in a sketchbook is to ALWAYS be a BEGINNER.
Life has a way of upsetting the cart so-to-speak. We’ll be in a groove of regular drawing in our sketchbook and wham…something happens that interrupts that flow. Work, relational needs, circumstances can come crashing in on our good habits we’ve worked hard to establish. And when the air clears, the fog lifts, or the dust settles from whatever it was that interrupted our habit; we can find it VERY DIFFICULT to start again.
This is when we need to have the grace to be a BEGINNER. To Draw Up A Chair once again, in the midst of our lives no matter the rubble around us, the altered terrain, or the fresh page; it requires a humility and willingness to start all over.
Think back to when you first began to make art or to keep a sketchbook of your life. Maybe it was only recently. Maybe it was years ago. Remember the excitement…the curiosity… the gotta-find-out-all-I-can-about-it attitude… the thrill of putting pen (or pencil, or paint) to paper … the fun of it all even though you had no idea whether you were “good at it” or not… the wanna learn, wanna be, wanna do, insatiable appetite. Somehow, you have to get back there. You have to regain at least some of that Beginner’s Mindset.
Life’s interruptions deal a hard blow to our enthusiasm. In response to trying to begin again, we may find ourselves saying: I’m tired. I won’t be as good at drawing as I was. I’m out of the habit. I’m weary. It’ll be boring. It’ll take so much of my time. Life’s too heavy.
The thing about the above responses, is that they are merely blocks. Creative blocks are very real, powerful forces to be reckoned with. But if you will recognize them as “blocks”, rather than “truths”, you may be able to see them as something you can actually blast through with a little enticement.
*Tired? Weary? Draw what it feels like to be tired. Draw what’s making you weary.
*Afraid you’re not as good at it? Grant yourself grace to be a KID again, to be on the starting block. And watch how quickly you move right back into where you left off…only with new eyes.
*Out of the habit? Set yourself a goal to DOODLE once a day. Doesn’t matter if it’s in a sketchbook or not. Just one Doodle a day. Keep them. Collect them. Then collage them onto the first page of a new sketchbook (or the page where you left off before Life took over.)
*Bored? Think of something you haven’t tried, or haven’t done much and give it a go in your sketchbook. If you were drawing in pen before Life’s interruption; then switch to colored pencils or markers. Try it all! Make use of time you may be doing something else. The above sketch was made WHILE WATCHING the Tour de France one year…having to catch images as they flew by on the screen was definitely NOT boring!
*Takes too much time? Hogwash. Do the Daily Doodle. OR sit down to draw for 5 minutes only. I have a feeling you’ll find you sit for longer than that without even realizing it! Draw during the “margins” of your life…the waiting rooms, the soccer games, the staff meetings, etc. You’ll be amazed how much time you actually DO have to draw, if you look for the odd minutes stashed here and there.
*Everything feels too heavy? Make pages that feel light and airy…marks that are ephemeral and joyful. Or, if it feels like it would be cathartic: Make pages that feel heavy…marks that seem laden with the gravity and burden you’re carrying. Who knows? You just might be able to move some of that heaviness out onto the page instead of lugging it around.
***Maintaining a Beginner’s Mindset will keep you happily Drawing Your Life. And it will have the added bonus of keeping you from becoming too “big for your britches” as we say ’round here. Even if you’re a professional artist whose list of accomplishments and sales reaches the ceiling, even YOU will benefit from remaining a BEGINNER at heart!!
A Final Blessing:
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”
― Camille Pissarro
It is my sincere hope, that you will begin again and again to LOOK FOR and DRAW the beauty in your life!! My vision for you is this: with sketchbook in hand, you will comb through the weeds of your life, the unassuming, unattractive, unordinary places of your life, to see the richness that lies there. Like a kid learning a new step, playing with a new toy, discovering a new path, I pray that you’ll take hold of this endeavor with renewed fervor each day. May you grant yourself the grace to be a beginner…ALWAYS!
**All images in this post (with the exception of the above Genevieve drawing) are the Beginning Page(s) from several of my many sketchbooks! Even beginning a new sketchbook can be a “block” through which we have to blast! I’ve heard of some artists starting on the second page, just to bypass that “first-page fear”. Others just plow ahead, splash it on, get it going!
Just Begin. Again and Again.:)
THANK YOU for following along with these Mini Lessons on Drawing Your Life. I have loved every minute of crafting them and I hope you have/are/will continue to enjoy them as well. Remember: you can pop in to the series via the heading at the top of my blog titled “Drawing Your Life Mini Lessons”. Please revisit these lessons over and over again for renewed inspiration. Cheers and Happy Drawing!
The saying goes, “Variety is the spice of life!” And so it is with Art. Keeping a fresh view on Drawing Your Life demands that you vary your approach, switch up the “rules” (if you have any), toss the proverbial salad of your sketchbook.
Human nature has a tendency to get bored with repetitive activities. Yes, for a while, they can be quite meditative. And I did say, in the last lesson, that Limitations can be FREEING! But when you limit yourself to just one way of doing things for way too long of a time, you may find your desire to keep on Drawing Your Life waning and lacking the spark it once had.
When I feel myself lacking in zeal for making my beloved contour drawings of my Life, I’ll say to myself…”What would I like to try?” How could I express x, y, or z in a different way? What approach have I not done in a while? How might I combine this and that to create something new and different in my sketchbook? How would Van Gogh draw this? Picasso? Twombly? or Emil Nolde? Just go through your list of favorite artists and try a drawing or painting inspired by their work! I spent a few years making big watercolor paintings inspired by Milton Avery’s large-shape paintings. I wasn’t after painting his paintings…just letting his work be a catalyst for my own. I still do this in my sketchbook from time to time…
It has probably been evident in each of these lessons that there are SO SO many ways you can document, record, celebrate, and express your Life in a sketchbook…but let me just run through a few of them. Like spices on your Art shelf, you can throw in a dash of this and a sprinkle of that, or go heavy on the garlic…however you want to keep your sketchbook. It’s up to you!
Fine Liner Pens
Charcoal
Opaque Watercolor
Bic Pen (or any other pen for that matter)
Marker & Watercolor Crayons
Watercolor Crayons
Transparent Watercolor
Soft Pastel
Acrylic
Collage
And these are only the tip of the iceberg!! Once you start hunting around for art spices, there will be no end to your discoveries!
A Blessing: May your life imitate the spicy variety your sketchbook has!! May you find ways to add/discover/switch to little changes that add up to a lot of excitement! May you cast fear aside as you try new things both in your life as well as in your sketchbook!!
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
I often think my kids have selective hearing. They hear what they want to hear and somehow block out what seems unimportant to them…like when I ask them to clean up their rooms, do their chores, help with dinner. Hmmm.
