Recent drawings

Tabletop with peonies and a postcard. Pen and ink.

It feels good to be drawing again, after running around for several weeks and barely setting pen to paper. There's no need to look for, or set up, a beautiful arrangement of objects - interesting forms and juxtapositions are everywhere. I find it a good challenge to just draw what's on the tabletop at a particular moment and not fuss over it too much. What can be made of whatever simply is?

Wine bottle with plastic bag and computer mouse. Pen and ink.

I think it's more important to get one's fingers busy drawing (or writing, or playing music) and one's head concentrating and absorbed than to worry about making a beautiful, finished, accomplished piece of art. Working fast and often, filling up sketchbooks, studying and learning from one's efforts: this is what seems to pay the best rewards and keeps me, anyway, from getting paralyzed by self-doubt or freighting infrequent drawings with too many expectations. (I liked what Laura Murphy Frankstone wrote about this recently on her artblog, in a post called "The 48 crayons and me") And it's amazing how, over time, we actually do improve: we see better, we draw better, our fingers gain facility, we get a better idea of what we want to do, we can make sense out of where we've been, we don't get as rattled by our failures, we're freer and more able to experiment. The point is to plunge in, trust the process, and not worry too much about where or how, or especially about end results or comments from others.

It helps to have ways of seeing one's path, and to have some sense of community. Having gallery shows is one way, keeping a blog is another, and the internet affords us a lot of other opportunities as well. Over the past year or two I've regularly posted a lot of my work on Flickr, and followed a number of other artists and photographers who do the same. Unlike some other, busier social media platforms, our little corner of Flickr seems to be populated by people who use it as a way to collect and view their own body of work over time, and that of others. It's respectful, serious, and pretty quiet. I enjoy seeing the evolution of the work of other artists: drawings that turn into paintings, ideas in different media that grow and change, bodies of photographic work, people who work in several media at once, directions explored and directions abandoned. I learn a lot about my own path by observing what others are doing, and their perseverance encourages me.

Comments

[Frances/Materfamilias]

I find this so encouraging, Beth, although of course it would be easy to be intimidated by your work. I can never catch up on the hours more experienced artists have put in over a lifestime while I was doing other things (not to mention basic skills, dispositions, genetics, etc.). But I can get better through doing.
I'll check out the sites you link to. I've been following a few inspiring artists on Instagram, which also seems a platform suited to a compatible, respectful sharing. Thanks for the post.

[Lorianne]

"Working fast and often": I might have to make that into a motto. I don't draw much, but "fast and often" certainly applies to writing, too.

Sometimes when I review past blog posts, I'm surprised that the posts I just "tossed off" weren't all that bad, after all. In my head, anything I don't spend a lot of time perfecting feels shoddy and slapdash, when actually nobody else has the same impossibly high expectations of me that I do. As the saying goes, "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

[Roderick Robinson]

I take your point about getting a sketch done as opposed to agonising about getting it right. For me there seems no equivalent in writing. In anything I do - even this comment, for instance - I subconsciously see it in two parts: the draft plus refinement. Pondering this theory further I conclude I presume a reader. Thus defective grammar, limping syntax and unimaginative structure are likely to get in the way of whatever I want to say and are also likely to irritate, confuse and/or alienate the reader. Perhaps I should elaborate: "intelligent" reader.

The point about writing is that it is evanescent until published, it may be infinitely modified. With a sketch there are limits. I assume that if the sketch contains a gross defect (in your judgment) it is discarded; but does this always apply? Can you live with a gross defect? Is there a point where a less gross defect becomes tolerable and therefore worthy of placing before others?

[Beth]

Frances, please be encouraged and never intimidated! You should know that I spent years away from painting and drawing - yes, I was a graphic designer, but I wasn't doing my own work, and had a lot of problems with it. I've been on both sides of that fence, so I do understand how hard it can be to "just do it." As I wrote in today's post, I've just gotten onto Instagram, so please let's find each other there too.

Lorianne, yeah, it's weird isn't it? But as a longtime meditator I'm sure you know how beneficial it is to do some non-over-thinking once in a while, and just write or just sketch quickly. I never kept up a practice of "morning pages" but just doing it for a while helped me to see how much we need to get into a flow and not think about it too much.

Roderick, yes, there's always at least a two-part process for my writing as well. A sketch, though, is a sketch and going back usually means overworking it. Better to move on to the next one. If there are big flaws, you just won't see it here ;-)