Citizen Sketcher

This is the last of the drawing classes I’ve signed up for. It happened to be fast poses – twos, five’s and tens, which is super challenging for watercolor!

Out of the three hour session I only kept 23 minutes of drawings, which is a roughly a 13% success rate, (given breaks). – hah!

When these fast ones work, they work! But at this speed, a lot of them don’t work :)

These are 5×7″ sketches on mixed paper scraps. (Which I don’t recommend doing! Changing paper abruptly is disconcerting. Each paper has a different feel and absorption rate, and that was also noticeably throwing me off.

So that’s it for life drawing for #30×30!

I do have to say, signing up for a few weeks of classes is kind of a hack for getting your one-painting-a -day with no special effort :)

Here’s a few sketches from early in my warmup phase of this year’s marathon.

This is a thing I sometimes do, which I call *Destruction Testing* – which is to keep painting, past the point where you would normally be satisfied – with the intention of pushing the image just a little bit past the brink of destruction – in order to achieve a new thing you haven’t done before.

Because, if you always stop when you think the drawing is done – you will never see what’s on the other side.

So:

I started by drawing a dozen or so (can’t recall) line drawings from a video by @milena_milachich, and painted them ‘as normal’ for life drawing – and then just kept going. Three, or four times over the figure and background.

All the drawings and the first-pass watercolors are now obliterated, except these two examples I put aside, and as well, about half of the ‘finished’ images were actually destroyed in the process. Painted over to the point of unrecognizability.

Fun hey?

One of the ways I judge a watercolor is if I can imagine it blown up to six feet high, and I still like it. I think these have that going for them.

I feel like the end result is something you can’t get any other way. And while they’re not really as refined as I might like – they *could* be the basis of a new painting later.

Most importantly – doing some Destruction Testing every so often rewards you with a freedom from perfection that you can use in all your work. Proof that there are gems to be found by taking risks.

Anyone who says they feel constrained, or anxious when they’re drawing, or who wishes they could be more loose – this is a cure for that.

On a more, I don’t know, ‘honest note’, as compared to yesterday’s post – I wasn’t even sure I was going to post these – but they are part of my #30×30, so you’re supposed to show your work; good or bad.

I do realize all the figure drawing exercises this year are somewhat silly for a supposedly mature artist.

These are literally what I was doing in the first year of college, just being done now with a more hand-skills and a slightly depressed sense of; it doesn’t matter, so f**k-it, just draw.

Maybe you can call this year’s marathon an artistic mid-life crisis.

Which might be something fueled by a knowledge that time is running short for my artistic lifespan, and that one’s abilities are possibly on the cusp of declining, rather than continuing to rise indefinitely.

Age is a factor, I wont lie. Art is a sport, not a science. It’s physical, and your age has an impact on your vision, your hand-eye coordination, and your processing power.

Did you know that studies have showing drawing is associated with the speech center of the brain?

Take my word for it or go browse: (Observational drawing in the brain: a longitudinal exploratory fMRI study / Pubmed) and ( The Neural Bases of Drawing: a Meta-analysis and Systematic Literature Review of Neruofucntional Studies in Healthy Individuals / Springer Nature)

Next year I will be 60, and I am noticing I am searching for words more frequently, or using placeholders (hand me that thingy, will ya?) – which is perfectly normal in aging people – but I do feel somewhat the same about my drawing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dying or something, but I can feel that things are changing. In the same way I feel my lower back when I’m gardening.

So while I do feel my marathon this year has been kind of weird and pointless – I also feel like I’m keeping in training for whatever comes next – and it’s important not to stop when you don’t see any immediate need to make art.

Whatever project that comes next is going to come out of staying active, not out of stopping, and it’s going to come out of experimentation, not retreading old routines. (Sorry Urban Sketching!).

So; that is also part of the whole psychology of #30×30.

The group motivation and the power of showing up, even when you don’t feel it. Same as the gym. Same as ‘butt-in-chair’ is the only way that a novel gets written.

It might seem sometimes that I only promote this online event just to be a bit of a marketer, self-promoting my books and classes, and that thing old dudes do where they try to stay relevant no matter what – but I hope that it’s clear that I really am doing it for the sake of the art, and that I really do think these benefits can be shared by everyone who participates.

But mostly I’m doing it for myself, and you should be doing it too :)

Hah!

