Sunday, March 02, 2014

Copying is good

While I've been gelli-printing, I haven't abandoned my goal to draw more. This book I'm reading at the moment, Freehand Drawing and Discovery, is a real inspiration. 

For years Ive been struggling between drawing exactly what I see (which I find overwhelming) and oversimplifying (which ends up looking like the drawings I did when I was 8). This book is helping me find a happy medium.

Another thing I've been struggling with is this thing about finding your own style, and that style being good enough. Well, James Richards says, worry about quantity first - draw every day - and quality will come along the way.  I'm not quite there yet, but I do try!

And a third thing I was worried about was copying other artists. Well, he says, copy copy copy. You will learn a lot from it, and you will develop the "muscle memory" that will help you hone your skills. This little drawing wasn't quite a copy, but let's say it was heavily inspired by one of Mr. Richards' drawings.

Like all the other drawings I've done recently, this one was Made with Paper



No comments:

Post a Comment