But Selective Sight is actually highly desirable for Drawing Your Life in a sketchbook. An ability to pick and choose what one wants to draw from the very rich-in-detail Feast around us, serves you well when you go to draw or paint it. How does one arrive at the above drawing from the view I was looking at beside our driveway below:
The best way to sort through it all is to ask yourself a simple question:
“What am I captivated by?” or phrased another way: “What specifically about the view in front of me, makes me want to draw or paint?”
*What “drew” me (love that!) out to my driveway was the gorgeous spring day, the dappling light, the lovely greens, the fresh air. I brought out my sketchbook and two pens. When I sat down and took a moment to survey the feast before me, I began to be captivated by that tree… the little knots, the bark pattern, the shape of the branches. So THAT is what I drew. And I chose to merely hint at the rest of the trees’ surroundings, so that those things would not appear more important than my ONE desire of capturing that tree. I did think briefly about using my smaller fineliner (o1) pen to describe the neighbors driveways, cars, bushes, houses, etc. But decided not to, in favor of keeping the tree as the focus.
*Now, I could create numerous drawings and paintings from this one view!! I could state that I’m captivated by the play of light and dark and thus render these shapes to highlight that aspect of the view, as I did in the above drawing. Remember the “Sculpt Your World” Mini Lesson and how squinting will help you to see!! This will heighten the contrast between the light and dark shapes making it easier for you to draw/paint them on your paper.
*OR, I could decide that what captivates me is how the tree forms a frame around the neighbors homes and cars in the background. So I could choose lines or paint that allow me to highlight that aspect! See how very different these three drawings are!! I just needed to take a moment to ask myself what captivated me and to consider how BEST to describe that on paper in lines/paint or whathaveyou.
I’m sure there are many more ways to draw this very scene…it all depends on what captivates you! It depends on your ability to select ONLY those things which will highlight YOUR VISION. And it depends on you deeming the rest to be UNIMPORTANT to your purpose. If you try to describe EVERYTHING, you’ll end up with a mess. Of course, it will probably be a glorious mess, but…you may feel that your drawing doesn’t capture the thing you were originally “drawn” to.
So…
Be picky! Be selective! Block out all the extraneous stuff except for the ONE THING that captures you. And get that down in your sketchbook! If many things captivate you about a particular scene, then set out to make several drawings or paintings of that scene which highlight the different aspects that you love!
*Another way to be SELECTIVE as you draw is to pretend your eyes are a camera lens…either ZOOM IN or PAN AWAY.
I sat down on the sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s house to draw these gorgeous tulips. The man who owns this house is a true gardener and has created an enchanting garden all around his home. It takes my breath away every time I walk by. So when I drew up a chair to draw, I asked myself what inspired me, and the first thing in my head was, certainly the tulips, but also the awesome structure in the center of them. So I visually PANNED AWAY to be able to draw the central garden structure, surrounded by the tulips, with the home in the background.
After that, I really wanted to just concentrate on those gorgeous tulips. So I ZOOMED IN on JUST the tulips. As I drew, I could revel in their shapes and their swaying lines. You might like to use a viewfinder for the purpose of helping you zoom in or pan away or just to crop out unwanted areas of the scene in front of you. You can even use your hands placed just so, to create this viewfinder.
*I also applied this to adding COLOR to these drawings. Take a look at how I selectively chose the colors, AND where I placed the color in these drawings. I used the same question from above to guide me in adding color. Selective Sight helps you all around!!
*This can also be applied to your APPROACH. For instance, I decide up front which approach I’m going to use. If I’m going to be making a contour drawing. I stick to it. I try not to shift into a gesture drawing mid-stream. I don’t flip into making a value drawing half-way through. Select one approach, and stick with it for the entire drawing. After you’ve made a drawing with one approach, switch and draw the SAME THING using a different approach, if you’d like. I am now having loads of fun making expressive drawings of how it feels to be outside, how “green” feels, how I experience a breeze. It is so much fun!! Here’s a drawing of the above scene using the Improvisational approach to express the many beautiful “greens”…
*You can also apply your Selective Sight to which ART MATERIALS you use. You might decide to only use pen. Or only use watercolor. Or just a pen and some watercolor crayons. Or collage. Or just ink and a reed pen. Or…
Being selective about WHAT you want to draw and HOW you’re going to go about it FREES you up to concentrate more fully and not be pulled in a zillion directions. It also makes for clearer drawings, fewer jumbly messes.
My husband is fond of saying: “If you try to say everything, you end up saying nothing.” This is SO true in art!! In any given drawing, BE SELECTIVE, major on ONE THING, whether it be your approach, your viewpoint, your medium, and/or color choices.
A Blessing: May you be selectively choosy this week as you ask yourself what captivates you about the Feast in front of you. May your eyes wear artistic blinders to all the unnecessary stuff & fluff. May you hone your ability to focus, pick, select, choose what matters most to you as you capture your life in images and words.
***Something to think about:
Take a few minutes to consider how this applies to your life in general. We all deal with “overwhelm” in some fashion or form…remember this post? Developing selective sight is helpful to us as we navigate where our energies need to go, what next to put our hand to, and whether or not we need to bother with x, y, or z. Maybe my kids’ selective hearing isn’t such a bad thing after all…as long as they clean up their rooms once in a while.
“Limitations can actually be FREEING!” -moi.
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
Ok. Not just 3, but FOUR different approaches to drawing. I know I had said there would be just 3 in these lessons, but I can’t resist! I must, must, MUST add this 4th one!! For our purposes, I’m going to call this very different approach…Improvisational Drawing. If you can get in your mind what’s happening when actors perform improvisational theater, when writers do stream-of-consciousness writing, or when musicians riff…then you’ll be farther along in understanding what I’m presenting to you today.
This approach to drawing is one I’ve played around with for many years in my sketchbooks, but really had no clear ideas about it, no firm teaching on it. I am a self-taught artist and much of what I’ve learned about drawing and painting has been through art BOOKS on technique, through VIEWING great artist’s works, through OBSERVATION, and through my own EXPLORATION. Through it all, I’ve discovered much about myself and my artistic preferences. The overarching thing I’ve come to know about myself is that I absolutely adore making marks on paper! Making marks of any kind on paper is, for me, IN AND OF ITSELF, a wonder-ous endeavor. Just moving a pen around on the page, watching the trail it leaves behind, is thrilling…whether that trail is “correct” or not.
Too much emphasis is placed on “accurate” drawing. If you watch young children draw, they have very few inhibitions (if any at all) about dashing off a drawing, regardless of its realistic accuracy. As the child gets older, however, outside forces begin to bare down on the child making him/her feel that drawing IS ONLY what happens when the drawing is a “correct” one. By “correct”, most folks typically mean, how well the drawing accurately describes the actual object, person, or place being drawn. It is a total shame that this emphasis and definition of drawing has become the preeminent and default definition most people subscribe to. I’d like to UNDO, EXPAND, and perhaps REDEFINE ways you have typically defined drawing that may be far too limiting and restricting.
