Awesome, I F*cking Drew That!

So see this little drawing here?  Click on it to make it bigger if you're so inclined.  This is me drawing on Addirol.  I spent over 4 hours drawing this, which is a feat in of itself.  Usually I give up on a drawing after 30 minutes at most, often far less, as I get frustrated with my lack of hand-eye coordination, bad perspective, or whatever.

In this case, though, I sat down and worked for two hours straight on the drawing and then had to tear myself away to make dinner.  After dinner, we went out with friends, but I really wanted to get back to rediscovering my drawing ability.  Unfortunately, the Addirol wore off some time while we were out, and my tendency is to focus on work, so that made things more frustrating.  Luckily, I was with some very good friends, so I was able to mostly stay focused on enjoying myself.

This morning, I got up and decided to spend another hour on the drawing.  The next time I looked up, an hour had passed.  I decided to give myself a little more time.  The next time, two hours had passed, and I only stopped because I was hungry.

I wanted to complete the drawing before posting it, but I have realized that I also now need to do what I'm always telling my brilliant cartoonist John to do, which is to know when it's good enough.  I'm not saying that this picture is as good as it could be, but it is MILES ahead of my last self-portrait from a few years ago, which I attempted to find, but which seems buried on one of my hard drives.  (Apple, could you please make a better search system?  Google did it; so can you!)

Things I noticed while doing this drawing:

1. I always am very self-critical about my looks when doing a self-portrait.  This time, I used that self-critical tendency as an opportunity to explore different ways of giving myself a little "plastic surgery" without affecting the portrait's resemblance to me.  Mostly this involved removing extra lines, which is an important part of knowing what to cartoon, and something I've always been bad at.
2. I embraced solving perspective problems.  In the past, especially when I am starting from a photo as I did here, if it's not traceable or copyable, I can't draw it in perspective (check out my "how i think" from a couple days ago!).  In this case, the original photo didn't have either of my elbows in it, nor most of my left arm, so I had to improvise.  The left arm definitely needs a bit more work, but that was my umptenth try.  The right arm I only drew three times, and I actually ended up very close to what I started with.
3. I set rules and stuck to them, but changed them when they were too constricting.  Although I wanted to do a monochromatic drawing (blue+white), I realized that I couldn't manage that, so I let myself cheat with the jeans and shirt colors, and then I threw in a skin tone.  Usually I'd either get frustrateed with my rules and stick to them too much, or I'd break all my rules and end up with something lousy.
4. I spent a lot more time checking my work, pausing to zoom out and see how things looked overall.  I have always hyperfocused on drawing details (my past work will have one amazing ear, or a really good section of hair).  I still think I may have done a bit of that on the eyes and hair in this drawing, but mostly I kept trying to edit the whole drawing, piece by piece, until it all seemed to "fit".
5. I developed new ways of working around the limitations of my tools.  In the past, I would get mad at Flash/Photoshop/Painter/my pen/my graphics tablet and blame the tool.  This time, I actually experimented with techniques until I found ones that worked.  I was much more careful about making my work "undo-able" until I was happy with it, and when things did go wrong, I didn't panic and lose anything.
6. I had a lot more fun drawing than I ever have before.  Usually drawing is torture for me.  I love visualizing ideas in my head, but as soon as pen touches paper (or wacom), panic and insecurity rise up.  I start checking the time, worrying about how long I "should" spend on a piece of art when I know it's going to be crappy anyway.  This time, although I knew that this piece wouldn't really serve much of a purpose, and that it was just for fun, I stuck with it for the sake of doing it.  I'm already looking forward to my next one!

So what did I learn from this? This experience made me think about how we don't value art in education enough.  If I had this level of difficulty or frustration in math or reading, someone would have probably pulled me aside and said "I think you need some additional help".  But with art, especially visual art, but also other forms, it is much easier to say "Oh that's just his style"  I remember often being near tears in Junior High School when I took art;  I think once I actually cried.  As a result, I didn't take any art classes in high school, fearing that I'd once again get a "most improved" certificate, which at the time stung more than a low grade ever could.  Although it is important to value different students' perspectives and realize that art is a personal experience, it is also important that art teachers look at a student's work critically.

If you asked my teachers at MassArt, they would all say I was a good student; after all,  I got As in all the classes that I took.  But if you held up my work next to other "A" students, you'd notice a big difference: I could do exactly what the assignment required, but no more.   I was doing my best, but my best shouldn't have been accepted as good enough.  A few "B" or "C" (or worse) grades might have again given me the wakeup call that I'd already once ignored in my undergrad education.

I know in my own art teaching I will be looking out for such students in the future!