Drawing
Friday, October 14th 2005
A while ago I decided to start drawing again. It's something I had done as a child as I'm sure we all did but probably like most people I had left it to lie dormant since my teens (if not before). My thought was that I probably had reasonable drawing skills hidden away if I only could put the time aside to work at it. Partially this had been awoken by drawing with my son, just silly animals and things but it was fun and I was quite pleased with some of them given how little effort had been put into producing them. Nothing that I'd want to keep mind you but pleasing all the same. I had also been inspired by a number of blogs that I had discovered where people had been posting sketches and drawings alongside their words. There are a lot of very talented people out there - professional and amateur. On the one hand I think 'there's no way I could do anything that good' and on the other there's the voice that's saying 'it would be fun to give it a go though'.
The blog that kicked this off was really Everyday Matters. Danny Gregory is a writer and illustrator and as well as posting lots of great drawings, also from time to time is kind enough to post drawing tips or posts that are just damn inspirational. Really it was his work, his drawings of the every day things that he came across in his daily life that pointed out to me that anything can be the subject of an interesting drawing. In some respects it's almost as though the quality of the lines, the compostition or the use of colour can be just as interesting to the eye as the subject matter. That's my experience anyway and an important lesson to learn if most of the week is spent at work, at home or moving between the two and not necesarily anywhere more interesing than that.
It was also Danny's blog that made me aware of the book by Betty Edwards
Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain. This has been useful in getting me to actually sit down and draw a bit and helping me to think differently about how I percieve objects and the space they occupy. I've been leaving it to sit for a while because I need to pick up a non-permanent marker and make a couple of cardboard frames for some of the exercises but for a week or two it kept me occupied and away from watching pointless rubbish on TV. It's certainly true, as she points out, that the time just disappears when you are concentrating on the details of a drawing but it's fine to look up and 1.5 hours have gone when you hopefully have something good to show at the end of it. I would suggest picking up a copy, you might surprise yourself at what you can achieve by merely changing the way your brain looks at objects.
It would seem that just recently a section of the animation community have stumbled upon blogs and realised they could be a good motivator for them to keep sketching and also a good way to share some of their work in progress. There are a whole bunch of these that are worth keeping an eye on and it's worth diving back into the archives as there really is some lovely work to see related to both commercial projects and just random drawings. On the whole they all seem to link to one other but I'll list in the sidebar some of the blogs that I've been checking out. I suggest you do the same.
Finally for an example of someone who has a traditional blog (in the sense that they write about their life and experiences) but who uses drawings to illustrate it I would visit vitrolica webb's ite.
Again I find it inspiring, more so than if it was just a text based site. To me it personalises a website having drawings on display that have actually been created by the human hand, be they done on paper and scanned or drawn on the computer. Websites with their standard fonts and layouts can be impersonal and almost dehumanised regardless of the words that are being written. Including such creativity alongside the written word humanises it, makes it a warmer place to visit and gives more insight into the person you are reading about than mere words ever could. I love it and more people should be doing it.
Of course, usually I have a quick look at these at work, get all inspired to do something but by the time I get home at night I'm tired and no drawing gets done *sigh*. Maybe I need to buy a sketch pad and carry it with me. Hope these sites inspire you too.
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