It is a lovely thing, when you have held for years, certain gut feelings and opinions you did not know others shared. And then to find, along the way, that others have held these same opinions, and have even formulated and articulated them long before you have. Such is my delight in a book I’ve recently reacquainted myself with. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years. Expressive Drawing by Steven Aimone is just such a book! I won’t take you through his book here, other than to quote him a few times, as I have Kimon Nicolaides book, The Natural Way to Draw, in the other lessons. You’ll have to buy, beg, borrow this book for all the rich information and exercises Aimone outlines. It is truly wonderful…here’s how he talks about this approach to drawing:
“Drawing is a powerful and wonderful language, capable of expressing things not easily conveyed any other way. As you know, drawings can be descriptive, by which I mean they can document the people, objects, or landscapes you encounter in the visible world. Perhaps this is the kind of drawing you’re best acquainted with but also most intimidated by!
Drawings can also be expressive: They can communicate things that are intangible or invisible–your memories, ideas, musings, emotions, even your spiritual world. And the good news is that everyone can draw like this, regardless of age, culture, education, or temperament.” (pg. 7)
What I’ve discovered through the years, is that many of my favorite artists, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Richard Diebenkorn, Van Gogh, Milton Avery and Alberto Giacometti (among many, many others), have long-since paved the way for DRAWING to be defined in much broader terms other than rendering realistically. The history behind this approach to drawing is rich and exciting. Here’s how Steven Aimone defines DRAWING (and he uses many examples from the above list of artists to illustrate his definition):
“Drawing is the arrangement of line and mark in space, designed to serve a variety of expressive purposes… You, the artist, are a unique filter through which life’s experiences are processed. As a result, responses and expressions emerge that are completely your own. Your drawings reveal things that are not easily spoken of or experienced in any other way. No matter your style, temperament, or approach, drawings can function on three levels: representational, symbolic, and nonobjective…” (pg. 11)
In order to keep this a “Mini” Lesson, I won’t go into all three of these levels and their defining characteristics. Try to get your hands on the book if you’re interested in delving further. For our purposes today, I want you to set aside the three previous posts on CONTOUR, GESTURE, & MODELLED drawing. For today’s approach, you need to step outside of the desire to RECORD your life, and jump into EXPRESSING your life. To be sure, ALL drawings whether they be done in a contour, gesture, or a modelled approach can be expressive!! But for now, put aside attempts to record things, people, events per se, and try your hand at freely expressing your life through marks made on paper.
In classes I’ve taught on drawing, I have asked students to draw lines that, to them, express particular emotions. I was delighted to see that this exercise has been used by others, like Mr. Aimone in his book, to get people to see how just a simple mark on a page can exhibit qualities of anger, agitation, calm, joy, contentment, etc. You can try it too…here’s a grid you can use to make marks in the boxes that seem to fit the emotion. You could even designate ONE PAGE of your sketchbook to expressing in line and marks, a particular thought or feeling. Use any and all drawing/painting/collage elements to express it visually. And here’s the most important part, and I’m quoting Steven Aimone here:
“Without thinking, planning, worrying, or analyzing, generate a linear movement or movements that feel _______ [angry, serene, worried, joyful, etc.]–Let’er rip!” (pg. 67)
And also… “Remember, don’t worry about making a perfect or correct drawing here. Simply trust your instincts until you arrive at an arrangement that is satisfying–or, at the very least, intriguing!” (pg. 69)
Mr. Aimone repeats this mantra many times throughout the different exercises he offers in his book. Though each exercise contains a few “try this” specifications, they are nonetheless to be carried out with complete freedom of expression, staying away from a representational form. I love how he emphasizes that you are not after an “accurate” drawing, but rather one that is “satisfying” to you, or “intriguing”.
I hope this gives you an overall underpinning to this approach to drawing your life. Now here are some of my own suggestions, ways I have enjoyed drawing in this manner:
*Draw with a Brush! You may find, as I do many times, that paint can feel more expressive than a pen or pencil in this approach. If so, by all means use it! Watercolor on paper, either transparent or opaquely applied has inestimable expressive qualities. Acrylics and oils on paper can also be used. Many, many times I sit at my drawing table and just move paint around on the page, responding quickly to each stroke without hesitation. They end up feeling like little prayers or haiku poems expressing so much and yet perhaps nothing at all.
*Feel free to combine media. I love to use as many different things as I can on a nonobjective page. A little charcoal smeared around, then with some watercolor crayons and wax colored pencils with watercolor swooshed on top and then oil pastel drawn into that and some chinese white brushed into and over all of it except for bits here and there… Well, you get the picture. Really let yourself go with all the wonderful materials you have.
*Work quickly! This will shut down the “thinking” and “analyzing” side of your brain, and will allow your creative side to have free reign. The key then, once you’re “finished” is to keep yourself from judging the result!!!!! Your analytical brain may attempt to destroy what your creative brain has just expressed!
*Try the Assert/Obliterate method. This is totally fun, and Mr. Aimone describes this process more thoroughly. Basically what you’re to do is to make some marks, then erase/scrape/paint over/draw over/smear part of whatever you’ve drawn, then go at it again. Make assertions in line and marks. Then obliterate some of them in any way you choose. Repeat. Fun! The very first drawing in this post is an example of an Assert/Obliterate page.
*Think “Flux”. This is a cool term used to describe a drawing that has a sense of energy and movement in and through the marks on the page. It’s as if what’s happening in the drawing is actually occurring ON the page IN PROCESS, and not at it’s end result. The drawing is “in flux”. I like that. Very much.
*Try your best to stay away from any preconceived or pre-determined outcomes! Maybe you just want to make a page to express an emotion or a memory. But begin the page without determining what it will end up like. Just go for it. Just start. Put down a mark, a color, a swoosh of something and then react and respond to that! I think Mr. Aimone’s term for this is Automatic Drawing.
*Think Texture. Make marks on your paper that nod to textural marks from nature. Perhaps consider sitting outside NOT to draw what you see before you, but rather to make marks that mimic the textures all around you.
*Create a Day Page. Dedicate a page to describing the day you had, the feel of it, perhaps, or just stream-of-consciousness-mark-making as you think about your day. The very first drawing in this post started with a written account of a day. I wrote about what happened and my feelings about it. Then, through the process of Assert/Obliterate, I went about adding marks and colors that seemed to express the day.
*Draw/Paint Music! Play music of any kind and make marks on a page to express how you hear that music, what you feel, what it sounds like. Many famous artists, like Kandinsky, worked in this manner. Write the title of the music on the back of the page you create. Do this again, listening to the same music on another day! You’ll be surprised how different your mark-making is depending on when you listen to the music.
*Create an expressive “portrait” page…lines, marks, strokes, and colors, all while thinking of someone you know OR a self-portrait. Just let it flow freely and DO NOT JUDGE!!
