Growing Art
One sketch at a time
Last night I taught an online class about illustration and painting. The focus was on imagination, using visual memory and sketching for fun. Half way through the class It occurred to me that it was easy for me to draw in front of others. I’ve been working towards having freedom in sketching and painting for as long as I can remember. The blank white page is a terrifying thing when you feel like you desperately want it to be easy. Writers have their notebooks, where they can place all their thoughts and close the book, safe in the knowledge there’s a universal rule that others won’t read it. It’s theirs. Somehow a blank page or sketchbook seems more public.
It’s been so long since I first decided I wanted to be an illustrator. I feel like I can look back on my early work in the same way as I would look at drawings I did as a child. Some of my terrible illustrations are even in published books. But I’m fond of them, even though I would do them differently now.
Bit of a metaphor
We’re in the middle of renovating our bathroom at the moment because the first time we renovated it we made all sorts of mistakes. In 2006 I went for an old freestanding bath and an old wooden table with a sink plonked on top, open shelves made of recycled wood. No hidden storage at all, and we had three girls. It got messy. But that was 15 years ago and the old bathroom served us well. It’s the same for a lot of this big old 70’s building. We took it on knowing that it would take years to sort it out. The kids have grown up here and moved out, but we’re still renovating, putting veggie patches in, planting more stuff in the garden. Why would you stop playing around with something if you love it?
Drawing and having freedom with it is pretty much the same thing. It isn’t a god-given talent,it isn’t magic that some people can do and others can’t. It grows if you feed it. One sketch at a time.
