Words at bottom of page:
i threw open the blinds this morning and what to my wondering eyes should appear but BLUE SKY beaming back at me! The bluest blue with only hints of white in a few meandering clouds, a streak or 2 where planes had traversed. i held my breath and drank it in. i went out into it and walked around in a bejewelled state of BLUE. 5/17/12
Mini Lesson #10: Develop Selective Sight
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!)
Our Spring Break is now over…I’m sending the kids off to school as we speak I type. All in all it was a wonderful week with kids home, being with both families, Holy Week services, multiple egg hunts and painting the hallway. Ever the optimist, I began what I thought would be a fairly simple project: to paint our hallway downstairs and if all went well, to continue it up the staircase and down the upstairs hallway. My eldest wanted to help, so I thought…piece of cake!
We bought the thickest paint from Lowes, what they say is their primer/paint combination that allows for a one-coat application. Cosmic Cream sounded and looked like just what I wanted. I knew, from having painted other rooms in our home, that it would probably need two coats. As the week wore on, and my helper wasn’t able to help with the second coat, it became evident that a probable third coat would be needed. And that’s where it sits… I’m not a fan of unfinished projects.
So. I’m thinking today is the day to put on the final coat of paint. That is, if LIFE will allow. But getting back into my weekly work/family routine doesn’t allow for lengthy spans of time. We shall see. I sat down at the kitchen-end of the hall to draw the above and then painted “the walls” with the Valspar Cosmic Cream paint. My sketch just might be more finished than the walls will be. Oi!
P.S. This is the stuff of the FEAST…ordinary, slightly boring, not-yet-finished LIFE. I hope you have a FEAST-FUL week! And a chance or two to draw it!
Lesson #2: DRAW FROM THE FEAST!
So you drew up a chair…maybe several times this week. Yay! Hooray!! And I hope you were able to do some drawing or sketching, swooshing a bit of color around on the page. I think several of you drew chairs…that’s totally awesome!! Perhaps at some point you began to wonder, “OK. What now?” “What do I draw? What do I want to put in this little book of my life?”
You may not realize it, but every time you sit down (or find yourself already sitting); every time you stop the whirl of activity and just notice what’s going on around you…THERE’S A FEAST right there in front of you, in you, all around you. It’s at your disposal to drink in, to draw from (HA! love that), to record in images and words in your sketchbook.
*No matter how normal or mundane the items surrounding you may seem, they are fantastic fodder for drawings. Look around you, look down at your feet, look up to the sky/ceiling…SO MUCH TO DRAW right within arms reach. Then open a cabinet or two, draw the jumble of stuff in your closet, or garage, or under a bed.
*Step outside…draw the birds, flowers, weeds at your door. These three bushes “live” at the top of my neighborhood. I created different versions of them here and here, oh and here and here too!. So many beautiful things to capture in your sketchbook! To jot down in lines or colors. To create in cut or torn papers. To say to yourself and any you might allow to view your sketches: “I see the little beauties in my day and I’m not letting them go unnoticed!” But beyond what we can see in the world around us, there’s so so much more of the Feast from which to draw:
*Draw from your Inner Well. Your emotions at any given moment are perfect to try and get down in a sketchbook. Am I content right now? Am I agitated about something? Am I fearful, worried, or angry? Am I pleased as punch? Why? Draw and paint these things. You might actually draw the thing that makes you feel a certain way, OR you can create an abstract sketch of what that emotion feels like. You might even enjoy creating a character who is “you”, who can be drawn to represent these things. This is how Genevieve came about for me.
*Draw from your Thoughts. Are you thinking about the to-do list for your day? Draw the list and the items on it. Is there a poem you’ve come across that you love? Maybe a poem you yourself wrote? Write it in your sketchbook and make little pictures or swaths of color that go with that poem. Is there a quote you’re particularly fond of? Write it out, illustrate it. When I was a young girl I kept a book of favorite poems and quotes along with small cut out pictures from magazines that I thought illustrated the quotes. I still have these and love to see what I was “drawn to” then. Working out your thoughts and emotions in a sketchbook is a terrific way of dealing with them, and even making sense of them.
*Draw from your Dreams. Both the dreams you have while sleeping AND the dreams you have for the future make wonderful subjects for your book. The above drawing is based on a recurring dream I had as a little girl. You can read about it here.
*Draw from your Past. In you resides a vast amount of experiences! Events from your childhood, career milestones, parenting, travels, or ANYTHING that makes up your history…these are rich soil for drawings and paintings in your sketchbook. You can even devote a whole book to one particular subject. I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina and spent every summer on the stage of the outdoor drama, Horn in the West. Read more about that here if you’d like.
*Draw from your Opinions. Fill in the blank…I love ______. I do not like______. I hate______. Be it political or food, places or events, your opinion about something is worth getting down. Choose lines, colors and papers that are in keeping with your feelings about those things. You can probably guess that’s me on the left with my oldest daughter as we’re kissing our ukuleles! We love playing ukuleles!
The smorgasbord of your life, no matter how simple or boring you think it might be, is truly rich and wonderful! It’s all there when you draw up a chair. All you need is to take the time to survey the feast in front of you and in you. You need a sketchbook and pen. Perhaps some color too. You might not see the vast array of richness yet. Drawing will help uncover it for you. Start with what you can see. Draw it. Capture it in lines and color. If you’re stumped for how to go about making marks on a page, try Bert Dodson’s book Keys to Drawing. It will cover practically everything you need in the technique department. But really…you can just draw! No need for getting bogged down with how-tos. Just draw.
And the more you draw…more of the Feast will appear. Simply by drawing and drawing…you will uncover more and more things to draw and paint in your book. Drawings beget drawings, I say.
A Blessing: May you have eyes to see the Feast that is your life. May your eyes be freshly reawakened to the Beauty that surrounds you in your everyday world. May you be able to see and accept the vast experiences and emotions in your life as part of this Feast. May your Dreams and well-guarded past be allowed to play in the world of line and color.
***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!)