*”Draw” with papers… I like to pull out papers and collage in a semi-random manner. Many times I’ll just start with a piece of “found” paper. This is a quirky piece that is perhaps leftover from a previous collage session where I cut something out. It’s an already cut/torn piece and I’ll just use it as a starting point to create shapes and colors around it. Sometimes I’ll just use ALL “found” papers without any tearing or cutting at all. Placing them in positions on the page that are pleasing to me.
*Create a page that has absolutely NO RHYME OR REASON to it at all!! Just marks on a page. Lines, colors, splotches, swooshes…make marks for marks’ sake. Any marks…painted, splattered, dark, light, long, thin, thick, dotted, sporadic, squiggly, strong, etc. Let go! Let’r rip! Let loose!
***Working with Improvisational Drawing pages will actually help your contour, gesture, and modelled drawings to be more expressive!!
(Note my little hand scrawl at the bottom of these pages. Click to enlarge image if you need to.)
A Blessing: May this week find you letting loose in the midst of your very structured, highly organized and planned life. May you find freedom in your sketchbook pages in such a way as to spill over into the rest of your life a sense of play and expression.
***Perhaps the allusions to our Life are evident here. But it really, really helps me to remember these things:
Life is like a box of chocolates a page of Improvisational Drawing:
–Life is always in Flux.
–Life is sometimes asserting new things, sometimes retracting old ones.
–Life is setting our pens to the paper (be purposeful to show up) and then going with the flow (allowing Life to lead us wherever it takes us).
–Life can feel very random at times, with no rhyme or reason to it. Perhaps more than we’d like.
–Life is best lived WITHOUT preconceived or predetermined outcomes.
–Life is more enjoyable WITHOUT trying to overanalyze every detail!
–Life is filled with color, textures, marks and lines…a plethora of beautiful things that may at first appear to be a mish-mosh, but in the end create a lovely whole.
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
Yet another approach to drawing could be encapsulated by one word: Sculpting. Now this is a 3-Dimensional approach being applied to a 2-Dimensional piece of paper. You are attempting to capture FORM on your page…the actual 3-dimensional shape of the thing before you, whether it is boxy and geometric or curvy and organic.
Our friend, Mr. Nicolaides, calls this Modelled Drawing. Just as Contour Drawing was the sensation of touching the contours of your subject, and Gesture Drawing was the sensation of energy, action, and character of your subject; so Modelled Drawing is the sensation of the shape of these objects moving away from and towards you in their form. He, once again, wants us to EXPERIENCE our subject, rather than merely create a product. Here’s how he suggests going about it:
“…using your crayon on the side and not making any lines, go over all the vertical (and horizontal) contours of the figure…Where the form goes back in, you press back or in with your crayon. For example, as the form moves up over the chest and then back over the shoulder, your crayon moves lightly up over the chest and then presses heavily back over the shoulder. You are trying to believe that you are touching the model and all of its many contours. Naturally, you have to push farther to reach those that seem to go back.” (pg. 36)
When I teach this in a class setting, I have students use a chunk of play-doh and model the play-doh into a pepper with its stem. From this, they get the very real sensation of pushing the play-doh back to form the sides and grooves of the pepper, as well as the area from which the stem grows. This is the same action we use to draw with charcoal. Press hard on the paper with your charcoal stick on its side to denote places where the form moves back or away from you. Use light pressure on the paper when the form comes forward. If you’ve gotten any areas too dark, just use a kneaded eraser to bring the form back out towards you.
*So you are to imagine that you are a sculptor, fashioning the form of your subject whether it be a vase, a face, or tree, whathaveyou. Imagining that you are actually holding these objects in your hands, sculpting their forms with your pens, pencils, charcoal or paint, is a great way to think about what you’re doing when you draw in this manner.
*A helpful discipline for creating form on paper is to learn to see how light falls on form. I said LEARN TO SEE. Learning to see in ANY of these three approaches to drawing is a lifelong endeavor! And especially so when learning to see light and its effects on the form of your subject. As you go through your day, look for this! In the daytime, look for the way the sunlight plays on the landscape, or on peoples’ faces, or on parked cars. At night, look for how lamp light falls on the objects nearby, how overhead light plays on faces, etc. There is SO much for you to learn and look for even when you don’t have a sketchbook in hand.
*One of the best ways to SEE THE LIGHT (and consequently the shadows), is to SQUINT!! Now there’s an oxymoron for you! SQUINT TO SEE! Yes indeed. Try it! Go outside in the morning or late afternoon (sometime when the sun isn’t directly overhead). Find a tree, person or object to look at. Now, squint! Notice how the shapes of light and dark become more defined!! And if you have your sketchbook in hand, try carving (with your pen or pencil) these shapes of light and dark on your paper.
*DO NOT DESCRIBE THE SHAPE OF “THINGS”! Describe the shapes of LIGHT and DARK even if they contain several “things” inside of them! Remember that this is a vehicle for capturing the overall FORM of these things. Seen as a whole, your eye will fill in all the “things” necessary. So there’s NO need to describe every blade of grass or leaf, every eyelash or tooth, every single little detail before you. SQUINT and see the BIG PICTURE!
*Stick to only two or three values! A value denotes the darkness or lightness of your pen marks (or paint marks) to delineate a particular shape. It is much easier to keep only a light value and a dark value in your drawing; possibly adding a third middle value.
*Use any drawing/painting implement to denote these light and dark shapes. Charcoal is a wonderful medium to use when you’re first learning to depict form. You can really press on the charcoal for shapes that are far away from you (or which have little light falling on them). And then you can lighten the pressure when the shape is closer to you (or has lots of light falling on it).
*But you can also use a Bic pen or a fineliner pen to do this as well. Building up scribbly lines, or crosshatching, to the value you need is a lovely way to establish the form of objects and the play of light on form. Of course, graphite (in its many varieties), is also a wonderful tool for establishing form.
*You can also use paint to denote these values. Of course, varying shades of black to gray to the white of the paper is a terrific option. But even in color, you can choose darker blues, greens and purples for the dark value and then lighter shades and/or colors of yellow, orange and red for the light values.
**There is SO much more to say about all of this!! We could really have a whole other set of lessons devoted to this one subject. I merely want to give you some basics for training your eyes to SEE, and your hands to RENDER, how form can be created by delineating shapes of light and dark.
*And for any of you who collage, let me steer you to a favorite artist who exquisitely uses pieces of paper to model the form. Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson’s “paper paintings” are beautiful collage works which capture the way light falls on objects and describes their 3-Dimensional form. Definitely check out her blog as well as her website.
***It is important to note that what we are after in drawing IN ANY OF THESE APPROACHES, is an EXPERIENCE, NOT a FINAL PRODUCT. Drawing our Lives means that we experience them, that we learn as we go, that we sip the beauty of our life as if through the straw of our pens or pencils or paintbrushes! Contour, Gesture, and Modelled drawing are three wonderful ways to sip, slurp, and drink in the Beauty that’s all around us.
