Apparently, God is on the side of the dude married to an angel. Like we didn’t know that already.
But back to my life, which is far more interesting than any silly, NFL playoff game. Er, maybe not.
Somehow I forgot to plan for a long, holiday weekend, which completely derailed my rather loose schedule of sitting at my desk for an unhealthy amount of time. Instead, I found myself un-decorating and then cleaning the apartment. So… I don’t have much to report but I do feel as though we can use the kitchen again and that no one will die from some peculiar bacterial contamination. Nothing like the unglamorous side of being a starving artist. But I’ll save the exciting stories of cleaning the bathroom for another time.
I did manage to spend a few minutes doing something that I talked about at the end of last year: actually drawing stuff for myself. I fired up the drawing box, sharpened a 3B pencil to a fine point and had at it for no other reason than I could. And of course, the drawings worked out better than I’d expected. How annoying is that? I mean, I spent a big chunk of 2011 trying my hand at stuff I used to be good at: painting, stenciling, photography, etc; only to find that I have very little interest in such things… and then, I sit down to draw and cha-ching, everything works like a dream. It’s good for my vocation but it’s as annoying as hell at times.
But I’m getting whiny about nothing so I’ll stop. Gotta focus on the positive. I drew just to draw. Which really is my strong suit and probably always has been. Let’s take a trip down memory lane…
As a teenager, I was convinced that I would be a painter because it’s what I did most nights between the hours of 10 PM to 2 AM, even on school nights. In fact, especially on school nights because weekends were all about being a social monster. But now that I think about it, drawing was the escape during the long hours of the day. Despite my good grades and manifold participation in all things high school, I was a lackluster student simply because I didn’t really buy into it. But I was a fantastic draughtsman in the making. And since I didn’t seem to need to spend a lot of energy making honor roll or doing extra curricular activities (to spend more time with girls rather than look good on the old high school transcript), I had extra energy to put into the doodles on the clipboard I toted through the halls.
When I entered college, I was still convinced I would be a painter. But, being a freshman, I had to take drawing 101 and all that other gen ed. crap. I was still trying to work the painter angle when I stepped into my first life drawing class and suddenly everything clicked. From that first day, I was hooked on drawing. Of course, I worked past the simple notion of drawing a nude figure in an abstract space to making drawings that were more meaningful to me and to others; but that was the first time that I felt like I was doing work that was “fulfilling”. And so, during those years, drawing was all I did. Sure, I met my curriculum requirements of painting, watercolor, photography and sculpture as well as all the art history and theory nonsense; but as in high school, drawing was the escape. The big difference was that drawing became an end goal as well.
And I guess it still is. Go figure. Even though I didn’t do the stuff I thought I would this past weekend, it turns out that I did the stuff that I needed to. Funny how that works out.
*As shown in this 1997 photo by Adam Yake, I was the guy who would wear his own band’s shirt… which is somehow worse than being covered, head to toe in charcoal.
0 comments:
Post a Comment