What summons you to make art? The lusciousness of the paints? The brilliance of color? Maybe you are mesmerized by the glow of sunlight on flowers, the playfulness of your dog, or the quiet of a special corner in your home. Maybe it’s the memories bound up in an object, a place, or a photo. Stop dithering and draw now.
We imagine we’ll come to the studio and leap into a rising tide of creativity. However, some days feel more like dust. The art sits there, arms crossed. It refuses to sing. The work won’t cooperate.
This is your signal to get out your sketchbook and draw. Ann Lamott calls this “butt in chair” time. You just need to start working. The bad work has to come before the good.
Scribble, mix, glue but get started.
For me, some days studio time feels like wrangling sloths. The mind feels glue-y, the hand uninspired. What to do? Just begin.
I heard a champion weight lifter once say that the hardest part of her workout was walking through the gym door. Whatever your day looks like, getting the art mojo working can itself be work.
So butt in chair. Eyes on your subject. What do you see? (Tell the yammering voices to go sit in the back. You’re working.) Turn off the phone. Put on music or a podcast, if that helps. One artist I know lights a candle. Whatever: mark the beginning of your focus. Breathe. Then, pick up the pencil.
It doesn’t matter what you draw. Your job is to keep your hand moving, your eye looking. Nothing calls you? Start with shapes. Circles become bubbles. Lines take on life, inviting color and shadow. Set a timer for five minutes and draw. Drawing, sketching, whatever your media, make the leaps you long for possible.
Drawing from magazines. Not life-drawing but they’ll hold that pose as long as you want.
This week, I’ve been inspired by a short class with Peggy Kroll Roberts to think hard about real shapes, their form and the shadows that tell us how they exist in space.
Sketching from Googlephotos. Marker for confidence, gouache for color and value.
A page of bunny photos gave me the chance to try drawing with a marker, semi-blind. The marker is a tool that brooks no corrections, so it slows you down, and you give yourself more time to look. Other ways to slow yourself down and get your hand moving include:
Draw the object upside down (Use your favorite photo-editing software to rotate an image.)
Draw with your non-dominant hand.
Do a blind-contour drawing: draw without looking at your paper
Do a wire drawing: draw the object with one continuous line.
Paint your subject with just three colors.
Paint your object as three shapes.
Cows, from the computer. Drawn (mostly) with my non-dominant hand.
Don’t judge. Keep trying. I guarantee you that the third, fourth, or even fifth attempt will be better than the first. You will learn so much more by trying again.
Try something. Try something else.
What happens if you turn the object upside down? Paint it with unexpected colors? Dramatically change the lighting?
Folks see someone painting and they think “what fun.” You and I know, making art is work. Painting, drawing, collage – these are a practice like any other. Baseball players, ballet dancers, musicians, magicians – they make it look easy because they practice for hours a day. Now, give yourself permission to practice. Draw.