I will leave this subject for now with a lovely quote by Nicolaides:
“There is only one right way to draw and that is a perfectly natural way. It has nothing to do with artifice or technique. It has nothing to do with aesthetics or conception. It has only to do with the act of correct observation, and by that I mean a physical contact with all sorts of objects through all the senses.” (back cover)
A Blessing: May you drink deeply of your Life by looking for the light. May you revel in training your eyes to see the beautiful ways Light shows form on all that surrounds you. And may these ways to draw allow you to experience your life more richly.
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
Another wonderful approach to drawing is called Gesture Drawing. Gesture drawing is a way of capturing the energy or movement of your subject. People, animals, and nature are perfect subjects to capture with gesture drawings. But ANYTHING can be drawn gesturally! Even still-life, inanimate objects have an inherent energy, character, or impulse.
Gesture drawing is very different from contour drawing! In CONTOUR DRAWING the sensation is that of touching the edge of the form, the exterior and interior contours of your subject. With GESTURE DRAWING the sensation is that of feeling the impulse or energy within your subject. Here’s a wonderful quote by Kimon Nicolaides from The Natural Way to Draw:
“As the model takes the pose, or as the people you watch move, you are to draw, letting your pencil swing around the paper almost at will, being impelled by the sense of the action you feel. Draw rapidly and continuously in a ceaseless line, from top to bottom, around and around, without taking your pencil off the paper. Let the pencil roam, reporting the gesture. YOU SHOULD DRAW, NOT WHAT THE THING LOOKS LIKE, NOT EVEN WHAT IT IS, BUT WHAT IT IS DOING. Feel how the figure lifts or droops–pushes froward here–pulls back there–pushes out here–drops down easily there…” (pg. 15)
Gesture drawing looks a lot like scribbling! It may appear as if any kindergartener could do this! But there’s a lot more going on with gesture drawing.
With contour drawing our emphasis was on TOUCH and CONTOURS. Gesture drawing emphasizes MOVEMENT and INTERNAL ENERGY or IMPULSE. It would be beneficial for you to actually take the same stance as your model. Let’s say you’re drawing people dancing, as I did in the above drawings one night when my husband and I and our kids started dancing to music. Get your body in the same position, or action, or form and notice how it feels. Try to draw THAT!
Artists who have been trained classically, learn to draw gestures at the beginning of every figure drawing session to warm up. It gets the juices going,helps you to loosen up, allows you to put yourself in the shoes of what’s happening in front of you, and loosely render the action using lines on paper. I, personally, think gesture drawings make for TERRIFIC play in your sketchbook!! The benefits you gain from it will reward you tremendously. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you draw gestures:
*Imagine what it feels like to strike the pose of your subject. If you’re drawing an animal, imagine what the body would feel like in that animal’s position. If you’re drawing flowers or trees, try to imagine being one of them.
*If necessary, put your pen/pencil aside, stand up and strike the same pose so you can really get a feel for the movement and energy inherent in your subject. Go outside and strike the pose of a tree in your backyard. Then draw it! On a windy day, draw the gestures of trees in the wind.
*Think INTERIOR!! You’re not out to describe the edges or contours of things, though you may hit on one or two as you render the gesture. Keep your lines moving INSIDE the person, animal, object so as to describe the energy.
*With living models, as well as with inanimate objects, think of the inherent CHARACTER of the subject. How is the model placing most of his/her weight? Is it thrust forward? Leaning back? Where is the energy in this person holding their cup of coffee? Which way is the model’s head tilting? Is there a sense of solidity or ethereal vapor? Try to capture this with lines moving around on the page.
*At first, think of exaggerating whatever sense of movement or energy you think might be there. Often, we need to think of exaggerating our line movements in order for it to translate to the paper.
Here are some more great thoughts on gesture from Mr. Nicolaides:
“By gesture we do not mean simply movement or motion or action. A thing does not have to be in motion to have gesture. You seek for it when the model is relaxed just as much as in a very active pose. Gesture, as you will come to understand it, will apply to everything you draw. Even a pancake has gesture. There is gesture in the way in which a newspaper lies on the table or in the way a curtain hangs. Gesture describes the compound of all forces acting in and against, and utilized by, the model. The term action is not sufficient. We may think of gesture, rather, as the character of the action. Look at two vases–one tall and graceful, the other fat and squat. They are as different in character as two people might be…The key to the nature of a subject is its gesture. From it the other aspects of drawing proceed.” (pg. 29)
Lately, I’ve been making more gesture drawings. They take so little time! They’re like a little ‘burst’ on the page. When I attended figure drawing sessions, we always began with a series of gestures…one minute, two minutes, three. I don’t think we ever took more than three minutes for a gesture drawing. Think of all the gesture drawings you would have in your sketchbook, if you simply made a little purposeful scribble to capture gesture in the one or two minute pauses in your day. You gotta have your sketchbook nearby!! Perhaps you need to set them around in various places: one in your car, one in your kitchen, one in your purse/bag. Make a little gestural doodle and be on your way! You’ll be delighted at the end of your day to see that you actually DID draw some!! And whether you realize it not, drawing gesturally will teach you so many things that you’ll be able to apply to your other, more studied drawings.
“Through your ability to grasp something of this, you will begin to understand other things like proportion and perspective, for the truth is that those things are caused by movement and are a part of it. It is far more important that your studies contain this comprehension of movement, of gesture than that they contain any other single thing.” (pg. 31) Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw.
A Blessing: May you be able to feel the energy in all the people and things in your life. May you have the ability to “leggo your ego” so that you can scribble purposefully in your sketchbook. May the child-like action of doodling the gesture of things, bring joy and laughter this week.
Here’s a starter list of things to try capturing the gesture in a little purposeful scribble:
*People standing in line waiting, person texting, talking on the phone, sitting at a computer, reading a book, walking, jogging, gardening, playing a sport, cooking, doing dishes, etc.
*Animals, pets, fish in a tank, hermit crabs, birds, pet store animals, cows in a neighboring farm, horses along side of road.
*Trees, flowers, weeds, grasses, bushes, anything and everything NATURE.
***For further examples of, and inspiration for gestural drawing: check out Laura Frankstone’s gestural drawings of flowers, and Melanie Reim’s fabulous gestural drawings of people. Melanie is a new favorite artist of mine. Not new to the art world…just new to me! Definitely spend some time enjoying and drawing inspiration from her work.
***AND…of course…there is much to take from gestural drawing into our everyday lives:
-We are so much more than merely what’s on the outside.
-Putting ourselves into others “shoes”, as it were, helps us understand and have compassion.
-Experiencing ALL of life requires that we not merely dance around the outskirts of our lives, but that we actually GET OUT ON THE DANCE FLOOR!
