And it helps to have a guide:
I bought Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered years ago, and just looking through it always tickled my funny bone and lifted my spirits. Someday I too wanted to learn to sketch whimsical figures. But until this week I had only done a couple of pages of the exercises. Then I made the commitment and finished every single assignment.
I took the authors’ words to heart:
…you will find yourself frequently unsatisfied with your efforts. Our recommendation? So what. Take a fearless experimental approach. Wield your pen or pencil with spirit and take bold chances. Your successes will shine all the brighter and the rest—nothing but necessary steps to greatness….
Around here we honor mistakes and botched details. Please make many.
Well, yeah. I can do that. 🙂 So I did.
Two of my favorite exercises were The 3-Headed Red Spotted Gorff and the pigs:
(The authors provided the legs and body, we filled in the necks and heads.)
The pigs:
Not worrying about polishing the finished product was liberating–just go for the general spirit of the subject and move on. I’m hoping to do some quick sketches regularly, and to keep me motivated I’ve gotten more books by Quentin Blake, the illustrator of Drawing for…. Again the idea is to draw boldly and quickly rather than looking for a polished product. I will let you know how it turns out. This week, at least, was a great adventure.
What was your week like? Have you had any adventures lately?
Tom & I are in the midst, almost finished, taking out our library. Will give to our local library. My friend sent that she has 6,000 books & couldn’t get rid of them, like getting rid of her children. We download audio & print books now. Computers do everything but wash the dishes. 😀
Everything was organized. Cook, nutrition, psychology, dreams, Freud, yoga, medicine, downhill skiing, cross co. skiing, wilderness snow camping, travel, books in other languages (french, german, swedish). Classics galore. Etc. They were all well organized. But I didn’t have time (take time) to read them.
The biggest adventure for me has been to have a house guest who has not yet released from his incessant chats about his recent activities and the highs and lows that he has had. It has eaten into my leisure time, but I am enjoying having the young man share with me as I am learning a great deal from him too.
I’ve requested the book mentioned from my local library service but I note someone has it out so I might not see it for a month…
New for me is related to assignment but in some ways not new as I have used some of the websites in a previous class during my BA – local music sites, ambling around them – reading and listening to song hooks
Also need to get up with the play on the new electronic gadgets – even the older ones so I can understand what you should download for what, what really all these app things are and where they reside when you’ve got ’em!! Which is better for what. Surfing around the Net, gets me more confused
No adventures, a great music festival though.
bikehikebabe,
I gave away most of my books years ago, and I don’t miss them at all. I do appreciate the extra space.
Rummuser,
It’s too bad your young friend talks so much, but it sounds as if on the whole he’s a plus.
Cathy,
This modern technology does keep our minds tuned up. One of my gidgets (for streaming Netflix movies) went on the blink two days ago. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon talking to various technical support people. The last one was actually helpful.
Evan.
Again, I’m so glad you could attend the festival.
It seems that my research on how I would present my part (New Media in contemporary Ethnomusicology) of the forthcoming presentation and which artist I will use Tiki Taane is the way the rest will go and put together theme/issues to work with him…
I feel chuffed on the matter 🙂 me the old girl in the now rather modern on-line society
>Your successes will shine all the brighter and the rest—nothing but necessary steps to greatness….
– This does not just apply to learning to draw. I think it’s one of the rules of life.
>Two of my favorite exercises were The 3-Headed Red Spotted Gorff and the pigs:
– They actually look like the animals you set out to draw (and complete)!
When I was Standard I, our homework one day was to draw our pet. We had a host of them at home. I opted to draw my favourite – Hector, our adopted mutt. When she saw my homework, my art teacher was puzzled.
“Kate, what is that?”
I innocently and very proudly replied, “My dog!”
I will never forget Teacher Rosie’s remark, “He looks like a donkey!”
Wrong, Teacher Rosie, very wrong. You should not have called Hector a donkey.
I went on to hold a grudge against her well into my 20s and I never enjoyed art class ever again. Thanks a lot, Teacher Rosie!
Hector, up there in doggie heaven, you know I love donkeys and donkey look-alikes, too, don’t you?
>Not worrying about polishing the finished product was liberating–just go for the general spirit of the subject and move on.
– Again, not just art, but this applies to life as well.
So that book is a case of life imitating art. 🙂
Kate
Mother took me to an art class in town when I was a child. I drew the door & then flowers in a vase. When I was 40ish I bought oil paints. My road looked like a ditch. My daughter’s friend hung it in her bedroom. I can’t sing either. The only thing about Camp Allegheny I didn’t like was singing around the campfire. I can do everything else. 😉
I just went through all of my books recently — boxed up the one’s I might read again sometime; the rest went to a local charity — more went than stayed. Did the same with old clothes — actually have a couple of empty drawers now and room in the closet (on my side, at least.)
No real adventures lately. Sunday and Monday, we moved some rock and building debris and built a small diversion dam to divert some runoff from the highway away from a grassy area, along with a shallow trench on the uphill side of the dam, most of it by hand, except for hauling some of the material in the lawn tractor trailer. I’ve been quite regular at the gym in recent months and it was nice to be able get out and do some physical labor without ending up worse for wear other a little bit of sore muscles.
Good job Mike!
Cathy,
Good for you!
Kate,
I agree. It’s a great approach to have for life. Jump in, try things and see what happens.
When I was in first grade the teacher always laughed at my drawings. I still remember her asking if my horse was a giraffe because its neck was so long. Then later in the year I had gone to a wedding and drew a simple bride–basically a circle for the head and a triangle for the body, plus two arms with hands holding a bouquet of flowers She liked it! So guess what. From then on when I had to draw a picture I drew my bride. Eventually one of the teachers told my mother I must have really been impressed by a wedding. No, just a strategy to avoid ridicule.
bikehikebabe,
My list of things I can’t do is a lot longer than yours! 😀
Mike,
It sounds as if you’ve been doing great stuff!