~m

So I mentioned before, how this year I started my personal #30×30 unusually early? At the time of tonight’s life drawing session it’s been fifteen days for you, but thirty days for me.

I’m way out of synch with the official dates I know. But I like to be ahead of the pack, so I have time to be online making comments, but also – there is the anxiety of *What if I don’t have anything good to show!*

It’s a real problem when you’re the instigator of an event!

I feel an undue amount of pressure to put in a good performance :P

I do feel my marathon was a bit wandering this year. I didn’t have a well-defined project. I didn’t have any ambitions for an entry to a show. It’s just been a lot of fun days sitting in the sun sketching, or relaxing nights going to life drawing.

Don’t get me wrong – that sounds amazing when you put it like that :)

So in fact, I don’t really have anything good to show. Not really. I don’t have any one piece that is ‘a new bar for me’. I don’t have a set of things I would put in a show, or material for a new book.

I just have these drawing’s that I’ve been making.

Daily exercises.

The most basic goal of the marathon.

It’s truly surprising to me how drawing skill can wax and wane.

It’s not like – just because you can do something once, that you automatically keep that skill for the rest of time. It’s not like a learned fact, where once you learn it, you know it forever.

The truth is – if you don’t use your drawing, it just fades away.

I think musician’s have had it right for hundreds of years – daily practice is the only way to stay at a high level of performance.

Every year it’s the same with #30×30. After a long winter when I tend to stop drawing for months at a time – the first few drawings of spring feel so tentative, so pale and weak.

But the marathon works!

Painting every day, day in and day out, simply continuing – even if you’re not happy with your own work – the confidence arrives though simple repetition.

I’ve come to believe (and I wouldn’t necessarily have said this even five years ago) that drawing is a physical ability – it’s not intellectual.

It should be a reflex. Like doing a backflip. It’s a muscle memory that was built by repeated training, but in the moment it’s performed, it should be done without thinking.

If you stop to think in the middle of a back flip, you’re falling on your face.

You have to let your body do the flip, and then just stand there and take the applause :)

I hope you can see it in these drawings. It’s the confidence – and the simplicity of the execution that makes these work for me. Even if they’re just studies, not finished work. Not a real project that I plan to publish, or paintings I think I could exhibit.

Right now, this is what I think is the true value of art-making for an individual person. A hobbyist, or let’s say an enthusiast. Not someone who’s earning a wage with art, (or studying to do so) but someone who is making art for themselves.

Achieving that state where drawing is as personally rewarding as playing music, or taking a great walk though the woods. Experiencing your own drawing like one of the great moments of life.

I have in the past been known for teaching art, and for making tutorials and videos. (People keep asking me for more!) But I’ve arrived at a point where, I don’t know what I’m going to do next.

I mean – during the actual drawing – I couldn’t honestly tell you what the next move is. I don’t have a plan, or a process anymore. I can’t make videos right now, because I can’t just draw normally. I’m picking up the drawing, turning it sideways to make a mark. Working on three drawings at the same time. I think I’m done and I pick up the drawing again and change something. I really don’t know what or why I’m doing stuff. Which is not normal for me!

I’m trying to make drawing an automatic reflex. It’s kind of funny to hear myself saying the old art-school stuff; ‘Be in the moment’. ‘Let the drawing dictate what it needs’. ‘Don’t try to control the outcome’.

I used to just tune out my teachers. Saying to myself – “Just teach me to draw buddy! I don’t need the Yoda stuff :) ”

Hah!

So. Is that a good sign? A kind of artistic maturity? If I can say that with a straight face about my own drawings.

Well; I can’t say for sure.

All I can do is keep drawing!

I’ve hit my 30 days, and a fair few more than 30 sketches – without anything earth shaking to show for it – but on the other hand I’m feeling great about what I’ve been making the last few days.

(I’m still showing you work from the past, while I talk to you from the future :)

So I’m going to keep painting without any aspirations to make a masterpiece – doing life drawing, and painting random things from social media that call out to me – because I feel like I’m getting somewhere with my mindset about painting, even while the work itself is going though an awkward phase. (I feel).

And I guess I have to once again say thank you! Because it’s the fact I have readers out there that keeps me working. It’s the years of doing the Marathon that keeps me growing.

So – thanks you guys!

Keep drawing, keep sharing, and keep encouraging each other to make more art!

And let me know when you hit your 30 paintings. I love seeing what everyone has made together.

Ok – good night!

See you tomorrow!

~Marc