-Our lives are never really stagnant…there’s always, even in resting, a sense of energy, character, and some kind of movement going on. Let this be an encouragement to you if you’re feeling stale, or stagnant, or in a rut. Look intently for the little bits of “life” in your life. It’s there. I promise.
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
There are several approaches to drawing, three of which I’ll be highlighting in these Mini Lessons. The one I tend to gravitate towards the most is CONTOUR drawing. There are many reasons why I love this way of drawing, which you can read about here and here. But chiefly, I love contour drawing because, first… it is the most meditative of the approaches, slowing me down in my busy life. AND second…because the very motivation behind it, is to fully engage with your life.
Here’s how-
When you set your mind to create a contour drawing, you are to focus your eyes on your subject and NOT on the paper. You are to imagine that the tip of your pencil, pen, (drawing implement of any kind) actually IS your hand, or finger, following the contours and shapes of the subject in front of you. Here’s how Kimon Nicolaides puts it in his book, The Natural Way to Draw. (This is a book on drawing I would highly recommend. It may seem a bit heady and wordy if you’re a beginner. But when you’re ready to dig deep into the world of drawing, it is a treasure trove of instruction.:)
“…move your eye slowly along the contour of the model and move the pencil slowly along the paper. As you do this, keep the conviction that the pencil point is actually touching the contour. Be guided more by the sense of touch than by sight. This means that you must draw without looking at the paper, continuously looking at the model…. Develop the absolute conviction that you are touching the model. This exercise should be done slowly, searchingly, sensitively. Take your time…” pgs. 10 & 11.
Love that! So, draw up a chair somewhere in front of a family member, your morning cup of coffee, a tree in your backyard, etc. Place your pen or pencil on your sketchbook page somewhere that corresponds approximately to where you’re beginning to draw your subject. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHERE YOU BEGIN! You could start with the eyes, or the top of the head, or the shoulder, WHEREVER! Just begin.
*And as your eyes move slowly around the contours of your subject, draw on your paper as you go, as if your eyes and your hand are ONE. Do not limit yourself to outer edges. The contours available to you to follow, are BOTH on the outside of your subject (edges of face, arms, feet) AND the inside of your subject (folds of a jacket, lines of crossed legs, neckline of shirt, etc.) Try not to get ahead of yourself…keep your eyes and hand moving simultaneously. Go slow. Caress the contours!
*Allow your hand/pen to NOT COMPLETE all shapes. Can you find the places where I did that in the above drawing? Let the contour line move you from the edge of the pant leg to the leg itself, EVEN IF you have not finished drawing the pants!! This is an essential element, in my opinion, to contour drawing. You are not trying to delineate complete shapes, but rather describe the lovely flow of contours as they morph in and out of each other.
*Allow your hand/pen to CROSS OVER already drawn contours!! This is another essential element. Don’t restrict yourself to thinking you can’t draw the leg of a chair OVER TOP OF an already drawn purse or bag sitting nearby. Draw right on through it and keep going!
*Feel free to BACK UP with your line. I will often take my pen/eye back over what I’ve just drawn to get back to another contour I want to follow for a while.
*DO NOT FRET over your hand/pen going off the side of the paper!! So what, if your drawing is not perfectly centered on the page?? Simply, place your pen back on paper and keep going! I personally, think this gives the drawing a feel of spontaneity and in-the-moment authenticity.
*Try contour drawing with various amounts of BLINDNESS. You can actually create a drawing in this manner without EVER looking at your paper. These are called Blind Contour Drawings. The above pastel drawing was developed from a blind contour drawing created during a Drawing Group. If you saw the lady I was drawing, you would not know this was her!! Most of the time, I look at my subject for a length of time while drawing, glance down for a brief second WITHOUT DRAWING OR LIFTING MY PEN, and then return to looking at my subject to draw. I suppose these would be called Partially-blind Contour Drawings.
*Try keeping your pen or pencil ON THE PAPER THE ENTIRE TIME, never lifting it to move it elsewhere in your drawing. These are called Continuous or One-Liner Drawings. Although the above drawing is only one or two complete lines from top of the page to the end of my name; most of the time, I draw one line for as far as I feel I can go and then pick up my pen and place it somewhere else to begin another line…again and again. Perhaps these could be called Several-Liner Drawings. Check out Picasso’s One-Liner Drawings! Very cool!
**A key element to contour drawing in this manner is to LET GO of your desire to have “pretty” results. (Remember the last lesson…“Leggo My Ego”). Just go with the flow, engage with your subject matter by drawing its contours, and then have a little chuckle at the result. THE IMPORTANT THING is the PROCESS of drawing!!! It’s NOT to have a “perfect” drawing, that is to say, a drawing with perfect proportions, scale and perspective. I, myself, ACTUALLY PREFER an off-kilter, wonky, funky drawing done freely and lovingly. Mr. Nicolaides says it beautifully:
“When you looked at your first completed contour drawing, you probably laughed. No doubt the lines sprawled all over the paper, the ends did not meet in places, and one leg or arm may have been much bigger than the other. That should not worry you at all. In fact, you will really have cause for worry only if your drawing looks too ‘correct,’ for that will probably mean either that you have looked at the paper too often or have tried too hard to keep the proportions in your mind.” pg. 19.
A Blessing: May you slow down and enjoy your life, by caressing its contours through drawing…this week and throughout the years to come!!
Addendum: It occurs to me to point out some things that may seem obvious to you. And here is where I absolutely, teetotally LOOOVE art for this. There are SO many things we can take from this lesson on contour drawing and apply it to our lives. For instance-
**We really, truly, absolutely need to slow down.
**We would do much better to enjoy and focus on the JOURNEY of our lives rather than on the PRODUCT or ACCOMPLISHMENTS of our lives.
**We need to be ok with some things just not being completed. Being willing to let things in our lives be open and unfinished is a good thing.
**Sometimes we need to back up. Then take a new direction.
**When we fall off the “paper”, we need to get back on the proverbial “horse” and keep going!
**We need to make an effort at NOT getting ahead of ourselves. Be where we are…fully!
**We need to “let go” of having a particular outcome.
**And last, but not least…we need to have a little chuckle as we look around at our lives.
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
My worst enemy to seeing the world through childlike eyes AND consequently, to being an artist, is the very adult-like endeavor to “improve”. Striving to “get better at drawing” can work against us, because we’re trying to fit ourselves into a certain mold of what a “drawing” should look like. We set up for ourselves a STANDARD by which we measure our art and consequently can feel defeated before we’ve even begun. I want to say to you: the BEST way to “improve” in drawing your life, is to cast aside any and all pre-conceived notions of what your drawings SHOULD LOOK LIKE in order to be “art”, and JUST DRAW!
The Miriam-Webster definition of “Ego” is: 1: the self especially as contrasted with another self or the world.
