Monday, May 21, 2012

drawing

Drawing is fucking hard and I suck at it and I hate it. I used to really enjoy it, you know, when I was a kid and could just let my mind wander and scribble my visions on paper and people would pat me on the head and say things like, "Oh! What a good little artist you are!" and, "What a lovely horse you drew! That is a horse, is it not?" and other positive, encouraging shit like that. Oh the halcyon days of childhood lies. Not now. Now it is all about SEARCHING LINES, and TECHNIQUE, and PERSPECTIVE, and DEPTH, and a whole load of other crap that I know nothing about and clearly am incapable of creating.

I had to sign up for an additional four credits to be eligible for student aid so I thought signing up for Intro to Drawing would be a fun, no-brainer, easy summer class. I mean, remember, this is something I thought I was GOOD at. Something I thought I ENJOYED. Who knew how wrong I could be?? In a mere two weeks I've learned to hate it and now I'm mad that I've been poisoned against it. I will never again be able to look lovingly at my chicken scrawls and feel the warm pride I once did. I'm relegated now to seeing only what isn't there. The LACK of persepctive, the futile search for the SEARCHING LINES that aren't there, the incompetent COMPOSITION.

On the upside, it is only drawing, and unlike say, brain surgery, you get credit just for showing up and trying, even if you have absolutely no talent and your work sucks (like mine does). And it is a condensed summer course so it is only six weeks long, the first of which I missed, and we are now halfway into (read: over) it. It will be a short, brutal reminder of my shortcomings, which is fine, it is good to know I don't have to decide whether or not to write AND illustrate my books. The writing, or should I say drawing, is on the wall. Thank God I'm witty.

-Jenny, Undecided

1 comment:

  1. blah. if you want accuracy take a photo. I want imagination and emotion when I look at a drawing. Did Picasso become famous because of his dead-on adherence to the principles of perspective? Or because he smashed them all together into a big creative yawlp?

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