I was in a bit of a rut the other day. Nothing I did worked out.
The past few months I have been working on drawing people, mostly from old family photos found in old boxes after mom died. It has been a lovely experience, looking at old memories, and even relatives I never got to meet. But it took me 3 years, from mom died to when I was able to get some joy out of this.
However, it all started with the dream of being good at painting and drawing people. Especially situations, relations, movement, or some emotion going on. I have had this image of what it looks like in my head for a very long time, but getting it out on paper is so challenging.
Yesterday I took out my sketchbook with thin drawing paper (because it’s cheaper) and my crayons and decided to go through the stack of family photos I have been looking at the past week, and with one color per person, draw a person or two from each photo, and not care how they turn out, just draw and not stop until they are all drawn.
I LOVED IT! Turns out that, like with my birds, I really enjoy imperfection and strangeness. Combined with strong colors, this was a huge hit for my mind and heart.
I am excited to see where this takes me. The biggest challenge now for me is to keep sketching freely, not become tight and overthinking like I do when I think the next step is to make “real art” of this. Just keep the mindset I have now and see where it ends up.
