Dear Intimacy,
What would you have me know today?
When I’m photographing and find myself getting excited because I see something interesting, the mantra I use is “don’t think! just shoot!” As soon as I start to think, my body tightens up and I, for whatever reason, think about composition. I get in my own way. Instead of feeling free and letting myself have fun, I overthink the entire scene and end up not having fun and my photographs look too composed and uptight. I’m finding the same thing with drawing!
Yesturday and today our drawing challenge was to look at a drawing which is positioned upside down and then copy this drawing, by drawing upside down. Betty (as I know affectionately refer to the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain), asks us to copy Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920, which when you take a look is SO intimidating! Look at all those lines! Betty then asks you to practice again, choosing between spiderman and another famous portrait. I chose spiderman.
Something funny happened when I made my spiderman drawing. I wasn’t nervous or scared (which seems funny, because drawing is not a competition, I have an eraser, and I make my rules! I can erase! I can start again! I can take all day long if I want). Instead, I looked at each part as a line and thought to myself, ‘Oh! Look at this! Here’s another line! I’m just going to draw this line and then this line and then this line!’ By doing this, I didn’t get hung up on thinking (!!) - I just starting drawing. I tend to get stuck with faces and hands. My brain automatically tells me ‘hands are hard’ and I start to second guess myself. When I’m just thinking about the lines, I seem to flow and my hand seems to move without my brain! It’s fun to see what appears on the paper.
Margot is into the upside down drawing, however, she makes these challenges her own by drawing what she’s thinking about or her favourite things (the unicorn lip gloss).
Miles was not into drawing Igor Stravinsky (he thought it was crazy of Betty to ask us to draw Igor!) but instead challenged himself to draw all of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake’s characters (ongoing project). The interesting thing about Miles and these drawings is that he starts drawing basic shapes (circles, squares, ovals) - the outline of the character - and then fills in the details once he’s drawn the shapes. If you were in the room with him, you would observe many emotions: the high highs and the very low lows which include throwing pillows :( . But! You would also see flow! And excitement! And pride!
margot’s upside down drawing, thought’s in margot’s head, day 1.
margot’s upside down drawing, unicon lip gloss, day 2.