blog 14

Blog 14

1. What is your drawing history?

2. Where have your notions of the role of drawing in art come from?

3. How do you manage your drawing anxiety?

4. How might you mentor an anxious drawer into the joy of making art?

1. I have always liked drawing. In preschool, when the other children were sent to nap, I stayed up and doodled. I would take a sketchbook around with me everywhere I went until I was about 13 years old. I most often drew heroic muscular figures, dragons and various exotic creatures. I dabbled with cartooning and anime. But I hardly ever dealt with the grounding relationships of these figures, they usually just floated on the page in blank space. Apart from the ‘realistic’ drawings I have always made marks. I scribble and wobble and tap the pencil or pen on the paper, just to see what marks it will make. It is a refreshing and cathartic experience.

2. Drawing has always been, for me, a marriage between realistic and symbolic representation. I doodle frequently. My doodles don’t achieve a high degree of realism or technical superiority, but they offer me an escape. When I doodle, I have an outlet for my excess energy, other than figiting. That is why I have an expressionist streak in my drawing. I have seen how drawing can reveal emotions for my entire life. Realistic representation came later on and never displaced that belief. In secondary and post secondary school, the realistic element in my drawing has been under the main spotlight and has grown significantly. Drawing’s role in art has changed for me most profoundly from the input of my professors at the University of Calgary. Their beliefs about drawing in the art world, and their techniques have impacted me a great deal.

3. I fully realize that there is a disconnect between my hands and my brain. I know that I may never draw exactly what I envision, but I have made peace with that. I accept that the process of drawing still has an element of randomness; that it, like all art can be an outcome unknown experience. If I am drawing a model or still life, or other realistically representative form, and it doesn’t look the way it ‘should’, I will either attempt to correct the problems, start over, or have a laugh at my mistakes and let it go.

4. I think that if I had a student who was upset about their drawings, or frustrated with their perceived lack of skill, I would show them some artworks by some of the most highly regarded artists of the modern era, who deal with surrealism and non-representational work. If those great artists can make great art without the precise realistic representation that the anxious student wants, than the student should realize that it is unnecessary.