I cannot tell you how many times I have compared my drawings and paintings to that of others and ended up in an angst-ridden heap, with a strong desire to throw out all my art supplies and never attempt a drawing again. Some might say this is good energy that then forces me to try again and improve. I’m not so sure about that. Thankfully, what ends up happening, after a few days “off”, I return to my sketchbook with a desire to “try something different”, to “see what I can make of this or that”, to try a new paint or drawing material. In other words, a very childlike desire to “explore” overtakes my desire to “be better”.
Yes. I have pursued learning to draw realistically. Yes, I have taken lessons from some magnificent artists. But any “improvement” gained has been from a sense of wonder and exploration as to how I might try to render that foreshortened leg. How might I capture the perspective of that building so it doesn’t appear to be falling off a cliff? Although a wonky house seeming like it might fall off a cliff is often more engaging to look at than the realistic version…it still has been fun, on occasions, to set myself the challenge of realism. But once this pursuit of “drawing a thing exactly as it appears in front of me” begins to take on a driven, anxious, dissatisfied-with-all-but-perfection feel…then I know I’ve lost something. My ego has taken over, and I’m at the mercy of its standard bearing down on me.
How can we work against this? Here are some suggestions:
*Draw Ish-fully! I highly recommend the book Ish by Peter Reynolds!! I came across this book about four years ago and it literally changed my life! You can read about it in this blog post . This one little book UN-blocked a nearly two-year long drought of drawing in my life because of its delightful message to draw Ish-ly! I’m not gonna tell you more…you gotta buy, beg, borrow or otherwise READ THIS BOOK!! That, and his other book, The Dot, have been HUGE encouragements to me to continue making my mark in the world!
*When you look at one of your drawings, and you’re saying in your head, “Blcchkk!” Stop there and ask yourself why? What is it specifically I don’t like about this? Is it because it doesn’t look like so-and-so’s drawing? Is it because it isn’t exactly what I see in front of me? Is “the color all wrong”? Is it just “blah”? Why is it “blah”? When your response is vague and general, you must try to put your finger on the specifics of it! Then you’ll have something to tackle, rather than just bashing your efforts.
*Work WITH “mistakes”. Try to use the lines or colors that you’re thinking are all “wrong” to enhance what you’re creating on the page. “Wrong” colors are often more exciting than the “right” ones. Re-drawn lines over top of or beside the first “wrong” ones, often ADD a sense of energy to a drawing, rather than it looking stale or stilted.
*Designate pages for “working on perspective, shading, proportion, etc.”, and pages for “playing around”. Try making a sloppy, playful wash of colors on a page and then, after it dries, add a drawing on top of it. (Above is an example of this kind of play.) You’ll feel freer to draw due to the fun colors underneath.
*Glory in the Messes! When you have a mess on the page, look at it like this: What a beautiful mess you are! A perfectly chaotic, uncontrollable beauty of a page I neither planned nor hoped to create! Let it be an artistic expression of how LIFE feels at times.
*If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Keep at it! Keep working and re-working the drawing or painting until it “says” what you want it to “say”.
*Gesso/collage/paint over it and RE-DO! Consider covering up the offending portion of a drawing or painting and then go at it again. (Like I did with the mouth in the above drawing.)
*Consider KEEPING ALL sketches, drawings, doodles, paintings, collages in your sketchbook, whether they be failures or not. NOT tearing out “failed” pages allows you to see how your sketch journals evolve over time. THE “FAILED” DRAWINGS ARE JUST AS MUCH, IF NOT MORESO, A STEP UP THE DRAWING LADDER AS THE SUCCESSFUL DRAWINGS. You always learn from the “failures”… if they really can be called a failure.
*If it really, really displeases you, then by all means…chuck it! I have thrown away a handfull of pages tearing them out of a sketchbook because I just couldn’t abide its presence there. Feel free to do this! It’s YOUR book. Make it your own. With or without the messes.
*Draw a lot! If you only make one or two sketches a month, you may feel more pressure for those sketches to be masterpieces. Putting pen or pencil to paper as often as you possibly can, frees you from feeling they’ve gotta be “good”. BTW…what does “a good drawing” mean anyway? In MY opinion, it is a drawing that causes you to be right back there in the moment you were making it, remembering the sights, sounds, feel of that moment. No one else has to approve of it. No one else needs to understand it. Draw for yourself…to enjoy the life you’ve been given.
*Limit the amount of time you spend gazing at OTHER PEOPLE’S ARTWORK! And instead….DRAW!! PAINT! Make YOUR art! Viewing other’s artwork, (perhaps even here on this blog ), can become oppressive; feeling that we will NEVER be able to do what so-and-so does. Only look to other’s work for inspiration, not for comparison!!
A Blessing: May this week find you letting go of your ego…that desire to compare yourself to others and either feel smugly better than they, or more likely, feel that you’ll never measure up. May you joy-fully BE wherever you are on your journey to chronicle your life in images and words. Like an apple tree whose many phases of leaf to blossom to cluster to fruit, is a perfect evolving; each phase is right where the apple is supposed to be at that given moment. Be an apple. Enjoy the growth, the seasons, the journey, the evolving. And may you make Ish-ful drawings all along the way!!
***Note: These first five lessons have concentrated on, shall we say, the back-bone to chronicling your life in a journal through images and words. They have been designed to motivate, inspire, and free you from blocks you may experience. Now we turn, in the next five or so lessons, to some specifics concerning making marks on a page. Please join me next Friday as we look at the first of three ways to draw that I myself enjoy so much. (There are SO MANY different “ways to draw”…I’m only going to show you three.) We will look at not only the HOW-TO, but the WHY behind it. Stay tuned friends! I’m really so glad you’re here!
**A Note about the title of this Lesson: It occurred to me that many of my worldwide blog friends here may not be familiar with this phrase. Many years ago, here in the States, we had a commercial about Eggo brand frozen waffles. The commercial had something to do with Eggo waffles being heated in a pop-up toaster and two people vying for the same Eggo waffles as they popped up. Hence the phrase, “Let go my Eggo” becoming Leggo my Eggo for these commercials. I dropped the “g” in Eggo…a good picture of how we need to drop our egos when we go to draw!
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
To Peer Behind the Veil often requires childlike eyesight. Not child-ish, but child-like. A childlike sense of wonder in a work-a-day, responsibility-laden world, is very difficult to maintain. But I uphold that keeping a sketchbook can connect you to the child within you that longs to come out and play. I’m convinced that cultivating a childlike view of our lives is a key element to freeing ourselves to draw and paint our lives.
As adults, we have a highly developed ability to turn ANYTHING fun into a structured endeavor for improvement or for money-making or both. We’re adept at making artful explorations into a burdening responsibility. When keeping a little book of your life in images, the best approach is that of a child…wonder at simple things, a willingness to get messy, and an ability to view life free of the skepticism and cynicism that lurks in our adult world.
Think back to when you were a kid…or if you have children, to when they were little. Try to remember the wide-eyed wonder at things like ants marching in a line on the sidewalk and stars twinkling in the night sky. When was the last time you marveled at something like that?
