Draw Every Day
One of the pieces of advice (or demands, as the case might have been) given by every single art professor I have known is this:
Draw Every Day.
I was always guilty of never doing this. Drawing every day. I made up lots of excuses for this misbehavior, including "I'm too busy being poor" once I moved to San Francisco and began paying $650/mo for a charming closet, while making $9.50/hr in a bookstore. I also used lack of space in said closet as an excuse. I also dreaded being one of "those people" who sat and drew for hours in a crowded coffee shop. What I was forgetting was that, as an artist, you are supposed to put all that self-conscious fear aside and let your creativity out. I, in fact, have a sketch that I did (see below) at a coffee shop in Berkeley during the first week I was out here. It's really good. Don't know why I didn't do this every day.
Today I don't so much DRAW every day as I SCRIBBLE MADLY every day. Did you ever see that scary movie "The Ring"? I did. It scared the shit out of me. Anyway, there was this scene in which the main character was researching the dead girl, and she was taking notes, and then looked down, and instead of notes, she saw a big horrible scribble all over a photograph of a woman's face. Remember that? OH THAT WAS SO CREEPY. Anyway, that's what I find myself doing while I'm on the phone. It's not really art, but I think just using that kind of habit as an excuse to get your hand moving with ink is a good start.
Here are some recent sketches:
Oh, and here's that sketch from the Berkeley coffee shop: dated 01.16.03.
The note beside the sketch reads: "At Berkeley Espresso in Berkeley. This guy with the ponytail was obsessively playing w/ his ponytail. Like using both hands and grabbing his pony tail back & forth. Weirdo." God, I was a sweet girl.
Draw Every Day.
I was always guilty of never doing this. Drawing every day. I made up lots of excuses for this misbehavior, including "I'm too busy being poor" once I moved to San Francisco and began paying $650/mo for a charming closet, while making $9.50/hr in a bookstore. I also used lack of space in said closet as an excuse. I also dreaded being one of "those people" who sat and drew for hours in a crowded coffee shop. What I was forgetting was that, as an artist, you are supposed to put all that self-conscious fear aside and let your creativity out. I, in fact, have a sketch that I did (see below) at a coffee shop in Berkeley during the first week I was out here. It's really good. Don't know why I didn't do this every day.
Today I don't so much DRAW every day as I SCRIBBLE MADLY every day. Did you ever see that scary movie "The Ring"? I did. It scared the shit out of me. Anyway, there was this scene in which the main character was researching the dead girl, and she was taking notes, and then looked down, and instead of notes, she saw a big horrible scribble all over a photograph of a woman's face. Remember that? OH THAT WAS SO CREEPY. Anyway, that's what I find myself doing while I'm on the phone. It's not really art, but I think just using that kind of habit as an excuse to get your hand moving with ink is a good start.
Here are some recent sketches:
Oh, and here's that sketch from the Berkeley coffee shop: dated 01.16.03.
The note beside the sketch reads: "At Berkeley Espresso in Berkeley. This guy with the ponytail was obsessively playing w/ his ponytail. Like using both hands and grabbing his pony tail back & forth. Weirdo." God, I was a sweet girl.
posted by Emily Hunter at 7:01 PM
2 Comments:
Draw every day is fine advice for a two-dimensional artist whose primary realm of expression manifests itself on archival bond paper or stretched canvas, but what of the three-dimensiona sculptor molding clay or chipping granite? And beyond the sculptor, moving into art's fourth-dimension, my realm, what advice does one have for the bullshit artist?
My medium is not paper or stone. I manipulate concepts--which is a polite way as saying I fuck with people's minds, warping, distorting and repackaging words, images, constructs, prejudices, and anything else I find annoying or engaging into typically humorous but sometimes profoundly discomforting new configurations and juxtapositions. At the top of my game, I go for the laugh and the jugular at once.
This is art in its highest form and most abstract expression. The bullshit artist creates a mobile museum for an audience of one. A permanent traveling collection. By sowing hook-shaped seeds of doubt in people's minds, the BS artist doesn't just change the way people view a haystack, ala Monet, he changes the way they view themselves and charms them into questioning the prism through which they view the world.
Perhaps a teacher's advice for a bullshit artist would be to bullshit every day. Finally, advice I can and do live by.
To those who would argue that art has no fourth dimension, and that a bullshit artist is not an artist at all, I have the following advice.
Draw every day.
Well said. Let's see what my former drawing professors have to say.
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