My creative journey 3

Every journey begins with a step...and continues with countless more. There is no end to the creative path. Only progress. To get better you have to do. Your skills, your mind, your art will not get better unless you try. And trying means you will fail a lot. But, if you keep at it, eventually you will triumph, break through, and be where you want to be. Here is another step on my journey.

Last night got a little wild, lol. I was running around all day doing stuff, random gigs and helping friends, so I didn't get started on drawing at my normal time...if there is such a thing. I only had time for one sketch at the coffee shop before it closed and when I got home I was a bit tuckered out. But, being dedicated I figured I'd still give it a swing.

This is where I made a mistake...not a huge one...but if left alone it could become a habit, a way of thinking that could reverberate waves into the future and affect my work.

It was my mindset.

A simple, insidious thing, if not right.

When I picked up the marker at home I was just doing what I had to. Drawing for everyone else. I mean, I needed to make a post this morning. I needed to feed the social media content machine and in order to do that I had to draw. And you can see that in the first image I did from my couch. I'm not there. There's ink on the page but none of me in it. Literally just strokes of a pen. And, it's a pretty bad drawing too. I still learned from it...not necessarily technique, but how to think.

I sat back after I finished...

Honestly kinda pissed at myself. Drawing is scary enough. Approaching a blank piece of paper with a marker, no eraser, and just an idea of what's supposed to go on the page. And, the better you get, the worse that fear can get, I think. But, I feel that fear builds up because of mindset. When you draw for the wrong reasons. Or, create in general. The work comes out wrong. And, if you don't work to fight it, like I said a minute ago, it can reverberate into the future and really mess with your work.

That's when I decided to keep on drawing until I did something I really liked. And, being a tough person to please it was a bit daunting. But, that was what I committed to myself. Because I wanted to start to cultivating the right mindset for this whole endeavor. I messed up with my photography and I was not going to let that happen with art.

So I drew.

Until suddenly I hit on something. Most people have noticed by now that I don't really draw faces. Most of my figures have a blank mask. There's several reasons for that, one of them being that I'm not really good at them. So, when I saw this image, how I had sketched the outline for her face, I was like, 'AHA!' And then I fell down a rabbit hole trying to figure out faces, heads, and perspective.

It was a slow start...I mean, it looks a lot easier than it is. You can start with those ovals and lines, thinking in terms of perspective, but when your pen hits the paper and suddenly you need to create details like ears, eyes, noses...and shadows? Wow...application vs theory, hard core.

But, I persisted. And I ran with it, letting myself just explore a bit. And, what came out in the end might not seem that impressive to many, but to me it's an accomplishment. Which, is the most important thing to me. After all, art is a series of complex skills that get woven together to create expression and you need to know and be able to work with so many to make things look right...or just the way you want them to. So, I'm good with drawing crazy faces for hours on end.

That was yesterdays creative journey. Gotta get started on todays now. :)
Michael

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