Citizen Sketcher

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