finally, stilted and cringing, i drew yesterday. stiff fingers, and bizarre painful yearning, i wanted to. i wanted to record the poorly put artwork on the wall of the coffee shop, and the cheesy guy that wishes he could be a mac ad. it was too beautiful not to.
its been hard watching these students draw, and know what training and skill is inside of me, but i wonder now if a sketchbook was always an entire novel of images that could become the worst weight i've ever experienced: failure. i never drew for me, i drew for other people, i drew to remember things, i drew cause i had to achieve a grade, or study a form for later painstaking illustration, but never for me. just because i saw something witty, and wonderfully human, something that struck me with its wry sense of tragic comedy, to capture a moment, a whisper of mortality.
these art students have it wrong. the ones i'm modeling for are so concerned with the contour, the outermost edge, the vague outline of what makes a pose what it is, not the form, the sense of weight, not the power of a thoughtful, contemplated gesture.
its about looking for that particle, that line, the subtle crease that makes the whole drawing, the scene, the charcoal or pen on paper... finding the moment in a gesture, the shape of being human.
so its coming back. the discourse finding its way to my fingers, the truths i know about illustrating life awakening in my hands that have been numb for some time now. since i have no one to seek favor from, no grades to fight for, i can let go of my intense fear of failure, of not having the best, most skillful drawing to show, and think and observe through my hands, rather than my terrified heart.