My husband and I had an affectionate nick-name for our oldest daughter when she was little. We called her “pokey little puppy” because we would be walking along as slowly as we could for her to keep up, only to find that she was way behind, squatting down on the edge of the sidewalk to look at the buttercups or clovers nearby. Other times it was ladybugs and ants. Another time it was an earthworm. Still to this day, at 17 years old, Catherine has a wonderful ability to stop and smell the flowers. Her dad and I hope this stays with her til she is 80.
Here are some ideas and suggestions for cultivating a childlike mindset:
*Be fascinated! Seek out things/places/events that fascinate you. Ask yourself what captivated you when you were a child and go draw that. What did you love then? If you were captivated by insects as a little boy…return to looking for them, draw them, make a shadow-box of the different species. Did you want to live on a farm when you were little? Seek out a farm to visit. Take your camera and sketchbook. Go dig in the dirt, jump in a pile of leaves, lay down under the stars and gaze. Create space in your life for wonder and fascination.
*Sit on the ground spread-eagle style or criss-cross applesauce to draw.
*Lay down on your tummy, feet up in the air, drawing the grass and the moving things in it.
*Draw the clouds and what they look like to you…a horse with wings? a unicorn? a teddy-bear? jellyfish?
*Draw a picture of yourself as a child. Find a photograph of you as a child and draw from the photo. Or draw yourself as YOU REMEMBER yourself to be as a kid.
*What were your favorite things to dress up in when you were a kid? Cowboy boots? Twirly skirts? Draw yourself, either now as an adult, or as a kid, wearing these beloved items.
*What were your favorite toys/stuffed animals as a kid? Was it Lincoln Logs? Legos? Teddy bears? Dolls? Barbies? Draw them!
*What were some of your favorite books when you were a child? I have blogged about some of mine here, here, and here.
*Use kid-like stuff to draw and paint with: crayons, markers, tempera paint, side-walk chalk, cray-pas, crayola watercolors, construction papers, glue sticks, dry-erase boards, stamps and ink pads, etc.
*Find a child in your life to draw with. Draw and paint beside them OR together on the same page. You’ll realize just how uninhibited they are on a white piece of paper. The above drawing I made just a few weeks ago sitting at a table with Maddie. She was engrossed in drawing her sunshine-filled beach scene. She is an inspiration to me!
A Blessing: May the kid in you come out and play this week! May he/she find wonders and marvels in the little things of your life. May your adult self step-aside for at least a few moments to allow some childlike wonder, fascination, and playfulness. And may your sketchbook be filled with these wonders as you peer behind the veil to re-cover your childlike self.
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
OK. Let’s face it. Life does not always feel like a Feast. Sometimes it feels positively the opposite: a famine. We look in our food pantry and it’s pretty bare, a loved one is sick, health issues are multiplying, someone close to you has died, bills are mounting, a relationship is strained. Even just the monotony and busyness of day-to-day living can be oppressive. In these times, it’s as if a coat of dust has settled over everything around us, keeping us from seeing its real beauty. This veil comes between us and the vibrancy of what we’ve actually been given lacks any sparkle or glimmer. We just can’t see it. Our eyesight is dimmed.
I tell you, DRAWING, PAINTING, CREATING has the power to open your eyes to see through the dust. It’s as if, with each swipe of your pen, crayon, or paintbrush, you are smearing away the dust. Somehow (and I don’t know that I can really articulate how) drawing in and through these times can bring a sense that THERE’S MORE to your life than the presenting situation. That, in some strange sense, there actually is a Feast behind the veil of the current famine.
There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies that illustrates this well. In the movie Hook, Robin Williams superbly plays the role of Peter Pan. In this scene, Peter is still not the Peter Pan they remember of old…he has lost his ability to crow (use his imagination). Peter and the Lost Boys sit down to have their evening meal and there’s nothing on the table but empty bowls and plates. As Peter finds his voice and learns to crow (albeit in boyish verbal daggers), a feast appears before them, sumptuous and in full color! This is what happens when we find our voice in our sketchbooks. We just have to show up to the table (the page) and begin to crow (draw/paint/collage/write)!
It may sound really silly to you, in the midst of what you’re experiencing, for me to tell you that if you draw, and draw, and draw…the Feast will appear. I’m not promising riches, nor healing for your loved ones. But I am saying that in drawing, just the act of drawing (and not the final results), the saddened heart is lifted a bit, the impoverished soul is fed, a thirsty heart is closer to being quenched, and an anxious mind is eased. Somehow, when we draw/paint/etc., a sense of abundance returns to us…a feeling that somehow everything’s going to be alright. We may even find renewed strength to move through the current difficult situation.
I’m not holding out a pollyanna view of things, as in, just be positive and it will all turn out ok. I know this lesson in my own life and have experienced it time and time again throughout the years I’ve been drawing and painting. It was my mainstay when Maddie was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. You can read posts about that time here and here. I have drawn and painted when loved ones and friends were going through tremendous difficulties… here is just one example. These are only a few places in my life where Peering Beyond the Veil has upheld me. I know this is true for other artists as well. Such as Laura Frankstone of Laurelines‘ drawings of her mom in her final days. Veronica Lawlor talks about her experience of drawing the Towers, on site, as they fell on 9/11. Watch this video interview with her describing what that was like. Cathy Johnson writes (and illustrates) beautifully of this subject. And our Everyday Matters leader, Danny Gregory, speaks to this so wonderfully in his book by the same title, Everyday Matters. I know there are many, many more who can attest to this mini-miracle that happens when we draw. It isn’t that our difficult circumstances are changed by drawing…but rather that we are enabled to SEE our circumstances in a new way. Drawing can transform a drowning despair into a joy-threaded ache.
Some suggestions and ideas for Peering Behind the Veil this week:
*Draw/Paint/Collage/Write the “famine” places in your life. Paint what they feel like. Draw the actual circumstances, either in the midst of them, or at a later time from memory.
*Create abstract images with color, line, papers that speak to what’s happening inside you and around you. Choose colors that convey your heartfelt grapplings with this part of your life.
*Draw/Paint/Collage any and all positive aspects of what your are going through. Look for them, draw them, write them. Even if it’s only that the sun is shining…draw it!
*Write out, in decorative lettering, quotes that are helpful to you in the midst of your circumstances.
*Create an image of the positive outcome you desire to happen in these difficult events, even if that seems unlikely.
*If someone you know is going through a rough time, and you are also saddened by it, why not make a little painting or drawing to give to them? The act of doing this will help you AND them.
A Blessing: May you have the strength and bravery to pick up your sketchbook and swipe at the dust. May your drawing practice allow you to see beyond the veil and experience your life and its difficult circumstances in a new light. May you lift up your Voice (pen, paper, paint, etc.) and Crow and Crow (paint, draw, write…)!
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” –Pablo Picasso
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
