Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Giddy Up! Drawing is a Cruel Mistress



This drawing is from a life drawing session that my work hosts for employees to come draw after work. I feel very fortunate to be in a place that not only appreciates creativity but fosters it they way BRC Imagination Arts does. At the very least I have a chance to draw from life again. 

I don't do nearly as much life drawing as I should, but truthfully it gets harder and harder after you leave school. My saving grace is that I'm still always drawing, just not necessarily from life. When you're working on projects like animatic films that are 4-6 minutes long and require hundreds of storyboards to be drawn and rendered by hand, it's kind of hard to find additional time just for a drawing workshop.

But now that I'm done making excuses :P I will say that drawing from life at this stage of my development is both relaxing and stressful. When things are coming together, there's no feeling quite like it. You're 'in the zone' so to speak and you could just draw for days.

But then there are also those moments when you're confident, probably even a bit cocky, at the drawings you're about to make. The model takes his or her pose and you start to put material to paper and all of sudden your arm feels like the way a newborn deer's legs act. It seems like all your years and hours of training have gone out the window because you haven't drawn from life or on paper in such a long time. This is only compounded by your realization that you can't hit 'control Z' or stretch or warp your drawing. What's there is there and all you can do is erase if you're lucky enough to not be using an unforgiving medium. 

It's only then that you realize yet again that drawing is a cruel mistress unforgiving of any negligence.

1 comment:

Thanks for letting me know what you think :)