Drawing As My Journey
We can see perfection in our minds. But we can’t make a perfect painting.
- Agnes Martin
I don’t know what has taken over me, but I cannot get over how much I love to draw lately. Does that ever happen to you, when you try to incorporate something in your life over the years, and find it hard and tiring. So you pick it up and give it up multiple times. And then suddenly, voila, you cannot get enough of it, and doing it up is not just easy, but a joy?
That’s what has happened with me when it comes to drawing. I started my art journey by learning to draw eons ago, and set myself a 100 day challenge to draw everyday. No media or subject was restricted. I copied a lot of famous artists, I found photographs to copy, I tried every medium I could think of. It was just a pure pleasure, along with a beginner’s frustration. I did noticeably got better over the course of my 100 days of drawings. So I called it a win and set it aside for then. You can follow my journey here.
But now, I am not trying any and every subject. I am not trying all the media in the world. I am done with all the experimentations. I want to do the simple thing and really learn to use my eyes. With that aim, I am mostly sticking to a pencil (sometimes a pen, or a stub of charcoal), and my drawing sketchbook. I am mostly drawing botanicals I find outside, or things around me. Nothing fancy and elaborate here. Because…I really want to just draw…I don’t want to judge my drawings, I don’t want to get frustrated. I want to just do it everyday, however I am capable of doing it on that day, and incorporate my learnings as I go. I can already see my drawings are better than before when I first did my drawing challenge (even though I am not judging!), and definitely easier to do. All the emotions that I went through doing that challenge- anger, fear, judgement, frustration, elation, pride- they are not there. What is mostly there is joy.
The question then arises- why this sudden love for drawing? Well, for one it makes me slow down. For 15 minutes a day, my hands are moving, and I am looking at something intently and focusing on its lines and shadows and contours. The world comes a little more alive for me with that intent looking. The details that I would have never noticed otherwise, become visible, and I get to know the world that tiny bit better. In that space of quiet and noticing, to feel a little more human, a little more of someone belonging to this world, a little more alive…that is my joy. Every contour on a cup or a leaf bud on a stem, or the swirl of a curling leaf that I can notice, I am a tiny bit more connected. I feel a tiny bit more of surrendering to the moment, to the thing I am looking to, to accepting myself.
The byproduct of the joy of drawing is two fold for me.
Of course, there is a sketchbook full of drawings- my journey, if you will. It’s not the perfectly paved direct path of a journey. But it is rich. I am creating it brick by brick of time spent every day. It is the journey of my surroundings as places change, and seasons change. It is a journey of my learnings making their appearance in my skill of drawing. It is a journey of me taking joy in commonplace things. It is a journey of me facing my discomfort and fear and accepting them. It is my journey of growing as a human.
The other byproduct is more material. It involves me collecting books on drawing as a subject, and books of drawings by other artists. Pouring over texts of why drawing has struck a chord with humans over eons, starting all the way back with cave drawings, and then over beautiful drawings of great artists…
All I can say to end is, that I cannot get enough of drawing as layer of richness in my everyday life, and all the learning and growing makes me happy.
