Drawing is a good way to channel frustration
Tag Archives: drawing
Weekend shenanigans
Like I said the other day, I just have to keep up with the scenius. Keep drawing daily, find opportunities to study the form, and keep trying, good or not, as Lynda Barry has said.
One thing we forget with digital media is the material properties of the materials…the organic flow or the way the materials shape the outcomes.
I haven’t any experience with watercolours and so pushing myself out of the comfort zone of flat colors which is what you need in comics but – my friend Raj always complains my drawings look a bit flat.
So tried a bit of depth in last night’s sketch – coloured this on Procreate where inks don’t bleed haha.
Hanging out with the scenius
Austin Kleon often talks about gathering a scenius, and I have to say – for me that’s @pacificleo @royalbengal @whackonondo & @the_legend_of_raj. We have a group called Wider than the sky. What is great is that my scenius is not just talking, but also doing. They’re constantly making things, churning out ideas, art, films, explorations – so I have no option but to do, and keep up my end!
There’s no way to escape, @the_legend_of_raj even sent me that handy little @sennelier1887 watercolour box!
These drawings are from the weekend, drawing at a street corner outside our little tornado’s karate class.
Just the usual
I work from home, and often my only social life is to have a conversation with myself in drawing. Here’s a typical one:
A year of drawing Orin
One of the things of being a parent is that you have to spend time with your kids. Lucky for you if they are entertaining. As in years past, our tornado still takes forever to eat a meal so I use the time to draw. It’s great to have a living breathing human being at close quarters to draw from! Between mouthfuls, we chat.
Sometime in August I was making notes for my DesignUp talk, and thinking about “belonging” when Orin chimed in:
“You belong to your parents, but you live with us!”
“Do you know centipedes lived in the time of dinosaurs?”
“Do you know what a sundial is?”
I don’t know what he thinks of us…
Here they are watching the FIFA World Cup, and the brown boy thinks this is the best drawing of him that I’ve done since 2003. That drawing is actually hanging on my MIL’s fridge I think.
Here we were discussing our best movies/TV shows of 2022. The brown boy chose Better Call Saul, while mine was Dune, and the tornado chose Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
At least one of you drew me!
We’ve created a monster, I say…
Spend time making things for no known reason
A book that has given me immense joy is Making Comics by Lynda Barry. While she herself is a big inspiration, her books are inimitable and exceptional. Ms. Barry teaches drawing and comics to young children and this book is a set of those exercises and her unique insights around drawing, imagining, and teaching. I’ve often done some of the exercises with our little tornado and his friends when they needed to be calmed down, and soon we are all giggling at each other’s drawings.
Typeface copied: Astronef Super
Here’s an exercise where she asked us to imagine ourselves as Batman, and draw what we did the day before. I had gone to the Aadhaar Centre nearby, worked from home, and went for a walk with a friend.
Ms. Barry also believes that anyone can draw, and so do I. My drawing wasn’t anywhere near the best in design school, and in the animation studio where I interned, our boss had despaired over my unfit-for animation drawings. He used to challenge me to do 20 iterations of bird flight cycles, or 50 iterations of floating balloons, and I persevered. All by hand, of course.
What happens through repetition and practice is that you get better by training your hand to follow your eye or your mind’s eye, as closely as possible, without any gen loss. The repetition also allows your conscious rational mind and your ego, to quieten, and you’re in flow until there are just the forms on the page…
“There’s the drawing you are trying to make and the drawing that’s actually being made – and you can’t see it until you forget what you were trying to do.”
Lynda Barry, Notes from an accidental professor
If you think you don’t know how to draw, this book is for you. Ms. Barry starts with basic stick figures to help you start envisioning. She also says,
It’s not your job to judge whether your drawing is good or bad, your job is to keep drawing.
Lynda Barry on Design Matters podcast
This insight itself has set me free.
Title from Picture This
Welcome to middle age
Middle age! Time to get serious about life.
But me, I worry about my short arms and the brown boy wants to grow his hair.
With our pack of memories slung slack on our backs
This video and the earlier one are how my day-to-day journal drawing takes place. I sit down with my book and try to draw what’s on my mind. Sometimes I start by drawing what’s in front of me – which is why there are so many drawings of Orin eating! At other times I draw the day, how things went, what I listened to, or read. Sometimes my mind is blank and quite often the fear of the empty page threatens to take over.
But the important thing is to show up, and get over that fear, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of not living up to your own expectations. And after some time, I find the flow, I start to commune with myself, and joy takes over.
Title from Joy Harjo, via Pome by Matthew Ogle
Looking back, some favorites from the last decade: Doing what you love (2013); Channeling the girls (2013); Life with Picasso, Art (2013)
A lesson learnt
{At the end of confidence, there is only one feeling. Only one.
That one has the capacity to bear all that comes.}
inktales 